The Turkish gang war behind the shooting of a nine-year-old girl
When a gunman riding a powerful motorbike pulled up outside a busy restaurant in north London and fired six shots in two seconds, the first bullet shattered the glass and hit a nine-year-old girl in the head.
Police say it came just millimetres from killing her and it is a “miracle” she survived, making a good recovery after spending more than three months in hospital, where her skull was rebuilt with titanium.
The girl, who was eating ice cream at the time of the shooting, still has the bullet lodged in her brain and is expected to have physical and cognitive difficulties for the rest of her life.
The intended targets of what prosecutors called an “assassination” attempt at Evin restaurant in Kingsland High Street, Dalston, on 29 May last year were a group of men sat eating and drinking at an outside table, who can be seen scrambling to the door in CCTV footage as the shots were fired.
Nasser Ali, 43, suffered a wound to his backbone. Kenan Aydogdu, 45, was shot in the leg – and Mustafa Kiziltan, 35, was hit in the thigh.
They were members of the Hackney Turks gang and the hit was organised by their fierce rivals, the Tottenham Turks, in a bitter tit-for-tat feud police believe is behind more than 20 murders over the past two decades.
The war escalated after Kemal Armagan, a leading figure in the Hackney Turks, swore revenge after he was beaten up at the Manor Club snooker hall in north London in the early hours of 24 January 2009.
Izzet Eren and his cousin Kemal Eren, whose family ran the rival Tottenham Turks, were among those involved in the fight believed to have sparked the war, which has seen members of the two organised crime groups, their families and members of the public murdered and maimed on the streets of London and across Europe.
Javon Riley, 33, has been found guilty of three charges of attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent after a trial at the Old Bailey over his role in helping to carry out the Dalston shooting.
Javon Riley. Pic: Met Police
The gunman, who was riding a stolen Ducati Monster, got away and Riley refused to name the person who had hired him, telling jurors he feared for his and his family’s safety.
Police are offering a reward of up to £15,000 for information to help catch him and those involved in orchestrating the shooting, who are believed to be among the higher echelons of the Tottenham Turks.
Detective Inspector Ben Dalloway told Sky News it fits the pattern of “tit-for-tat violent incidents” between the gangs.
“You’ll have one member of one OCG [organised crime group] shot, stabbed, murdered, and then within months, sometimes even less, there’ll be retaliation,” he said.
Gang feud linked to multiple murders
Beytullah Gunduz, who had left the restaurant just 17 minutes before the attack, was allegedly the subject of a £200,000 contract hit taken out in Turkey by Kemal Eren over his alleged role in the 2013 murder of his cousin, and Izzet Eren’s brother, Zafer Eren. Gunduz was acquitted of the murder.
Gunduz avoided the execution of the contract but was shot in the neck in August 2020 at close range by a motorcyclist before arriving at his solicitor’s office carrying his passport, a court heard.
One of the three men injured in the Dalston shooting, Kenan Aydogdu, who was described by prosecutors as a “high ranking” member of the Hackney Turks in a previous murder trial, had also been targeted before.
He was shot in the leg while in the same car as his close associate Ali Armagan in 2009 and suffered gunshot wounds to his legs when a gunman fired 10 shots as he was driving the following year.
Ali Armagan was shot dead in 2012. Pic: Metropolitan Police/PA
Ali Armagan was shot dead in his car parked outside Turnpike Lane Tube station on 1 February 2012. Three men were later convicted of informing Kemal Eren – nicknamed “No Fingers” because of his missing digits – about his whereabouts at the time.
Kemal Eren is still wanted in the UK for the murder after he fled to Turkey, where he was himself shot and left paralysed in December 2012.
Police believe he is now the de facto leader of the Tottenham Turks after Izzet Eren, 41, was murdered in Moldova – where he fled after escaping from prison in Turkey – on 10 July last year.
Kemal Armagan, wearing a camouflage outfit and riding an electric bike, allegedly fired seven shots with a 9mm gun at his back and head, killing him instantly as he sat outside a café in Moldovan capital Chisinau in revenge for the murder of his brother.
When he was arrested carrying a false identity document in the ancient Turkish port city of Izmir on 10 March this year, Kemal Armagan was also wanted on suspicion of the murder of a shopkeeper in London and two other members of the Eren family in Turkey.
Izzet Eren. Pic: Met Police
The rise of Turkish organised crime
Former head of drugs threat and intelligence for the National Crime Agency (NCA), Tony Saggers, says Turkish organised crime groups filled the demand for heroin from the 1970s as the UK grew into Europe’s largest market for the drug.
Legitimate trade routes set up by immigrants were “mirrored and matched” by the gangs, who brought heroin from Afghanistan through Iran and into Europe, he says.
Among those to get a foothold in the 1990s were the Hackney Turks, who are also known as the Bombacilars (Bombers), an ethnically Kurdish group run by Huseyin Baybasin, who was known as “The Emperor”.
He was dubbed Europe’s Pablo Escobar, said to be responsible for importing some 90% of all heroin into the UK, before he was jailed for life in the Netherlands in 2001.
When his younger brother Abdullah Baybasin – who is in a wheelchair after being shot in 1986 – took over, police likened watching him while he was under surveillance in the early 2000s to a scene in The Godfather. Those who met him kissed his hand and he spoke in quiet whispers so only those close could hear.
He was jailed for importing heroin and blackmail in what the judge described as a “mafia type” extortion racket in 2006 but the conviction was quashed and he was deported to Turkey in 2010 after a retrial collapsed.
Baybasin served a sentence for setting up and directing a criminal network and drug trafficking but is now free.
It started with a slap
By 2009, Kemal Armagan, and his brother Ali, were among those leading the Hackney Turks.
Along with the Tottenham Turks – also known as the Tottenham Boys – and a third north London gang with Turkish links, they were responsible for importing most of the UK’s heroin, according to police.
Izzet Eren, his cousin Kemal Eren and Mehmet Senpalit arrived at the Manor Club, a snooker hall near Manor House Tube station, at around 1am on 24 January 2009 before Kemal Armagan approached their group and a fight broke out, according to a police intelligence report.
“I’m old school, I’ll sort it out myself,” Kemal Armagan told police after the incident.
The fight was directly linked to 31 shootings, four arsons, five stabbings, and three murders that year as the gangs attacked each other in retaliatory violence.
The Hackney Turks’ E5 social club was sprayed with machinegun fire in March before Ahmet Paytak, 50, was shot and killed in a convenience shop then linked to Senpalit in Hornsey Road, Holloway, by helmet-wearing gunmen, in what prosecutors described as an “act of immediate revenge”.
The two men convicted over the shooting were said by the prosecution to have been hired by the Hackney Turks leadership “to do their dirty work”, while Kemal Armagan is still wanted for the murder.
Izzet Eren was shot at 12 times, but escaped uninjured, in September in an attempted hit, while fellow Tottenham Turk Oktay Erbasli was shot dead by a man on a motorbike on 2 October while driving a Range Rover rented by Kemal Eren.
Three days later, 21-year-old Cem Duzgan, who was not thought to be the intended target, was killed when a gunman opened fire with a submachine gun at the E5 social club, where Erdal Armagan was also inside.
Kemal Eren. Pic: Met Police
Prosecutors described the murder as a “hit” likely ordered by Kemal Eren as revenge for the shooting of Erbasli.
Ali Armagan was murdered in February 2012, while Kemal Eren, who is still wanted in the UK over the murder, was shot in Elbistan, southeastern Turkey in December 2012 and left paralysed.
Zafer Eren, then the leader of the Tottenham Turks, was shot dead in Southgate on 18 April 2013, when his younger brother Izzet Eren took over the gang.
Prison escapes
Izzet Eren shot and killed one man and left another in a wheelchair in a revenge shooting in Bodrum, Turkey, in 2014.
He was deported to Turkey, where he was wanted for the murder, after serving a drugs sentence in the UK in 2015.
On 18 April that year, his cousin and Kemal Armagan’s brother, Beyzat Eren, was shot and killed in Turkey on the second anniversary of the murder of Zafer Eren.
Izzet Eren escaped from prison and smuggled himself back into the UK, where he was stopped by police on a stolen motorbike with another man on 13 October 2015, armed with a pistol and a Skorpion submachine gun.
Both guns were loaded with the safety catches off and police believed they were on their way to avenge the murder of Izzet’s brother, Zafer.
The pair admitted firearms offences but while being taken to Wood Green Crown Court in a prison van for sentencing, the Tottenham Turks made a bid to free Izzet.
Police were tipped off to the escape attempt at Wood Green. Pic: PA
Jermaine Baker was shot dead by police
The Metropolitan Police had received intelligence his gang were planning to help him escape and Jermaine Baker, one of the those recruited to help, was fatally shot by a police marksman.
Izzet Eren was jailed for 14 years and transferred to serve the rest of his sentence in Turkey on 26 August 2019 but escaped a month later on 26 September 2019.
His younger brother Huseyin Eren was murdered on a holiday to Turkey in 2020, sparking a new wave of violence.
In evidence given to the Jermaine Baker inquiry, police said the Tottenham Turks were behind three fatal shootings and four threat to life warnings in 2020 alone, which appeared to be linked to the murder of Huseyin.
There was also intelligence that Izzet Eren planned to return to the UK to seek revenge on multiple targets.
Mehmet Koray Alpergin. Pic: PA
The Tottenham Turks were linked by a judge the murder of DJ Koray Alpergin, 43, who was stripped naked and tortured to death after being kidnapped with his girlfriend Gozde Dalbudak as they returned home from an Italian restaurant in Mayfair, central London, in October 2022.
One of those convicted over the plot was also found guilty of conspiracy to murder another man who was shot in Enfield, but survived, in another Tottenham Turks-ordered hit on 7 January 2023.
Leaders killed and arrested
The suspect in the shooting of Izzet Eren. Pic: Moldovan police
Izzet Eren is understood to have travelled to Ukraine, from where he crossed the border to Moldova along with refugees fleeing the war with Russia.
An arrest warrant was issued from the UK to Moldova in 2022 to extradite Izzet Eren, who was suspected of being behind the importation of 156kg of heroin from Iran to Heathrow Airport and escaping lawful custody.
He was remanded in custody for around 18 months before being shot dead after being granted bail pending an appeal of his asylum claim.
London-based former lawyer, Toper Hassan, 58, who is married to Kemal Armagan’s sister, solicitor Reyhan Armagan, was allegedly recruited by his brother-in-law to organise logistics for Izzet Eren’s murder, a court heard during a court hearing, where he was fighting extradition to Moldova.
Turkish police confirmed to Sky News that Kemal Armagan was arrested on 10 March this year.
Dr Mahmut Cengiz, an adjunct faculty at the Department of Criminology, Law and Society of George Mason University, says targeting and killing the Tottenham Turks leader sends a “strong message” and further reprisals are likely.
“If you are … able to kill a group leader, it means that you are the most powerful organisation,” he said, adding that he expects a “strong response”.
He said the Tottenham Turks are “fighting for the criminal markets, so to be able to give a strong message” that they are still active they will have to attack the Hackney Bombers and target “the high-level people from this organisation”.
The flying of St George’s flags across the country are creating “no-go” zones for NHS staff, with some facing frequent abuse, health bosses have warned.
Several NHS trust chief executives and leaders have said staff feel intimidated by the national symbols, including when they make home visits.
The findings follow a survey conducted among senior managers, 45% of whom were extremely concerned about discrimination towards staff.
A leader of a trust said anonymously that there were safety issues around how they work in the community, with nurses regularly visiting patients in their homes alone.
He said: “You’re going in on your own, you’re locking the door behind you.
“I have been into homes with people who have been convicted of sex offences, and we go in and provide care to them.
“It can be a really precarious situation, and they [the nurses] handle that absolutely brilliantly.
“The autonomy and the clinical decisions that they make within that, I think, is fantastic.
“We saw during the time when the flags went up – our staff, who are a large minority of black and Asian staff, feeling deliberately intimidated.
“It felt like the flags were up creating no-go zones. That’s what it felt like to them.
“You add that on top of real autonomous working, that real bravery of working in people’s homes, with an environment… [where] it feels like it’s an area that’s designed to exclude them.
“Our staff continue to work in that environment, and I think they deserve our real praise and thanks as a nation, frankly, for doing that within those really difficult circumstances.”
He added his trust had also seen “individual instances of aggression towards staff”.
File pic: iStock
Another NHS trust leader said a member of staff, who is white and has children of mixed heritage, had asked some people putting up flags to move so she could park her car.
“The individuals filmed what was happening, and then followed her, and she continued to receive abuse over a series of several days, not because she objected to the flags, but because she disturbed them,” they said.
“There are lots of stories like that. There are lots of stories where people have tried to take flags down outside of their own homes and have been abused and threatened as a consequence of that.”
The leader said the “springing up of flags everywhere has created another form of intimidation and concern for many, many of our staff”.
Daniel Elkes, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: “The NHS has relied on overseas recruitment for a long time to ensure we have the right workforce.
“We have a really diverse workforce and without that you can’t deliver the NHS.
“We are trying to recruit from the very places where we provide healthcare so the intake into the NHS is representative of British people from more diverse backgrounds.”
Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, said: “Following a summer of further racist disorder, it is little wonder a growing number of nursing staff report feeling unsafe, particularly when having to work on their own and often at night.
“The government and all politicians have to stop pandering to dangerous anti-migrant sentiments and employers must prioritise tackling racism and work with trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms to protect staff.”
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A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was “no place for intimidation, racism or abuse in our country or our NHS”, adding that threats and aggression should be reported to police.
They said the government valued the “diversity of our NHS”, and that workers “must be treated with dignity and respect”.
“Our flags represent our history, our heritage, and our values,” they said. “They are a symbol of our nation and belong to all of us – not just some of us.”
The survey findings come ahead of strike action by resident doctors over pay and jobs due to take place on Friday for five days.
A woman caught with £5bn in Bitcoin in the UK’s highest ever value money laundering investigation has been jailed for 11 years and eight months – after nearly five years on the run.
Zhimin Qian, 47, sat up in bed looking stunned when police kicked open the bedroom door of an Airbnb in a York suburb on 22 April last year.
She vanished and went on the run after officers seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin in the country’s biggest cryptocurrency seizure in a raid of her rented £5m home next to Hampstead Heath.
Qian – who fled China after carrying out a huge fraud and arrived in the UK in 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Yadi Zhang – pleaded guilty to two money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
Police said she styled herself the “Goddess of Wealth” and wore imperial robes as her sales teams offered 300% returns at conferences in luxury hotels in China promoting her “Britain Nice Life Insurance” scheme.
In a slick video played to targets, the narrator says “Britain is a nation of glories and dreams” over footage of the Houses of Parliament, Oxford University, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the City of London.
Qian was already wanted in China over two other scams when she orchestrated the gigantic investment fraud, conning more than 128,000 victims from every province out of 40bn Yuan (around £4.6bn) between 2014 and 2017.
More than 80 people have been convicted in China over the scam, but Qian converted some of the proceeds into more than 70,000 Bitcoin and fled, crossing the border into Myanmar on a moped before arriving at Heathrow Airport in September 2017.
Jian Wen. Pic: CPS
The women rented a £17,000-a-month house in Hampstead. Pic: CPS
She recruited Jian Wen, who left her job in a south London Chinese takeaway, and the women moved into a £17,000-a-month rented £5m house next to Hampstead Heath, posing as the bosses on an international jewellery business.
They travelled extensively across Europe, buying jewellery and spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods, while Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.
Qian made extensive notes about her “grandiose” plans to increase her social standing.
She wanted to meet a royal duke, hoped the Dalai Lama would anoint her as a reincarnated Goddess, and dreamed of ruling Liberland – an unrecognised micronation on the Croation side of the Danube – as Queen.
The women travelled extensively. Pic: Met Police
Wen tried to buy Hampstead property. Pic: Met Police
But the women came to the attention of police when they tried to buy a £24m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, using more than £800,000 converted from Bitcoin.
Officers raided their home in October 2018 and seized £300,000 in cash and cheques, along with phones and laptops, and found a hand drawn “treasure map” leading from Harrods to a safety deposit box containing more devices.
When investigators finally accessed the cryptocurrency wallets stored on them, they thought someone had put the decimal point in the wrong place.
The 61,279 Bitcoin was then worth £1.4bn and has now soared to more than £5bn, making it the biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure in Britain and, until recently, the world.
Read more: How Chinese takeaway worker led police to biggest ever Bitcoin seizure
Police believed Qian had left the country, but shortly before Wen was found guilty of money laundering offences in March last year, Detective Constable Joe Ryan detected activity on a cryptocurrency exchange from a wallet linked to Qian, which hadn’t been used since 2019.
The exchange provided details of the account holder – Seng Hok Ling, a Malaysian national with a previous conviction for fraud in Hong Kong in 2015, who was living in Matlock, Derbyshire.
Seng Hok Ling arrives at a rented property. Pic: Met Police
Qian disguises her appearance while on the run. Pic: Met Police
Working on the theory he may be in contact with Qian, detectives stepped up the manhunt, which took them all over the UK, before they identified her at a detached house in a York suburb.
When police kicked open the upstairs bedroom door, there was Qian, lying under a bright red duvet and struggling to put on her top as she stared wide eyed at officers from behind her thick glasses.
Detective Constable Chris Woods told colleagues: “It’s her.”
A ledger and passwords found sewn inside a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing, led investigators to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency worth around £67m.
Ling had helped her stay on the run, providing false documents and money laundering services, and renting Airbnb properties, including a house in Glasgow and a remote farmhouse near Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands.
The court heard he tried to get one passport in the name of dead Hong Kong actress Dianxia Shen.
Staff made to sign confidentiality agreements. Pic: Met Police
A rotating entourage of cooks, drivers and security guards were employed on lucrative contracts to look after Qian, who they assumed was a rich recluse.
They were made to sign strict confidentiality agreements, which barred them from using Chinese devices or apps and photographing, recording or videoing “anyone or anything indoors or outdoors” – with breaches resulting in dismissal and fines of up to $30,000.
Metropolitan Police officers travelled to Beijing and Tianjin to speak to victims of the fraud, some of whom had lost their life savings, seen their family collapse or been left unable to pay for medical care.
Chinese police officers were lined up to become the first in history to give evidence in a UK court, but Qian pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial, while Ling also admitted a money laundering charge.
The court heard that since being in prison Qian has had poetry published and her artwork displayed at an exhibition.
Wen was jailed for six years and eight months last year, and the sentencing of Qian and Ling marks the end of what the Met’s head of economic and cyber crime called “one of the longest running and most complex economic crime investigations” in the force’s history.
“She lived, while she was on the run in the UK, a relatively reclusive lifestyle. She had that entourage of people around her, but she didn’t venture out much,” he said of Qian.
“And we have some understanding from some of her musings and some of thoughts around what she may do with the rest of her money and her wealth and her life ultimately.
“But thankfully, we were able to catch her and bring her to justice before some of those dreams were realised.”
The fortune is now at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims.
Prosecutors have set up a compensation scheme but lawyers representing those who want to recover their investments say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin and not just what they put in.
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