R v Jisl

In relation to these two appeals against conviction, we will take time to consider our decision and we will let counsel have written copies of the judgment in due course. In relation to that hearing, there is no need for any leading counsel to be present, or junior counsel for that matter, provided somebody is present who can take it.

Now that seems to us to leave Konakli's appeal against sentence and an application, Mr Lithman, on behalf of Tekin. Nothing in relation to Jisl, Mr Singer? Very well, Jisl can go down. Konakli can be brought into court. Mr Singer, thank you for your assistance.

(Submissions made in relation to an appeal against sentence on behalf of Konakli and in relation to a renewed application for permission to appeal against sentence in relation to Tekin)

We shall say that the sentence will be reduced but we will not give judgment until we have dealt with the conviction appeals. Does that present you with any problem?

None whatsoever. Thank you very much.

We will reserve the question of Tekin's renewed application for permission to appeal. We shall in due course reduce the sentence on Konakli to one of a total of 12 years' imprisonment. We shall give our reasons for doing that when we have considered our judgment in relation to the conviction appeals.

These are appeals against conviction with leave of the single judge by Gungor Tekin and Jan Jisl, together with an appeal against sentence by Yucel Konakli, and a renewed application by Tekin for leave to appeal against sentence.

After a trial which lasted nearly seventy working days, and which was itself a re-trial, Tekin and Jisl were convicted on 5th October 2001 at Central Criminal Court before HHJ Dunn QC and a jury of fraudulent evasion of a prohibition on the importation of goods. Konakli pleaded guilty on re-arraignment. The goods in question were 139 brown packages of diamorphine, with a street value in excess of £7 million. An additional defendant, Mustapha Mus, was acquitted.

A few days after the trial, Tekin was sentenced to 21 years imprisonment. A Drug Traffic Confiscation Order in the sum of £168,365.20, to be paid within nine months, with two years imprisonment consecutive in default was made. Konakli was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, and Jisl to 14 years.

There are numerous grounds of appeal against conviction. We must begin by summarising the essential facts which led to the appellants' arrests. Although conscious that much of the strength of the Crown's case derived from the detail of the evidence, we shall do this briefly, focussing on the facts relevant to the issues raised before us in the appeal.

The interest of HM Customs and Excise in Tekin, and a subsequent surveillance operation, were triggered by information from two sources known to Customs' Officers, Mr Houston and Mr Goodman, who first heard Tekin's name on 24th October 1997. On 3rd and 10th November, information was received by HM Customs and Excise from two informants, who were paid £25,000. One informant was Tarpaz. The second was Khan. Khan was later tried and convicted of conspiracy to supply heroin (in connection with a different importation from that with which we are concerned), and two further counts of conspiracy to commit GBH. He was sentenced to a total of 18 years imprisonment. He is currently appealing against conviction. Khan was also charged with and faces trial in relation to two further heroin importations. The trial has been postponed pending his current appeal. We must deal briefly with the suggestion made in argument before us that there had been insufficient disclosure about Khan's criminal activity and bad character. That suggestion was not made good. In particular, the material disclosed to the defence pre-trial went further than providing details of the conspiracies of which Khan had been convicted and charged. On any view he was a serious criminal, sometimes running with the drug dealing hares, sometimes with the Customs hounds, and sometimes indeed running with both simultaneously. On the evidence available to the jury, they can have been in no doubt about his true character.

We must next identify a third individual, Mentesh Hassan. He too was believed by Customs and Excise to be a dealer in heroin, and the trial proceeded on the basis that he was indeed a significant drug dealer. The importance to this case of Khan, Tarpaz, and Hassan can now be explained. Tekin's defence at trial was that Khan and Tarpaz, and Hassan acting in collaboration with them, set him up. They framed him and lured him into the hands of waiting Customs officers, who arrested him in circumstances to be described. In addition, throughout the trial, there was something of an undercurrent, more obvious at times than others, suggesting that Customs officers had acted corruptly, and that they too were closely allied to Hassan and his plot against Tekin.

Tekin also alleged that for sometime before the events with which we are immediately concerned, Hassan had owed him a great deal of money. This was important to his defence in a number of ways. First, if true, it served to provide an explanation why cash found later at Tekin's flat was found to be contaminated with heroin. His case was that the cash represented part-payment by Hassan of the debt, and that the heroin which contaminated the cash must have been present when Hassan repaid him. Thus it was Hassan, not he, who was the source of and linked with this contaminated cash. However even after these payments, £120,000 was nevertheless still outstanding at the date of Tekin's arrest. Therefore, second, this alleged debt purported to provide a motive for Hassan's involvement in the decision to set up Tekin. If successful, the debt would be expunged, or at any rate any realistic possibility of its repayment would be extinguished.

The issue was explored by the Crown in cross-examination, in the context of a transaction in April 1997 in which Tekin assisted Hassan by helping him to change over £150,000 in pounds sterling into German marks, without apparently seeking or insisting on the repayment of the debt. The fact of the transaction was not in dispute. The Crown suggested that the incident served to undermine the assertion that Hassan was indebted to Tekin, and along with it, Tekin's explanation for the contaminated cash. The Crown also contended that this incident was a money laundering exercise, to be set against Tekin's good character, based on the absence of previous convictions, and positive and glowing testimonials to him which were put before the jury.

The defence adduced the evidence to show a surveillance operation mounted on Tekin which revealed three probable meetings between him and Hassan. On 6th December 1997, at 5.36 pm, Tekin was seen in animated conversation with Hassan, who was sitting in the front passenger seat passenger in a Renault motor car. A little south of the parked Renault car was another car, registered in Hassan's name. The engine was running, and another man was sitting on the boot of the car, apparently acting as a look-out. At 6.30 this car, driven by the look-out man, drove past the Renault which, at about the same time, moved away and stopped in the middle of the road at a junction where the second car had now parked. Its front passenger door was open. The driver was lying down in the reclined front passenger seat. Hassan walked away from the Renault being driven by Tekin to the second car, got into the driver's seat and then drove away. Tekin then drove away in the Renault.

On 21st December, Tekin was again seen walking in the same area as before, near to the same Renault parked car, and was holding a mobile telephone conversation, when he was approached by the same second car, with the driver using a mobile phone. Tekin entered the second car. It drove away for a few yards before stopping, and after that it drove away.

On 23rd December, the same second car was parked in Stoke Newington, when the same Renault stopped and parked nearby. The inference was that this was another meeting between Tekin and Hassan.

The importance attached at trial to the details of these incidents is not entirely clear to us. They established that there was a connection between Hassan and Tekin. Indeed, that fact was...