Photo: Chidorian @ flickr

Concerns have been raised over the decision by Croydon council to stop its school meals services, forcing individual schools to find new caterers . (more…)

Ranjit Nankani and Dwayne McPherson. Pic:Met Police

A Croydon man has been jailed for life for murdering another man by driving his car at him outside the Ministry of Sound nightclub in South London.

Ranjit Nankani, 30, killed Gary Johnson, 25, from Streatham following an argument inside the nightclub in August last year.

After driving his Mitsubishi Shogun at Johnson, pinning him to a wall, Nankani himself miraculously survived an attempt on his own life when Johnson’s friend,  Dwayne McPherson, 28,  from Sydenham, fired four shots at him at close range. McPherson was also found guilty of attempted murder.

Aftab Jafferjee, QC, prosecuting, told the jury at the Old Bailey that the case involved  ”breathtaking lawlessness on the streets of London.”

He said that what had began as  a relatively minor incident had escalated into ”murderous violence.”

The drama began when Nankini accidentally stepped on the toes of Johnson inside the nightclub. He apologised, but there was a violent confrontation between Johnson and McPherson on one side and Nankini and two other men  on the other side. However, bouncers broke up the fight and threw both groups out of the club.

However, Nankini went back to his car and saw McPherson and Johnson walking down the street.

Closed circuit television camera footage played to the court showed the Shogun being driven onto a pavement and knocking over a bollard, before accelerating, hurling Mr Johnson against a wall and killing him instantly. The Shogun then crashed into a taxi containing two woman, who the court heard, were lucky to escape with their lives.

McPherson then pulled out a gun, went over to the Shogun and fired four rounds at close range into the vehicle. Nankini survived with only a small shoulder wound.

The jury rejected Nankini’s defence that he got into the Shogun and then heard gunshots, , ducked down behind the steering wheel and drove off in an attempt to escape being shot but not being able to see where he was heading.

Sentencing him to a minimum of 18 years, Judge Stephen Kramer said his attack must have involved a degree of premeditation. He said: ‘’It was a targeted revenge attack on a crowded public street when people were leaving the club to go home. You waited and you used your vehicle as a lethal weapon in the streets.”

McPherson will be sentenced later. The trial was unable to resolve the question of whether the gun had been smuggled into the nightclub.

Dalton and Chen. Photos: Metropolitan Police

A couple who made more than a million pounds running a cluster of brothels exploiting vulnerable South East Asian women were yesterday (more…)

Photo: Chris Fleming @ flickr

A ‘destitute’ Iraqi Kurdish asylum seeker committed suicide after being turned away by government immigration officers from their office in Croydon.

Osman Rasul, 27, killed himself by jumping off a building in Nottingham on Sunday 25 July,  according to a report in the Guardian.

According to friends, Rasul, a father of two who arrived in Britain in 2001, had become desperate following nine years of legal impasse over his immigration status.

Having once been refused permission to remain in the country, he was engaged in preparing a second application. Prohibited from working, he had been living on charitable donations and sleeping on the streets.

The collapse in June of the charity Refugee and Migrant Justice only worsened his situation, removing hopes of access to legal aid and expert advice.

After the organisation, which aimed ‘to secure justice for asylum seekers and other migrants in the UK who seek protection or need help to secure their human rights under UK law,’ went into administration, Rasul was left with the looming threat of deportation.

In a last-ditch attempt to resolve his situation, he decided to travel to Croydon and throw himself at the mercy of immigration officers, but was met with incomprehension and advised to seek legal assistance.

Nottingham-based charity worker Harry Woolner, who works with the homeless and had sheltered Rasul, told the Guardian: “He felt he was never able to take control of his life.”

“He was frustrated that his case had not been progressed so he decided to go down to the Home Office [immigration centre] in Croydon and ‘hand himself in’, saying: ‘Either send me home or help me’. He felt he was taking control at last. It was a brave thing to do.”

“But when he got there they said ‘Who are you? We don’t know you. Get a solicitor’. In terms of his mental state it was too much to take.”

“In London he stayed with friends some of the time but also slept rough and was not eating well. He was mentally and physically exhausted when he came back. We didn’t realise the severity of the situation,” he added.

“He went out for a bike ride on the Sunday. We thought that was positive. But he did not come back.”

A UK Border Agency spokesperson said: “Any death of this kind is a tragedy and our deepest sympathies are with Mr Rasul’s family and friends.”

“We are working closely with Nottinghamshire police while this matter is being investigated. It would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this stage.”

Photo: Kyle May @ flickr

A taxi driver from Haringey was killed last year after unwittingly drinking a deadly mixture of rum laced with cocaine, a Croydon court has heard.

Lascell Malcolm, 63, died in May last year after consuming the adulterated drink, described as ‘a mixture of such toxicity that a teaspoonful could kill anyone who consumed it.’ It had been given to him by a friend who was unaware of the contents.

Malcolm drank a shot of the Bounty rum alongside a pint of Guinness on 25 May, only hours after receiving the bottle.

At 4am the following day, he called emergency services, complaining that he could not walk, had a headache and thought he was dying.

He was admitted and later discharged from hospital, but collapsed and died soon after, having suffered a heart attack through cocaine poisoning.

Father-of-two Malcolm’s death was the tragic culmination of a chain of coincidences after the 246g dose of cocaine was dissolved in the alcohol in a bid to smuggle it into the country on a flight to Gatwick.

Martin Newman, 50, the alleged smuggler, was the only person who would have been aware of the bottle’s secret contents, which had a potential street value of £15,000. He is appearing at Croydon Crown Court, charged with manslaughter and importing Class A drugs.

The court heard that Newman had given two bottles of the drink to an acquaintance, Michael Lawrence, at an airport in St Lucia, claiming that his own baggage was too heavy.

The two then flew to the UK, where Lawrence planned to return the items. However, Newman was detained by customs officers and Lawrence instead gave the rum to another friend, Antoinette Corlis.

Finally, Corlis gave the rum to Malcolm as a favour for giving her a lift home.

Prosecuting lawyer Oliver Glasgow said: “Corlis, unaware of the dangers posed by the defendant’s bottle of rum, decided to give it to Lascell Malcolm as a thank you for his trouble. It was gratefully received.”

“Corlis was only to realise the full import of what she had done when she tried to contact Lascell Malcolm over the following days.”

The exact cause of Malcolm’s death was discovered when two friends visiting his house to pay respects found the rum and decided to make a toast. The two spat out the liquid, but were hospitalised, suffering seizures.

“Whilst this could never have been the intention of the defendant, the risk [Newman] ran in importing cocaine in such a manner would have been obvious – once the bottle was passed into the hands of someone who knew nothing of its true contents there was the very real danger that anyone could chose to drink it,” Glasgow added.

Newman denies the charges. The trial will last for two weeks.

The cocaine, with an estimated street value of £4.5 million, was smuggled inside this orange suitcase. Photo: Metropolitan Police.

Four men have today been found guilty of involvement in a £4.5 million cocaine smuggling operation that employed corrupt baggage handlers at Heathrow airport.

Mark Oliver, 30, Michael Hopkins, 51, Malcolm Bax, 31, and Andrew Robinson, 46, were part of of a gang of seven criminals, all of whom have been found guilty at Croydon Crown Court of being knowingly concerned in the importation of cocaine.

The group used contacts with Heathrow baggage handlers in a bid to illegally bring 12kg of the Class A drug into the UK from Brazil.

The cocaine was placed inside a large orange suitcase and carried as baggage on a flight in September last year.

Police, who had been conducting a ‘protracted’ surveillance operation on the smugglers, then arrested them in a dramatic swoop – during which one gang member shunted an officer’s car in order to escape the scene.

The gang’s three other members, Anthony Rouse, 53, Charles Oliver, 29, and Anthony Cenci, 24, were all previously convicted after pleading guilty.

The convictions are the culmination of an ‘intelligence led, multi agency operation,’ which saw police cooperating with customs officials, the UK Border Agency and the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Detective Inspector Robert Boggon of the Metropolitan Police Middle Market Drugs Partnership, said: “More than £4 million worth of cocaine, which was no doubt bound for London’s streets and beyond, has been removed from circulation.”

“This result illustrates the fantastic liaison and cooperation between a number of agencies, to combat the importation of controlled drugs.”

Miah and Choudhury. Photos: Metropolitan Police

A 15-year-old from Croydon has been jailed for murdering his girlfriend and her sister in a revenge-fuelled arson attack on their family home.

Akmol Miah was today sentenced to a minimum of 23 years in prison for the murder of 15-year-old Maleha Masud and her older sister Nabiha, 21, as well as the attempted murder of three other members of their family last summer.

His cousin and accomplice in the crime, Shihabouddin Choudhury, 21, was jailed for life, with a minimum of 21 years, after being found guilty of the same offences.

The sentencing, at the Old Bailey, was the culmination of a six-week trial during which the court heard how Miah had plotted the attack in revenge after Maleha Masud ended a brief ‘relationship’ between the two.

Miah, who was aged just 14 at the time of his crime, proceeded to threaten the family, before recruiting Choudhury, a waiter from Nottingham with no previous connection to the Masud family, to help him carry out the attack.

Maleha and Nabiha Masud were killed in the arson attack. Photo: Metropolitan Police

In the early hours of Sunday 21 June, Miah and Choudhury poured petrol through the letterbox of the family’s home in Tooting. They then set fire to it.

The pair, who were caught in ‘extensive’ CCTV evidence assembled by the police, showing them driving to the house to commit the crime, denied all charges.

Police who searched Miah’s house and computer found that, in addition to searching the internet for the phrase ‘how to burn someone’s house down,’ he had also saved an image of the burnt-out property as a screensaver.

Jonathan Laidlaw QC, prosecuting, expressed incomprehension at Miah’s actions. “Why he should arrive at the extraordinary decision to burn down their house is really impossible to understand,” he said.

Speaking in a statement after Miah and Choudhury were convicted, Zaid Masud, brother of the victims, said: “The verdict was as we expected, however, this does not change the reality of our great loss. We have in effect been given a life sentence without parole and now must live with this.”

Michael Gove has announced plans to pull funding for school buildings. Photo: Conservative Party

The man charged with overseeing schools in Croydon said he is  “disappointed” that three major re-building projects  at borough schools have been scrapped as part of Government expenditure cuts

Renovation money in excess of £30million  promised under Labour’s Building Schools for the Future scheme has been cancelled by new Education Secretary Michael Gove.

Projects at Priory Special School, Selsdon High and The Archbishop Lanfranc School have all been axed as a result.

Councillor Tim Pollard, Cabinet Member for Children, helped the borough get on funding list just last December, at the time saying the BSF money “will be used to transform the standard of schools in Croydon”.

But in an apparent case of last one in first one out the grants have been withdrawn from all of Croydon’s secondary school hopefuls.

Councillor Pollard told EastLondonLines: “The Archbishop Lanfranc School is one of Croydon Council’s top priorities [for renovation]. It was built on a landfill site and has venting and plumbing problems.”

“Selsdon High is also in need of serious restructuring. The initial buildings were only meant to last for 25 years but it’s now double that.”

Since the scheme came into effect in 2003 only five per cent of 3500 secondary schools in England have completed renovations using BSF funding.

Mr Gove’s decision means the end of funding for 715 schools, although 705 rebuilds will still go ahead.

Cllr Pollard is still hopeful that this is not the end of the schools rebuilding program in Croydon, as the Government will be looking at each investment on a case-by-case basis in the future.

He added: “The letter we received from Michael Gove made clear that they haven’t given up on rebuilding schools.”

Although Croydon is not the only borough in London to be affected by the proposed cuts, none of the secondary schools in Lewisham, Hackney or Tower Hamlets had any of their planned renovation works dropped.

Additional reporting by Tom Hilton

Forest Hill school in Lewisham: one of the local schools seeking academy status

More schools in Croydon have registered an interest in academy status than any other of the East London Line boroughs.

Eleven requests for further information by both primary and secondary schools in the area, have so far been registered on the Department For Education website. This is compared to five requests from Lewisham, four from Tower Hamlets and six  from Hackney.

The new academy legislation introduced by Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, earlier this month allows state schools to break away from local authorities gaining greater freedom over things like budgets, admissions criteria and curriculum.

Schools that register interest and are rated as ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted will automatically be fast-tracked to academy status by this autumn.

Critics of the new legislation have argued that the introduction of academies will lead to a two-tier education system, where children from the poorest backgrounds will suffer most. Head teachers are being urged to proceed with caution, as once their school becomes an academy, it cannot revert back to the state system.

A collection of fake Banksy items seized from Grant Howard's home address. Photo: Metropolitan Police

A Croydon roofer was one of two ‘old-fashioned conmen’ found guilty today of selling over £50,000 worth of fake Banksy prints on eBay. (more…)