Latest news with #drugsmuggler
Daily Mail
5 days ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Gun runner from mob with tentacles all over Britain that supplied underworld thugs with weapons, drugs and bombs is found DEAD in jail
A notorious gun runner and drug smuggler has been found dead in prison, MailOnline can reveal. Barry Kelly, 32, was just six years into an almost two-decade sentence for Class A drugs and firearms offences when he died at HMP Kirklevington Grange in North Yorkshire on May 25. Kelly was a Merseyside mobster from a sprawling organised crime group with tentacles across the UK. When he was just 26, the Liverpudlian was jailed for 18 years after a landmark operation by police in 2019. The late gangster pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs and three firearms offences. He was also implicated in a plot to throw contraband into a prison. He reported to the infamous Burrows Brothers, who ran the East Side Boys gangs in Speke, and worked with notorious bombmaker Christopher Wallace. When police started to dismantle Wallace's underworld armoury in a Wirral garage, they were forced to call in the army to handle a bomb of a similar grade to the one used in the Manchester Arena attack of 2017 that killed 22 people and injured 1,017. The East Side Boys was a classic Liverpool street gang that ran a network of seedy stash houses and street dealing operations in the warren of streets controlled by their crew. Kelly played a key role in helping the Burrows brothers move guns and drugs around their hometown. Handguns, shotguns and a hunting rifle were buried in surrounding fields. The East Side Boys later used the hardware to fight wars with rival drug firms in the towns. Masked yobs on scrambler bikes roared the gang's patch, terrifying the majority of ordinary decent people who lived in the area. At one point, Speke residents were too scared to walk past one particular stash house, for fear of being beaten up in the street. The police later revealed how the Burrows used some of the more ruthless tactics associated with drug gangs, such as 'cuckooing.' This involved bullying and coercing vulnerable people into working for the gang, against their will. Flare messages were sent out to their customers on graft phones, which promoted the latest batches of drugs and their prices. The court heard of incriminating text messages between William Troake and Kelly, when the two criminals discussed how sales of cannabis were declining in the Speke area. Ian Unsworth, prosecuting in 2019, said: 'In relation to firearms counts, the prosecution say that Barry Kelly was a trusted member of the Burrows OCG and was close to both Callum Burrows and Jake Burrows and was aware of and participated in their acquisition, storage and transfer of firearms. 'Barry Kelly's DNA was recovered from [a] loaded St Etienne revolver recovered on the 14th June 2017 in the blue bag that had been concealed in Alder Woods which was discovered by a member of the public walking their dog.' Kelly was also embroiled in a plot to throw a bundle of items into HMP Hindley, where gang member Jack Ross had been remanded. Kelly was observed throwing items over a perimeter wall into the prison estate. However, it was the use of firearms that would contribute to the gang's ultimate downfall. In particular, when a Tikka hunting rifle was used to pepper a rival gang's HQ with bullets, the police started to close in. When specially trained officers burst into Lee Price's home, which was a hub for the gang, he darted out of the back door and managed to hop over a couple of garden fences. Following a series of linked trials, 22 people were sentenced to more than 300 years in jail ring a week-long hearing at Liverpool Crown Court Operation Bombay saw cops raid homes across the country, from Merseyside to Cheshire, Plymouth, Nottingham and Staffordshire. Following a series of linked trials, 22 people were sentenced to more than 300 years in jail during a week-long hearing at Liverpool Crown Court. A Prison Service spokesperson told MailOnline: 'Barry Kelly died in custody at HMP Kirklevington Grange on May 25, 2025. 'As with all deaths in custody, the Prison and Probation Ombudsman will investigate.'
The Guardian
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Poem of the week: Poem in which I'm a transnational drug smuggler by Bethany Handley
Poem in which I'm a transnational drug smuggler The guy in front of me is told to remove his leg. He unscrews it and places it in the tub with his luggage. We watch his leg disappear through the rubber curtain as he hops through the airport scanner. His stump is swabbed alongside another guy's empty boot, a tube of toothpaste and a wallet. I'm asked to wheel past the metal detector and to park myself where the other travellers await their bags. A female guard cups my arms, my waist, my breasts. She asks me to raise myself above the cushion, squeezing her hand into the gap between my skin and chair. Below, my five-hundred-pound pressure cushion protects my skin, bags of coke stashed where the gel should hold my form. Each bum cheek is perfectly imprinted in bleached powder. Later, when the taxi driver asks whether my wheelchair is to support my benefits claim, I'll smirk and nod. 'Ableism. The act of wrapping the world in cling film.' Bethany Handley extends the metaphor further in the title poem of her recent pamphlet, Cling Film. It's also 'the film you've wrapped me in / as I move with palms open to the clouds / whilst yours are bound to the ground'. Disability can refresh the senses: it can have the force of poetry. Politics dictate the poetics in other poems, such as The Heath, where multi-spacing, erasure, typographical emblems, etc, visualise the disorientations created even in settings where the medical establishment seriously attempts to investigate an unfamiliar disability. Other poems use smoother lineation and more traditional stanzas paradoxically to express the enhanced bodily awareness which is liberating, and reintegrates the poet with the natural world she loves. 'Swifts' legs are fingers, not fists. They don't pound but stroke the earth,' she writes in a paean, A Swift's Flight, inspired by the arrival of her first wheelchair, and the accompanying dreams of flying above Cardiff. Other poems are direct, scathing accounts of ableist insults and ignorance: they are eye-openers for anyone who hasn't encountered the daily round of prejudice that people with disabilities face. This week's poem is one of those. It's powered by sharp observation and impeccable self-restraint. The title, Poem in which I'm a transnational drug smuggler, memorably announces a first-person narrative. It subverts expectation initially by looking outwards, watching what happens in airport security when 'the guy in front of me is told to remove his leg'. The ensuing short description recreates not only what's happening to the 'guy' but also the way he becomes the central focus of the ableist gaze, stared at and humiliated 'as he hops through the airport scanner'. The narrator introduces her own encounter with security in a casual, end-of-stanza use of the passive voice: 'I'm asked to wheel // past the metal detector and to park myself / where the other travellers await their bags.' Like the man with the prosthetic leg, she's reduced to an object among other objects. Directed to her 'place', she might as well be an item of baggage. The intrusiveness of the body search performed by 'the female guard' is made only too tinglingly clear in stanza four, where the guard's hand 'squeeze[es] /… into the gap between my skin and chair'. The gap is narrow, because the user has had to raise her own body weight from the chair to allow the intrusive inspection. Now the final phase of the search takes place. Instead of expressing a legitimate indignation, the speaker calmly goes along with the assumption that there may indeed be 'bags of coke stashed where the gel / should hold my form'. The voice remains steady as it forensically notes that 'each bum cheek is perfectly imprinted / in bleached powder'. Handley has found her weapon. She will be able to resist the further brutal thrust of prejudice which she has learned to expect: '… when the taxi driver asks // whether my wheelchair is to support / my benefits claim, I'll smirk and nod.' Allowing herself to enact the 'transnational drug smuggler' fantasy, she's armed with perfect sardonic control, matched by the parallel technical control of the poem's judiciously sharp line breaks and plain diction. There are more overtly angry poems in the collection, and they are powerful, too. There's an infectious relish when a friend is patronisingly offered help with the wheelchair that's got stuck in deep sand, and Handley throws him her 'piss off mate, we're doing fine thanks look'. (Hiya Butt Bay). Mockery, like revenge, is 'a dish best served cold' but it's also tasty warmed up, as in another exposure of officially sanctioned idiocy, the 'work focused interview' demanded by the Universal Credit system. 'Can't you work lying down / with headphones on?' an official asks a suffering applicant. 'Your goal for finding work this month / is to learn to sit up.' (Attended Work Focused Interview). Handley is an award-winning disability activist as well as poet, and she knows how to write a poem that expresses strong principles without removing the poetry. She makes us acutely aware of the truth that people are disabled by the system that labels them and pretends, with total lack of imagination, effort and adequate funding, to meet their needs. Cling Film is a collection that lifts many veils and lets in much-needed light and air.
The Independent
09-07-2025
- The Independent
Listen to drug smuggler's voicemail before trying to flee police with cocaine-laden boat
Listen to a voicemail that a drug smuggler left right before trying to flee from police in a boat filled with cocaine. In audio shared by the Home Office on Wednesday (9 July), a man can be heard saying: 'It's literally zero f****** risk. All we need is a fisherman with a boat.' The individual was one of three men who then proceeded to try and evade border control officers, speeding away in their class A-laden boat for 28 miles before authorities caught up to them. Footage shows the Border Force officers jumping out of their boats and chasing the three men across a beach. An additional four men who helped organise the collection of the drug, which was worth £18.4million, have also been convicted.
Daily Mail
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Schapelle Corby embraces mystery man at Gold Coast Airport - after sparking engagement rumours
Schapelle Corby was jet-setting on Monday. The convicted drug smuggler turned influencer hopped off a plane at the Gold Coast Airport where she was met by a mystery man. The 47-year-old hugged the male pal as she arrived with a large black sports bag in tow. Schapelle dressed casually in a loose faded black hooded shirt and a pair of leggings. She added an olive toned bucket hat and a pair of sneakers, and appeared to go makeup free. The clockmaker wore her red locks down in soft waves and completed her look with a gold watch. Last year, Schapelle left her many fans wondering if she's getting ready to walk down the aisle. Schapelle, who was at the time celebrating her 47th birthday in Paris, set tongues wagging after an eagle-eyed fan spotted a sparkling ring on her left hand. In the image posted to Instagram, Schapelle looks every inch the stylish fashionista as she poses in a beret in front of the Eiffel Tower, while her bejewelled hand rests on her leg. 'Happy Birthday To Me #27... oops, #47,' she wrote in the caption. It wasn't long before Schapelle's followers inundated the post, with one hearing wedding bells all the way from the city of love. 'Is that an engagement ring on your finger haha,' they asked after spying the ring. However, it appears not all is what it seems. A close look at the image shows the picture has been 'flipped', and the flashy ring she is sporting is actually on her right hand. The clockmaker wore her red locks down in soft waves and completed her look with a gold watch A tell tale give away that the picture has been 'mirrored' is that the Olympic rings seen on the Eiffel Tower in the background of the photo are around the wrong way. In photography a 'mirrored' image is one in which right and left in reality have been reversed - as if seen in a mirror. In 2020, Schapelle split from her Indonesian boyfriend Ben Panangian after 16 years together. She revealed her long-distance relationship with Ben, 45, was over and that she was looking for her Prince Charming. The couple met in a Bali prison in 2006 when they were both serving time for drug-related offences, but hadn't seen each other in person since 2019. She has not publicly dated anyone since. It comes after Kyle Sandilands recently shared his theory about where Schapelle Corby's drug-filled boogie board bag really came from after her infamous arrest at Bali airport almost 20 years ago. Schapelle was incarcerated for nine years for attempting to smuggle cannabis into Indonesia. She was arrested at Bali airport in October 2004 with 4.2kg of cannabis wrapped in plastic inside her boogie board bag. Schapelle has always maintained her innocence and her lawyers argued she had unintentionally become a drug mule, suggesting baggage handlers put the drugs in her bag. Radio shock jock Kyle discussed her incarceration on The Kyle and Jackie O Show. He said he believes smugglers forgot to take the cannabis out of the bag after her transit flight from Brisbane to Sydney, leading to it accidentally travelling on to Bali. 'I think they didn't take something out that should have come from Brisbane to Sydney. They missed it and off it went and got redirected to Bali,' he shared. His co-host Jackie 'O' Henderson also shared her sympathies with Schapelle, claiming she didn't deserve the nine-year prison sentence. 'She nearly lost her mind over it. Either way, even if she did it, I don't think she deserved what she went through,' Jackie, 49, argued. Schapelle has made a new life for herself after her release from an Indonesian prison in 2014, and went on to make a living as a successful clockmaker. She promoted some of her colourful timepieces with her many followers, which typically retailed for around $220. However she announced recently that she could no longer keep up the time-consuming work. 'This may be the last year for me to create my epoxy art,' she wrote in an announcement on Instagram. 'This saddens me. 'Life is changing, I'm not sure how my resin obsession hobby will fit in. At this point I just don't know' she continued.
