By Patrick Edrich,Ruth Suter

Copyright dailyrecord

The shooting of a nine-year-old girl as she ate ice cream was linked to a £4bn cocaine plot. The girl was shot in the head as she ate ice cream with her family outside a restaurant in Dalston, east London , in May last year. The misguided bullet remains lodged in her brain to this day. It was part of a decades-long feud between two London gangs – the Hackney Turks , also known as the Bombacilars (Bombers), and the Tottenham Turks. The spat appeared to have escalated following a fight in the 2000s that sometimes saw innocent people caught in the crossfire. As part of a weekly series looking at Merseyside’s criminal history, the Liverpool Echo has taken a closer look at the huge drug plot and its links to a global empire controlled from England’s capital. The head of the organised crime group (OCG) was previously Huseyin Baybasin, who has previously been called the “Pablo Escobar of Europe” and nicknamed “the Emperor” after taking control of much of the heroin exportation from Afghanistan in the 1970s. Formerly based out of Amsterdam, he is serving a life sentence in the Netherlands after convictions for drug trafficking and conspiracy to murder. The size and organisation of the gang’s operation was unquestionable, with Huseyin later alleging he was in league with high ranking Turkish government officials, as well as significant links with various intelligence services and militia groups. After Huseyin was locked up, the family business was allegedly taken over by his brother, Abdullah, who was forced to use a wheelchair after being shot by a rival. Courts have heard Abdullah recruited young thugs to extort businesses in Kurdish and Turkish communities in London. Abdullah was jailed for 22 years in 2006 after admitting blackmail and perverting the course of justice and a further 10 years, to run consecutively, after being found guilty of drugs smuggling . The trial heard he was the head of a £10bn criminal organisation. However, he was later cleared following a retrial after a judge ruled the lack of prosecution evidence meant a conviction would be unsafe and he was deported back to Turkey. A third brother, Mehmet, looked north when it came to the organisation’s criminal exploits. The Turkish national plotted with a Merseyside gang to import vast quantities of cocaine from South America. Criminal proceedings previously heard between 2008 and 2009, the OCG concocted a “sophisticated” plot to get a 40 tonne shipment of cocaine from Columbia to Britain. Eldonian Village man Paul Taylor, led the Liverpool conspiracy and used the phone box as his “office”. Their plan involved bringing the drugs over from Central America by sea – Honduras was considered before Venezuela was favoured as a casting off point for the shipments – with the illegal loads stashed in tins of fish or wood pellets. But Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) officers listened in on calls between the two kingpins as they discussed shipments and watched on as the pair met at a café and at Taylor’s home. Three times the gang tried to make the imports a success, but internal squabbles and mix-ups meant that despite hundreds of thousands of pounds changing hands SOCA got in to stop them before the plot could come off. However they tried again to arrange the enormous cocaine shipment . The plan was hatched in July 2008 when Baybasin was to use his already established contacts in the global drugs game to supply between two and three tonnes of cocaine to Taylor and his Merseyside network. The Turkish man acted as the gang’s international connection and travelled to South America to meet with cartel representatives. The cocaine would be bought at a “wholesale price” and then sold to other gangs who would dilute it down and sell it on – either to yet more criminals or on the streets. If all the cocaine had made it into Britain, and was cut before being sold, experts believe it could have been worth around £4bn. Taylor, described as the helm of the Liverpool crime group, was jailed for 22 years. Baybasin was described as the participant “at the highest level in a drugs and conspiracy and international drug trafficking on a vast scale”. He was jailed for 30 years. Ten other members of the plot were jailed for a total of nearly 150 years. By the time of the shooting outside the Dalston restaurant, it is believed the Armagan family were leading the Hackney Turks while the Eren family led their Tottenham counterparts. Leading members of both families have been murdered or fatally injured in targeted shootings in London and around Europe. Bombacilar associates Mustafa Kiziltan, Kenan Aydogdu and Nasser Ali were sitting on tables outside a restaurant when a gunman and driver rode past on a motorbike and opened fire, spraying six bullets. The gunman and weapon used in the east London shooting have never been found. But getaway driver Javon Riley, 33, was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and three counts of attempted murder in relation to the shooting on September 12. He was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 34 years. The sentencing judge said: “You had a leading role as a planner and a spotter and this was an act in revenge for previous incidents.” A statement from the nine-year-old girl’s mum said: “Our daughter’s joyful spirit remains but it is now wrapped in layers of frustration and silent pain. She watches her friends do what she cannot and she carries it all inside with quiet strength. This tragedy did not just change our daughter’s life, it broke something in us as a family.”