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The ‘Godfather' gang wars tearing Scotland apart

The ‘Godfather' gang wars tearing Scotland apart

Telegraph16-05-2025

Officers working for Border Force knew the routine. For six months, they had been checking consignments of fruit arriving at the Port of Dover from Latin America. They had done it 17 times, without finding anything of significance. But at the eighteenth time of asking, in September 2020, they struck gold. Within dozens of cardboard boxes of bananas that had arrived from Ecuador were 119 parcels, wrapped tightly in silver foil. When the officers cut through the packages, they found 952 blocks of cocaine – one tonne of it in total – with a street value of between £75 and £100 million.
The boxes were addressed to David Bilsland, a Glasgow fruit merchant who was linked to one of Scotland's most wanted criminals, Jamie Stevenson, known as 'The Iceman' because of his reputation for cold-blooded ruthlessness. The discovery of the cocaine and the eventual arrest and conviction of Stevenson – once called Scotland's answer to Tony Soprano – along with Bilsland and others, was the start of a trail that has now culminated in a battle for supremacy over the Scottish drugs market – one that has brought violence to the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh on a scale that has not been witnessed in recent years.
The fighting has rekindled a bitter decades-long feud between rival Scottish crime families and sparked fresh hostilities with a shady drugs syndicate operating from the Middle East. Locals have compared the horrifying scenes to a modern-day version of The Godfather.
'Every time police have a success, like the Stevenson case, it has repercussions in the criminal world,' says Simon McLean, a former undercover police officer who worked for the serious crime squad in Glasgow.
'The criminals look to see how vulnerable they are… they start looking inwards and at scapegoats – and violence is their answer to everything. When police have a success, it's actually pouring petrol on the fire,' he adds.
A wave of violence
The flames have been there for all to see. Over six weeks in March and April, there were more than a dozen arson attacks in the two cities, with cars, homes, garages and businesses set alight. In other incidents, shots have been fired and two people, a pensioner and a 12-year-old boy, seriously assaulted by men wearing masks.
After a brief lull, the violence erupted again this month, with a car firebombed in Edinburgh and, in the early hours of Tuesday this week, a house set on fire in Glasgow.
Perpetrators have filmed some of the attacks and posted the chilling footage on social media to boast about what they'd done and goad their opponents.
In response to the wave of violence, Police Scotland has stepped up street patrols in local communities and set up a dedicated team of detectives to investigate the crimes. So far, they have arrested 32 suspects, charging 20, and carried out a series of raids, gathering cash and mobile phones, and seizing firearms from properties in South Queensferry, a town just west of Edinburgh.
'We believe these incidents are linked to rival groups who are targeting each other,' Det Ch Supt David Ferry said in a statement last month. 'We will not stop until we bring those responsible for this criminality to justice.'
The violence has frightening echoes of savage street conflicts in Glasgow from years gone by, such as between the 'razor' gangs of the 1920s and 30s, teenage mobs from high-rise estates during the 1960s, and rival vendors selling drugs and stolen goods in the 1980s 'ice cream wars'. And it is a painful reminder that although violent crime in Scotland has fallen substantially over the past 20 years – with a focus on prevention and support for those at risk – organised crime groups continue to pose a significant threat.
'Those involved in organised crime have had a fairly joyful time developing their business – with the odd casualty, as law enforcement intervenes,' says Graeme Pearson, a former head of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency.
Government apathy hasn't helped.
'Most of those who might have been able to change [the situation] have lacked the commitment to see things through and have prioritised other areas, such as the NHS and education,' says Pearson, who served in the Scottish Parliament for five years and was Labour's Shadow Cabinet Secretary for Justice. 'Organised crime was overlooked and the wealth and power of those people has developed and become more confident.'
Pearson's views are shared by other retired officers who claim the police service opted for a 'softer' approach to organised crime. 'You need to keep your foot on the neck of the violence,' says one.
Indeed, the latest Scottish Government report on the work of the pan-agency Serious Organised Crime Taskforce (SOCT) paints a troubling picture. It says there are 90 serious organised crime groups (SOCGs) operating in Scotland and more than 1,400 people involved in criminal activity. In March last year, 158 crime group members were in prison.
'I attribute all of it to cocaine'
Although the tentacles of the criminal underworld reach into human trafficking, prostitution, child sexual abuse, fraud and money laundering, it is drugs which present the biggest draw – and where the largest profits can be made. As experts from the University of the West of Scotland concluded in a study last year, Scottish organised crime has become 'cemented' on the supply of drugs – even if the nature of the problem has changed.
In the mid-1990s, when three men were shot dead during some of Scotland's bloodiest underworld skirmishes in Paisley, a town to the west of Glasgow, the violence revolved around control of the market for heroin and tranquillisers, estimated at the time to be worth around £200 million. Not any more.
'I attribute all of it to cocaine,' says Mark Dempster, a Glaswegian-born former international drug smuggler who turned his life around and now works as an addiction counsellor.
'Over the last 15 years it's become a massive issue. Cocaine use has become normalised – people drink less to pay for their cocaine. It's become so lucrative for the gangs, they're bringing in shipments, with a massive customer base, and they're fighting over these territories.'
The SOCT report says 56 serious organised crime groups are involved in drug crime, with cocaine and cannabis the 'most common commodities' supplied. And in Scotland, where a gram of cocaine can cost as little as £40, there are plenty of customers.
By 2011, Scotland had acquired the unfortunate label 'cocaine capital' of the world, after the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that almost four per cent of people used the drug, more than any other country. Since then, the problem has spiralled. Scotland has the worst drug death rate in Europe, at 277 fatalities per million people – over twice the level for England, Wales and Northern Ireland – with cocaine increasingly implicated. According to National Records of Scotland, cocaine was a factor in 41 per cent of 1,172 drug-related deaths in 2023 – up from six per cent in 2008.
'When I was a young officer and went to a drugs death it was predominantly heroin,' says 'Stuart', a recently-retired policeman from Scotland who spent three decades in the service. 'Towards the end of my career it was cocaine, the most prevalent and highest-profit.'
A battle for the drugs market – and reputation
Stevenson, the drug trafficker, benefited from the switch to cocaine – until the Ecuador banana plot he'd masterminded was foiled. Having fled the UK, the 60-year-old was named on CrimeStoppers' list of most wanted fugitives and captured in 2022 while out jogging in the Netherlands. When he and his five co-conspirators were jailed last October, it disrupted the drugs market in Scotland and unsettled the suppliers.
'There was a lot of money from that operation, some proceeds of crime recovered – there'll be scores to be settled,' says Simon McLean, who presents the Crime Time Inc podcast and campaigns for reform of the drugs laws. 'Someone always pays – when you do a bust, someone loses their money.'
The evidence which underpinned the investigation into Stevenson came from encrypted phone messages on a system run by a European-based communication network, Encrochat. In early 2020, French police, assisted by the Dutch and British authorities, cracked the Encrochat code giving them access to millions of messages exchanged by criminals, including Stevenson. In the UK, the operation, known as Operation Venetic, has led to more than 3,000 arrests and over 1,200 convictions.
Tony Saggers, who was head of Drugs Threat and Intelligence at the National Crime Agency during a 30-year career in UK law enforcement, says Venetic was the 'most significant' operation against drug markets ever conducted – in terms of the intelligence gleaned, criminal assets recovered and the powerful signal sent to crime bosses that they were not untouchable.
But Saggers suspects that Venetic has led to opportunities for other drug gangs to capitalise on what he describes as the 'relentless' demand for cocaine. 'In the case of a very large success or impact, where someone who was previously in charge at 'wholesale' international level gets taken out of the picture, either those remaining in their SOCG attempt business as usual, depending on to what extent they have been disrupted, or their competitors see it as an opportunity to take the place of someone influential.
'Then, it's not just about vying for market place – it's about vying for reputation,' says Saggers.
Rival clans
In Scotland, with Stevenson serving a 16-year prison sentence (though still said to be pulling the strings from his cell), other SOCGs have taken the chance to strengthen their footprint in the cocaine market.
One group is the Edinburgh-based 'Richardson clan', associates of Mark Richardson, who's serving a prison term for possessing a Glock handgun and fleeing from police during a high-speed car chase, having previously been jailed over one of the biggest seizures of class A drugs in Scotland.
There's also the 'Daniel' crime family, from Glasgow, whose founder, Jamie Daniel, turned from scrap metal dealer to heroin smuggler before his death in 2016. They've been engaged in a 20-year violent feud with another Glasgow-based crime family, 'the Lyons'.
Added to the mix is a high-level criminal from Dubai, known as Mr Big, who is thought to be trying to wrest control of the market from the Richardson's and the Daniel's through a faceless group going by the name Tamo Junto, which means 'we're together' or 'we're in this together' in Brazilian Portuguese. Tamo Junto are believed to be behind videos that have emerged of the recent firebomb attacks. Earlier this week, they posted a brazen clip on social media showing what appeared to be members of the gang breaking into a residential home in broad daylight. One of the masked trio can be seen battering down the front door with a weapon while two others vault through a ground floor window.
One message posted online by the group reads: 'We are urging everyone in Scotland on the streets and those incarcerated to join us in the fight against Mark Richardson and the Daniels [sic] family.'
@tmj2025 These 🐀's shouting on comments this n that but here a video that proves there being hunted down and it's not just 🔥 and running 🏃‍♂️ away scared 😱 there has been not one come back to anything that's happened as was mentioned in papers yesterday nothing back as yet has happened to the MR BIG who's 📦 where stolen up the TMJ2025 yasss #edinburgh #glasgow #gangster #tmj #tmjdisorder #tmj2025 #gangland #jailtok #hmpprison #hmpscotland #danielsglagow #dainlesvirus #markrichardson #tmjtreatment #tmjglasgow #danielsgangland #edinburghscotland #hmpeasy #heepsy #davidtogher ♬ original sound - #TMJ2025#
Although some of the addresses targeted are reportedly linked to the Daniel's and the Richardson's, Police Scotland haven't commented on the SOCGs involved in the violence or what triggered it. Ex-officer 'Stuart' says the criminals will seize on any snippets of information they learn about the investigation to stay one step ahead. 'These people are so savvy, they debrief and learn from court cases and what their lawyers tell them.
'You also need to factor in the gangs' awareness of police tactics, thanks to endless TV shows,' he adds.
Police cutbacks undermining the crackdown
An even bigger challenge facing police in Scotland as they counter the gang threat is a dearth of specialist capabilities, such as surveillance teams, due to staff cutbacks. The number of officers across the force has fallen by more than 900 in the last five years, to 16,507, and surveillance, which is particularly resource intensive, has been badly hit.
Calum Steele, who spent 30 years in the police, including 14 as general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, says the loss of experienced uniformed officers on the ground is especially keenly felt.
'Police are very good at swarming around after something has happened, with extra reassurance patrols – but they don't do that forever and invariably the passage of time sees them withdrawing and coming out of the trouble-spots,' he says.
Steele laments the lack of 'good old-fashioned tradecraft' by detectives who 'knew who to speak to, how to speak to them and what to say'. He fears that despite the progress Police Scotland are making tracking down those responsible for the firebombings and shootings, the gang violence will continue without officers gathering intelligence on the ground.
'While they may identify the perpetrators, many of the 'red flags' that will be there will not be getting picked up by the police,' says Steele.
It's a chastening thought. The takedown of Stevenson's gang, the extraordinary success of Operation Venetic and the police response to the latest wave of violence will not, it seems, be enough to prevent the callous cocaine-trading criminal networks from unleashing more terror onto the streets of Scotland to expand their market share and protect their reputations.

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Tomorrow David Webber will watch his 17-year-old son Charlie play cricket in a match at Nottingham University in memory of his brother Barney who was senselessly killed there two years ago at the age of 19. Charlie will wear his 'brilliant, sporty' older brother's number 53 shirt. Barney's mother Emma, who crusades relentlessly to find justice for him and dulls her pain with medication on particularly 'difficult days', says 'sadly, it's too much for me' to be there, too. By rights, David and Emma should be proudly anticipating their dearly loved eldest son's graduation from this university next month. But, as David says, 'Barney will never take his degree in history, never have his 21st birthday, never grow into the man he was becoming.' Instead, he says, 'Barney is trapped at 19 for ever and left there while everyone else is moving on', following his vicious stabbing in the early hours of the morning on June 13, 2023, as he and close friend Grace O'Malley-Kumar walked back to the halls after a night out. Their monstrous killer Valdo Calocane went on to slaughter 65-year-old school caretaker Ian Coates and tried to kill three other people. Today, after admitting three counts of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility owing to paranoid schizophrenia, as well as three counts of attempted murder, Calocane is able to watch DVDs, build Lego and play musical instruments in his cell at the 'soft' NHS psychiatric Ashworth Hospital where he is detained. Meanwhile, Barney's ashes remain in an urn at the funeral directors. 'We've not been able to pick him up,' says David. 'Emma and I have talked about it and both of us have said we really can't at the moment. 'I can't explain why. I think a big part of us knows it's just another tick to say, 'He's gone'. Even though you know he has, maybe it puts another layer of confirmation on it.' Similarly, they can't bring themselves to touch Barney's bedroom which is as it was on the day he returned to Nottingham for a cricket match at the end of the summer term two years ago, while his post piles up and remains unopened in the kitchen. 'We're both petrified of seeing something, like a letter to Barney or a bank statement, that will trigger us,' says David. 'There are lots and lots of memories that suddenly come back that you try to push away to hold yourself together. I remember him in this kitchen, there.' He points to the wooden dining table, gesturing to four chairs. 'Barney would sit there, Emma there, Charlie there and I'd sit there. Now I tend to sit there more.' His hand rests on the back of Barney's seat. By rights, David and Emma (pictured) should be proudly anticipating their dearly loved eldest son's graduation from this university next month. But, as David says, 'Barney will never take his degree in history, never have his 21st birthday, never grow into the man he was becoming' David looks at me. 'I feel like I let him down because I'm his father and I didn't protect him,' he says. 'But how could I? What could I have done? 'I know that's the logical response but there's a part of you, especially as a bloke – some primeval part of your brain – that goes, 'I should have been there and stood in front of the saber-toothed tiger and stopped him from attacking Barney.' 'You find yourself fantasising about inventing a time machine, to return to that day and stop him being there. 'The dreams I have are horrible. One quite frequent one is where he's there. I know he's there.' David reaches out his arm in front of him to demonstrate. 'I'm trying to get to him and I can't. I just keep trying to grab him, but I can't.' He clutches at emptiness in front of him as tears roll down his face. 'You know something awful is about to happen, but I can't reach him. You wake up in a cold sweat. It's horrible.' We pause for David to collect himself. It's a miracle he can. For in truth, his family – just like those of Grace and Ian – have been appallingly let down by the police, the NHS, the justice system, the government and just about every public servant whose duty it is to protect us all from monsters like Valdo Calocane. This is the first in-depth interview David has given in the terrible two years since the savage killer shattered so many lives. His pain remains raw. 'We try for Charlie, to have a normal – as much as it will ever be normal – life going forward. Part of that is to have a nice family holiday every year. We have just got back from Morocco. Charlie took a friend with him because it used to be him and Barney – but it's difficult. 'You can see in his eyes he struggles with it. Emma struggles with it. I struggle with it. He wants his brother with him. We all do. 'Charlie's at an age now where Barney would find him interesting instead of thinking he was a pain in the arse. He would be Barney's drinking buddy. They'd be out having a laugh. He always looked up to his brother and that's the bit he wanted' David, 53, has been diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety and complex PTSD. He was unable to even attempt to return to work as a director of an IT company until January this year. He says his co-director has been nothing short of 'a saint' holding the fort, but David continues to find concentrating on anything other than his son's killing 'very difficult'. 'I still have lots of flashbacks of when I saw him in the hospital [in Nottingham] just lying there and his face, the beauty of it – that lovely smile he had still there. 'I held his hand, talked to him, kissed his head and told him I loved him. The hardest part was walking out because you know that's the last time you're physically going to see them. It's unbelievable pain. 'You walk out and that's the last image. It just haunts me because you can't unsee it. It never disappears from my mind.' For the past six weeks David has been undergoing tests for an undiagnosed heart condition. He suffers with a pain on the left side of his chest. The consultant cardiologist has ruled out atrial fibrillation but knows something is 'not right' so David will have an MRI scan in the next few weeks. 'I'd always laughed at the thought of a broken heart before but I don't know any more. The pain is always there. It's there now.' He raises his hand to the left side of his chest. 'I think what happens is you internalise stuff. People ask me how I can look as calm and in control as I do but, God knows, if they knew what was happening up here.' He points to his head. 'And down here.' He holds his stomach. 'It's just churning all the time. I have the ability to mask how I feel but I don't think it's helping because, when you don't let those feelings out, they just tear you about inside.' Barney's shocking death has affected every part of David's life. The many photos from happier times that hang in their home in Taunton, in Somerset, show the sort of loving, stable family many aspire to be. When I first met David and Emma more than a year ago they never imagined they would have to 'dig, push, push and push' for all these months to expose the shocking truth about Barney, Grace and Ian's deaths. This is my third visit to the family's house and each time I see them it's as though a little bit more of the soul of this once happy family has seeped from their home as the fight for justice consumes them. 'It's not easy,' David says of his relationship with Emma. 'You try to stay close but there are times it's very easy to fall out. I suppose we niggle at each other a lot. We're close but we're not close, if that makes sense. 'As a couple, there are times you're sort of paddling your own canoe – going into your own self-protection and your own 'I need to survive' mode. That sort of isolates you in some bizarre way. 'Other times you think, 'Actually, this might have driven us closer.' It changes you as a person. You're not as emotionally attached. It's hard to find the words to explain but your physical relationship is no longer as it was. 'I don't feel particularly handsome and Emma probably doesn't feel particularly sexy or pretty or whatever. You sort of just exist and try to fire yourself up to do what you need to do to find justice for Barney. You feel guilty if you're having a nice time. 'When you find yourself enjoying life you suddenly check yourself and think, 'I shouldn't be doing this.' I suppose, the guilt sits there between you. 'Emma and I are very close. We love each other but there's no sort of spark. 'As for Charlie, he calls me 'creepy dad'. You want to give your children all the freedom in the world but, when you've had this happen to you, you want to know where they are every minute of every day. 'Obviously, you can't live your life that way but if I lost Charlie as well, I think it would just finish me. I can barely function now.' The lives of Barney's and Grace's parents have been consumed with their fight to establish why paranoid schizophrenic Calocane – 'a ticking time bomb' – was free to kill their children, since they learnt he was not to be charged with murder six months after that terrible night. Ian's sons – Darren, James and Lee – are battling with them to seek the truth. Four months ago, an NHS England report was published, finally revealing the catastrophic mistakes that allowed Calocane, who had been sectioned four times, onto the streets of Nottingham. 'He was attacking his flatmates, stalking people. You know he attacked a police officer and had to get tasered? 'They put out a warrant for his arrest but he was never arrested. This report is littered with examples of the number of times he should have been stopped. 'When he assaulted his flatmate, one of the psychiatrists said he believed Calocane could kill. If that's not a red line to lock him up and keep the public safe, what is?' asks David. 'The psychiatrists were just discharging him back onto the streets and he'd stop taking his medication. The fourth time he's sectioned there's talk of 'depot medication' [long-acting, injectable antipsychotics that are slowly released into the body over weeks and months] but he refused because he doesn't like needles. 'He said he'd continue taking his tablets so he's released. Instead of being monitored, he's discharged to his GP when they can't get hold of him. How ludicrous is that? These people weren't doing their jobs properly. They should be held to account.' Indeed, the report also exposes claims made in mitigation of Calocane at his sentencing hearing in January last year to be nothing short of poppycock. 'A mental health nurse assessed him when he was arrested and said he wasn't psychotic. But in court we had an idiot psychiatrist who saw him four or five months afterwards, when he'd been on medication for three months, made an assessment that on that day he was psychotic. How dare he? 'The psychiatrist also said in court that he was treatment resistant. The report shows he was never treatment resistant. The truth is he was sectioned, treated, released, stopped taking his medication, became violent, was sectioned again. This happened four times. Nobody gave a ****.' David's fury is palpable. 'It's impossible to rationalise why nobody is being held accountable for releasing him onto the streets where he's just decided Barney doesn't deserve to live, Grace doesn't deserve to live, Ian doesn't deserve to live. 'I'm not generally an angry person, it's not in my DNA but, when it comes to that monster who killed my son, I have massive anger. What makes my blood boil is that he's got away with murder. If he was in front of me and I had the opportunity to kill him I would, absolutely. 'He made a conscious decision to murder my son. 'Yes, he was ill, but he still made decisions. He was still in control. He could get a train. He could go to a cashpoint and go to buy a sandwich. He could drive a car. Don't tell me you can do all of that but not control yourself. 'Mental health is a reason for someone's behaviour but it's not an excuse.' David remembers every minute of that dreadful day. He was with Emma at the family's holiday lodge in Cornwall when the TV news began to report what was happening in Nottingham. After locating Barney's mobile in Ilkeston Road on his Find My Phone app, he called the police. 'When I said who my son was, I could hear the person on the phone's tone change completely. They said, 'It's really hectic here. We'll get someone to call you back.' Then I saw the phone moving towards the police station. 'Emma was in the middle of a work's team meeting. I said, 'We've got to go now.' 'We chucked the dogs in the car and began driving to Nottingham to my son. 'I didn't know if he was safe or not. Even if I got there and he just fell out of the pub because he's been out all night and had dropped his phone in Ilkeston Road, I'd have been the happiest man alive.' He was haring through Cornwall when his phone rang. It was a policewoman. 'When they won't quite tell you why they are calling, but ask if there's somewhere safe you can pull over, your heart just drops. You know what you are going to hear.' The policewoman could not confirm it was definitely Barney, but they'd found his driving licence in his wallet. Emma got out of the car and fell to her knees. 'I didn't know what to say or do,' says David. 'I couldn't believe it. All I remember is saying, 'I've got to get to my other son.' Charlie was at a school activities week in Torquay. Thankfully, the teacher in charge had separated him from his classmates before he'd seen the news on his phone. David does not know to this day who released his son's name to the media. Charlie was in the minibus when David and Emma arrived. 'Charlie is a very intelligent boy. We thought the best way of dealing with it wasn't to try to sugarcoat it so we told him Barney had been murdered. 'It was awful. He just broke down screaming and ran off.' The family travelled to Nottingham the following day where they met Grace's parents for the first time at a vigil for their children. 'The shock takes over,' says David. 'You can't quite fathom what's happening. There were so many people there crying – bless them.' David stood beside Grace's devastated father, Sanjoy, united in grief as they both addressed the mourning crowd with generous words of love. 'Nothing was rehearsed. I just found myself speaking. Maybe it's the British way.' Today Sanjoy and David speak often. He is, says David, sort of like a brother now. 'We're intrinsically linked for the rest of our lives. Barney and Grace fell together. Bless her, Grace tried to stop him attacking Barney. Emma says it all the time, 'Silly girl, why didn't you run?' But she wasn't that character. She wouldn't let her friend down. 'If it had been the other way round Barney, would never have left her.' Last month, Nottingham announced they would grant posthumous degrees to Barney and Grace, but David says, 'I would struggle to go and collect it as the pain of not seeing him getting it himself would be too much, especially when everyone else is graduating and quite rightly happy to be starting the next chapter of life.' On Friday, Barney and Grace's families will lay a rose where their children fell together on Ilkeston Road. Afterwards, they will walk with Ian's three sons to the place where their father was attacked. All are determined to continue their fight to hold the authorities to account. 'On Monday we see [the Health Secretary] Wes Streeting. 'We've got a statutory public inquiry where all that has happened will come out but that won't be until next year. 'We need change now. The people who allowed this to happen need to be held accountable for their mistakes now. How many more people need to be murdered by those with mental health issues for this to stop? 'We need to make the streets safer and protect all our sons and daughters. If we can do that, in the name of Barney, Grace and Ian, then that, I suppose, is success. But the main problem – the bit that really tears you apart – is that they are not here and we can't bring them back.'

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