MEMBERS of a gang involved in transporting class A and B drugs in and out of the Bradford district have been jailed for a total of more than 13 years.

Four men were sentenced at Bradford Crown Court after being arrested under Operation Rap, undertaken by the Yorkshire and the Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit.

The gang was charged for its “significant” role in conspiring to transport heroin, cocaine, and cannabis in and out of Bradford from places including Manchester and Oxfordshire.

Zaheer Bashir, 37, of Horton Grange Road, Bradford, was jailed for four years after admitting three charges of conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs between May and July last year.

The court heard that on July 29 last year, Bashir had left an address in Bradford in a Toyota car which was subsequently stopped by police on Cranbrook Street, Clayton.

Inside the vehicle, officers found a carrier bag containing 980g of heroin.

When Bashir’s phone records were examined, police found links with a larger operation to transport quantities of class A and B drugs.

His other charges related to 59kg of cannabis which was seized by police en route to the Bradford area from Oxfordshire, and the possession of four kilograms of cocaine seized on the M1 in Yorkshire.

Bashir also pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy to transfer criminal property, relating to £60,000 in cash found being transported from Bradford to Manchester.

Bashir had been jailed for three and a half years in November 2009 for possessing class A drugs with intent to supply, having previously received a three-year prison sentence in 2006 for conspiracy to supply crack cocaine.

He had been jailed for 51 months in 2002 for his part in the Bradford riots the previous year.

Addressing him, Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said: “You and your associates were doing your best to bring drugs into this area.

“You were all over the operation, even when you were not present.”

Other members of the gang were revealed as Shafiqul Ali, 35, Ali Hussain, 27, and Ahmed Fraz, 25.

Ali, of St George’s Place, Little Horton, Bradford, was jailed for six years for conspiracy to supply class A and B drugs and criminal property, with Hussain, of Tivoli Place, Little Horton, Bradford, sentenced to three years and four months for conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

The pair were already serving sentences of six years and three years and nine months respectively, imposed in April of this year, for their roles in the kidnapping of Christian Stanica, who was assaulted and held in a car boot as they believed he had information about a missing drugs stash.

Ali had also previously been jailed for eight years in 2009 for an offence of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

Fraz, of Giles Street, Little Horton, Bradford, was charged with conspiring to transfer criminal property and handed a 12-month community order.