A “COWARDLY” drug dealer who fled to Pakistan part-way through his trial is now serving his ten-year prison sentence after being arrested at the airport on his return to the UK.

Judge Jonathan Rose told Sully Line trafficker, Mujahid Mahmood, that he disappeared because no jury would have believed his lies.

Mahmood, 29, of Hollins Street, Manningham, Bradford, absconded to Islamabad on Sunday, May 12, last year after giving evidence at Bradford Crown Court on the Friday.

He told the jury he had £60 in his bank account and his last car was a second-hand Skoda.

“If I was a drug dealer, I would have paid my mortgage off and be leading a luxury life.

"I don’t even have a car,” he said.

Mahmood was bailed over the weekend but he did not attend court on the Monday.

He was convicted in his absence of conspiracy to supply heroin and crack cocaine.

When he voluntarily came back to this country this week, an arrest warrant was executed after his plane landed, Deborah Smithies for the Crown said.

He was brought to Bradford Crown Court where he pleaded guilty to failing to surrender to custody and was jailed for four months to run consecutively with the ten-year sentence.

Mahmood sat in the dock in a blue T-shirt with his arms folded as his barrister, Andrew Petterson, said he returned voluntarily to the UK after the death of his grandmother knowing that he would be apprehended at the airport.

Judge Rose said he ran away hoping to scupper the trial.

“He told a pack of lies in his evidence and his case was dismantled in cross-examination,” he said.

The judge told Mahmood: “You are a coward. You stood your trial, you gave evidence, you told nothing but lies and you knew that no jury would ever believe a single word you said; so you ran away, hoping the trial would collapse and you would evade justice.”

Mahmood was one of twelve men and a woman given prison sentences totalling more than 80 years on June 14 last year for their roles in the Sully Line “ring and bring” drug dealing operation.

A later Proceeds of Crime Application found that his benefit from drug trafficking was a share of £2.5 million and his available assets were £74.40.

Mahmood was described as a “trusted lieutenant” for the operation that netted up to £4 million in just over a year.

He was arrested in Bradford in an Audi S3 on March 7, 2018.