Drugs man sent down by Zeppelin

A DRUG trafficker who organised the supply route for £11 million worth of heroin has been sentenced to six years by Harrow Crown Court.

Following a major undercover police operation, Salim Caylak, 31, of Greenway Avenue, Walthamstow, was found guilty of supplying the Class A drug.

Operation Zeppelin, an investigation into the supply of heroin throughout the UK, was carried out by the National Crime Squad.

Officers seized 108 kilos of heroin with a street value of £11 million in London in July 1999.

Detectives then hunted down Caylak and his accomplice Andrew Dodds, 37, who had planned the supply route.

Police found the heroin had been secreted in consignments of marble tiles, then imported from Turkey via Felixstowe docks.

The tiles alone had a commercial value of more than £300,000.

Caylak, a manual labourer, was arrested last April on his return from Turkey.

He claimed to have been tricked into moving the drugs, thinking he was moving bags of tiles.

Officers observed Caylak at a lock-up in Barking where he loaded the heroin into a car and drove to a house in Latimer Avenue, East Ham.

Dodds, of Poplar, was also found guilty of supplying heroin and sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.

An independent film producer, he was arrested last June.

In 1998 Dodds was a student, but was able to buy a Docklands flat in 1999 for £280,000 in cash, and owned a Mercedes and Porsche.

Dodds who produced the award-winning film, Milk, used an assumed identity to create a bogus company to hire the warehouse where the drugs would have been stored.

Det Chief Insp Alex Wood, of the National Crime Squad, said: "We are pleased with the outcome. "This was a complex investigation that involved inquiries throughout the UK, Europe, the Caribbean and South America to gather evidence and locate these men.

"My message to would-be drug traffickers is that we will persevere until we secure a conviction, following which we will strip you of the assets gained at the expense of others."

A financial hearing to seize Dodds' financial assets, an estimated £750,000, will be heard at Harrow Crown Court on May 17.

07:35 Saturday 19th April 2003

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