County Lines: Dealer jailed for running heroin and cocaine network from London to Sussex

A drug dealer set up a network running tens of thousands of pounds of heroin and crack from London to Sussex while out of prison on licence.

Liban Abdulle, along with Abubaker Sahal, both 30 and from east London, oversaw the shipping of smack and coke on a ‘County Lines’ supply chain from the capital to the countryside.

Both men - along with three other drug dealers who were part of the operation - have been jailed for a total of 32 years.

Cops raided two trap houses - one in in Ilford, east London, and another in Bognor Regis, West Sussex - and found nearly £80,000-worth of class A drugs.

In the east London operation, officers discovered 700 grams of class A drugs with a potential street value of £66,000.

They also unearthed the ‘deal line phone’ that controlled what was known as the ‘Henry’ drugs line selling heroin and crack cocaine on the streets of leafy West Sussex.

Two other conspirators - Holly Gittings, 23, and Adam Braggs, 33 - were arrested at the flat in Bognor after being found with over 1,000 wraps of class A drugs with a potential street value of around £12,000.

A car owned by Igors Gogu, 37, who was also arrested in the Illford raid, was seized and found to have been used to move the drugs from east London to Bognor.

At Lewes Crown Court, all five defendants were jailed for their roles in the supply of drugs.

Liban Abdulle, from Ilford, who was out on prison licence when arrested at the flat, was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison.

Abubaker Sahal, of Stratford, east London, was jailed for eight-and-a-half years, while Gittings, from Lewisham, south east London, was handed a six-and-a-half year prison term.

Igors Gogu was sentenced to six-and-a-half years inside and Braggs, both from Bognor Regis, was jailed for 35 months.

All defendants - except Gogu - admitted the charges and he was found guilty by a jury after a two-day trial that finished on June 30 at Guildford Crown Court.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Stephen Mooney described how Abdulle and Sahal had no ties to Sussex, but oversaw the distribution of heroin and crack cocaine into the county.

He told the court class A drugs “wrecked lives and communities and had a corrosive effect on society”.

Detective Inspector Alan Pack of the West Sussex Community Investigation Team at Sussex Police, said: “This was another successful operation in collaboration with the Metropolitan Police Operation Orichi team, with whom we work closely to disrupt and bring to justice dealers seeking to bring dangerous and lethal drugs from London to vulnerable people in West Sussex.”