Six month hostage claim doesn't look so unlikely anymore...

Back in 2010 Blood and Property reported a case of a 67-year-old man claiming to have been held hostage in his flat for six months.

At the time the allegation appeared highly unlikely.

Whether or not the claim was ever true it doesn't sound so extraordinary after these cases:
a) September 2011 police raided a traveller site in Leighton Buzzard leading to a case described in court as the first ‘quasi-slavery trial in this country for over 200 years'.
b) November 2013 three women believed to have been held as slaves for 30 years.
c) January 2014 Sheffield family jailed over slave beatings 

The 2010 allegations in Hackney were thought to be a case of visitors refusing to leave a man's flat. The police charged the suspects for burglary, not for holding a man hostage but a statement from Hackney Police said: "The victim has been spoken to and does not wish the suspect to be arrested. A first instance harassment warning has been issued and if the suspect re-attends the address, then he may be arrested for harassment."

UPDATE: Murder suspect tasered on Kingsland Road

UPDATE: A murder suspect (Now charged, details below) was injured when police fired a taser during his arrest on Friday afternoon (22 June).

The incident that has been reported to the police watchdog the Directorate of Professional Standards.

12-year-old injured in Clapton shooting

A 12-year-old boy was  injured after a shot was fired on Sewdley Street in Clapton on Monday night (about 9.30pm?). A 15-year-old was stabbed in the chest in Homerton earlier in the evening.

The police issued this statement about the shooting:

Drug dealer car chase and smash

Cycling down Englefield Road this afternoon I ran into a scene full of crashed cars and policemen arresting a man in a grey hooded top. I didn't hang around but took a couple of  these bad photos. More details are available from the Hackney Gazette in a story called: "Suspected drug dealers ram three cars in Hackney police chase leading to innocent man being cut from his vehicle."

UPDATE: Mabley Green travellers now on Millfileds?

(UPDATED  with meeting details) Travellers moved into Millfields Park this week and the number of caravans on the site has increased since the first wave on Wednesday.

Turks and Trident and the Olympics

This week, (Thursday 9 Feb 2012) Hackney's new borough commander, Acting Chief Superintendent Rob Jones, commented on the implications for Hackney following the murder of Ali Armagan on 1 February. (Details here from Evening Standard and here from the Hackney Gazette).

Chemical spill blocks Downs and Cricketfield Roads

Fire crews rescuing someone trapped in a building on Downs Road (which turns into Cricketfield Road) were caught in some kind of chemical spill - possibly asbestos - which contaminated the area and some of the people involved.

There were a few people in alarming looking orange suits decontaminating or being decontaminated. A look at google maps didn't help identify which business or residence would need to store material that could contaminate in this way.

Diane on social services

Diane Abbott's piece in the Guardian on Haringey's former head of social services, Sharon Shoesmith, could prompt questions about Hackney's social services. The department has a good reputation but there are some unknowns.

One example was in a recently published book by a detective sergeant who worked for Hackney police's child protection unit up until 2006. He wondered how a child could have been beaten to death in Hackney in 2003 and no one went to jail.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any news on whether or Hackney's social services were aware of the mother charged with murdering her four-year-old daughter on the Chatsworth Estate?

Then there's the story recently reported in The Voice about a man only being saved from jail because he recorded his conversations with Hackney social services?

Police target Turkish social clubs, was it a success?

A police press release, mentioned briefly in the Hackney Gazette on March 10, described raids on Turkish social clubs that took place at the end of February.

Nothing particularly significant was found, at least not compared to raids on suspected Turkish gang-related properties back in 2003. Back then the police arrested several people and found guns, machetes, stolen mobile phones counterfeit money and a torture chamber with hooks suspended from the ceiling and electric cables allegedly used to discipline Turkish businessmen who didn't pay protection money.

The motives for the recent raids was concern about recent gun incidents and they will have been alarming in the context of the outbreak of a gang war of 2009... (Blood and Property had a look at the links between Turkish crime and Turkish Politics last year).

On the face of it the raids didn't turn up much but may be they're more focused on improving police relations with the Turkish community?

The police said: "The operation was planned as a result of recent incidents involving firearms in the vicinity of Turkish sports and social clubs on the borough, as well as heightened concern from Hackney’s Turkish community."

Four venues were targeted on the night:

Karadeniz Club - 109 Green Lanes, N5
What the police found: Three unlicensed gaming machines seized. Closure notice served on the premises, following several firearms-related incidents in the vicinity of the club.

Dilligra Social Club - 113 Green Lanes, N5
What the police found: Seven unlicensed gaming machines seized.

Efes Snooker Hall, Stoke Newington Road, N16
What the police found:The premises was found to be abstracting electricity to the value of several thousand pounds. By arrangement with EDF Energy, the owner has since paid this bill in full.

Adana Social Club, 59 Stoke Newington High Street, N16

What the police found: Ten unlicensed gaming machines identified.

Prosecutions for violation of gambling law may follow. Other venues identified by Hackney Police as worthy of attention will be subject to an education programme, to ensure licensees are clear of their responsibilities.

Detective Sergeant Simon Smith of Hackney Borough’s Intelligence Unit, said: “This operation was a great success and demonstrated our commitment to ensuring the safety of all communities in Hackney. During the operation we were approached by many members of the Turkish community, expressing their approval at police action.”

Chief Inspector Jane Easton of Hackney Safer Neighbourhoods, said: “We have disrupted the activities of the small minority of licensees who think they can act outside the law. We will be keeping a close watch on these venues and others to ensure that they remain a safe environment for their clientele and operate in a responsible fashion.”

Blood and Property tried to untangle some of convoluted world of Turkish crime and Turkish politics - not sure how successful it was but an interesting story of intrigue and corruption non-the-less.

Cannabis factory discovered on Sunday

Press release from Hackney Police:

On Sunday, December 12 at around 13:20, officers from Hackney Police received a call regarding a man trying to break into a derelict factory workshop in Tudor Road, E9.

On arrival at the scene, officers came across one man attempting to gain entry.

On speaking to the man, he said he was working on the door. He was asked to open the door at which point he ran past officers towards Mare Street. Officers gave chase and he was detained and brought back to the original venue.

On gaining entry to the premises to investigate the reason for the suspect's behaviour, the ground floor was searched. Nothing was found apart from construction and demolition debris.

On ascending to the first floor, officers discovered a length of plastic sheeting sealed against a doorway entrance. On peeling this back, several cannabis plants could be seen to be densely packed together in plant pots, with lengths of cabling were strung along the ceiling. Further investigation revealed in excess of one thousand cannabis plants spread across two floors of the premises, including a fully-functioning hydroponics system rigged up to a water tank and heat lamps.

The 41 year old man was arrested for cultivation of cannabis and abstraction of electricity. A name check conducted on his identity revealed he was also wanted for drugs supply offences in West Yorkshire and cannabis cultivation in South London, and he was further arrested in relation to these offences and taken to Shoreditch Police Station.

Investigations continue. Anyone with any information about cannabis factories on Hackney Borough is requested to contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

'An insult to the people of Hackney' or an injury?

The Local Government Chronicle's chief reporter has provided more terrifying insights into the government's attitude to Hackney as Mayor Pipe does his best to get some straight answers about cuts. (More background here)

It is disturbing stuff. Pipe told the LGC reporter that the government's response to his questions about the cuts were an 'insult to the people of Hackney'. Sadly the end result is more likely to be an injury: evidence that the government will let places like Hackney become dysfunctional casualties of the cuts.

A story about the potential demise of Operation Trident - in the Guardian and the BBC - demonstrates that some of these assaults on life in Hackney may not be directly aimed at the borough. The Hackney Gazette had a source claiming that these reports were 'taken out of context' which is hardly a convincing denial.

And the official 'denial' is nothing of the sort - it had a Hackney Police spokeswoman saying the police were committed to building on the success of Trident, not necessarily with Trident.

Trident could even stay as it is and Hackney still lose out. A slight shift in political priorities at the top could see the task force's efforts concentrated on other boroughs - Hackney and Lambeth have been the main recipients of Trident's efforts.

There is also the question of elected police chiefs and the effect that could have on places like Hackney - watch The Wire to see what goes on behind the scenes in a politicised police force.

Turkish crime - Turkish politics

(UPDATE  February 2012): http://bloodandproperty.blogspot.com/2012/02/police-watch-watch.html

This month a team of Hackney police officers returned home from a trip to Turkey. The trip was to "learn more about the culture, to strengthen existing relationships with Hackney's Turkish and Kurdish communities."

They have some interesting stuff to look at:

Last week the BBC published this story: "Could Turkish and Kurdish gangs become the new 'mafia'?"

What are the MLKP and the PKK? They exist in Hackney and appear to be in conflict with the Bombacilar gang cited as a cause of Turkish gang violence in Hackney.

(PKK marching through Dalston in 2008. But marching not illegal in the UK or Hackney? And marching again in 2010 may day march. Story in the Observer, 2002 about MLKP and the world's longest hungerstrike, 49 dead. (Feb 2010 Socialist Worker))

CRIME AND POLITICS COCKTAIL:

In 2007 BBC Radio Four's File on Four transcript March 2007: "Drugs" which investigated the how Baybasin (leader of Bombacilar) had a deal with HM Customs which ran him as an informer.

The BBC investigation mentions another character, Nurretin Guven. He, and another convicted drug dealer, Hamit Gokenc, were both allegedly linked to a right-wing nationalist group and to attempts to capture or assassinate PKK and MLPK leaders. (Most of these links were taken from this article: Turkish Conflicts: PKK, Grey Wolves. I don't know if the claims made in it are correct.)

The BBC's 2006 story about a clampdown on the notorious Bombacilar said: "Matters came to a head on 9 November 2002 when the Bombacilar clashed with their PKK/Kadek rivals" which led to a street battle along Green Lanes and the death of one man. The PKK being the far-left Kurdish nationalist party and listed as terrorist organisation in the USA and Europe.

The violence errupted again in 2009 with several tit-for-tat shootings but this time the Bombacillar were believed to be in conflict with the Tottenham Boys. According to the Evening Standard both gangs are Turkish Kurds.

Blood and Property spoke to a Turkey expert from a well-known London-based institution who did not want to be named. He said that Turkish communities, like those in Hackney and Haringey, were more polarised than Turkish/Kurdish communities in Turkey itself. He also said that events, like a recent PKK terrorist attack in Istanbul, could result in increased tensions in communities like those in North London.

Some back ground:

A piece of research done in 2008 by academics at Sussex University:

"Since the enactment of the 2001 Terrorism Act in the UK, the PKK has been listed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government. Kurds from Turkey who claim asylum in the UK stating persecution due to membership of, or association with, the PKK could risk imprisonment under the Terrorism Act. At the same time (2000) the Kurdish television station MED-TV, which was broadcast from the UK, was closed down by the British government due to breaches of impartiality and claims that it incited people to commit criminal acts. These events highlight how diaspora politics and the struggle for Kurdish national recognition have the potential to escalate into a sensitive political issue between the UK and Turkey."

But then the same research suggests it's more to do with integrating into life in a Western city:
According to academic research:

In policy terms, the absence of youth centres, and hence of activities for young immigrant
origin people to engage in, is seen as one reason behind the growth of Turkish and Kurdish gangs. These gangs are usually ethnically differentiated, although some mixing occurs too, according to our key informants. Identity is seen as a central issue:

If they don’t belong to an identity, they tend to do a lot of criminal, anti-social behaviour. They form mafia street-gangs. Fighting and anti-social behaviour is becoming a problem (community centre representative). Whether the problem of youth crime lies in issues of identity, or lack thereof, is a moot point. What is less contentious is the strong correlation between poverty and alienation."

A quote from the "'Turks' in London: Shades of Invisibility and the Shifting"

This is why their community organisations insist that using the term ‘Turkish-speaking community’ is not neutral: it implies that ‘Turkish Kurds’ somehow ‘belong’ to Turkey, and that their separate Kurdish identity does not merit recognition. Their claims as a people and nation are at times found to be at odds with anti-terrorist legislation in the UK and with the UK’s position in favour of Turkey joining the EU.10

9 In practice, the centres which call themselves ‘Turkish and Kurdish community centres’ are either Turkish- or Kurdish-dominated, with a very small minority of Turkish Cypriots involved.

10 Since the enactment of the 2001 Terrorism Act in the UK, the PKK has been listed as a terrorist organisation by the UK government. Kurds from Turkey who claim asylum in the UK stating persecution due to membership of, or association with, the PKK could risk imprisonment under the Terrorism Act. At the same time (2000) the Kurdish television station MED-TV, which was broadcast from the UK, was closed down by the British government due to breaches of impartiality and claims that it incited people to commit criminal acts. These events highlight how diaspora politics and the struggle for Kurdish national recognition have the potential to escalate into a sensitive political issue between the UK and Turkey.

In policy terms, the absence of youth centres, and hence of activities for young immigrant origin people to engage in, is seen as one reason behind the growth of Turkish and Kurdish gangs. These gangs are usually ethnically differentiated, although some mixing occurs too, according to our key informants. Identity is seen as a central issue:

If they don’t belong to an identity, they tend to do a lot of criminal, anti-social behaviour. They form mafia street-gangs. Fighting and anti-social behaviour is becoming a problem (community centre representative). Whether the problem of youth crime lies in issues of identity, or lack thereof, is a moot point. What is less contentious is the strong correlation between poverty and alienation.

Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2005: Young Turks and Kurds: a set of invisible disadvantaged groups.

"There is clearly an ethnic enclave present, consisting not just of sandwich and kebab shops but many other family businesses that provide extensive services and, in many ways, a parallel micro-economy. This is clearly a resource not often available to all disadvantaged groups, for example to indigenous white working-class neighbourhoods. But it has to be stressed that this resource comes at a price. Its presence may be a contributing factor in the young people's relative disengagement with the broader structure of labour market opportunities and can lead to them being trapped in the ethnic enclave.

"The young people are ambivalent about what it means to be British and reluctant to adopt that identity. Yet at the same time, most do not simply use a Turkish identity either. They usually choose multiple ethnic identities, but in the majority of cases, the term 'British' is not (yet) part of that plurality. This is complicated by the fact that the majority of Kurds refused to self-identify as Turks."

Blood and Property wrote a brief follow-up piece about the conviction of the leader of the Bombacilar gang 18 months ago - Turkish Gang Problem - it remains one of the most viewed Blood and Property stories each month due to Google searches for "Bombacilar Hackney".

What do terrorist attacks in Turkey ( Five Killed...) do to Turkish communities in London: US to support Turks in suppression of Kurdish separatists.

What do Operation Trident cuts mean for Hackney?

Hackney is one of the biggest 'clients' of operation trident. The chances are that Trident officers know more about Hackney's worst criminals than Hackney's own detectives.

According to data provided to Blood and Property by Operation Trident under a Freedom of Information Act request, Hackney is its second biggest customer. In 2008-9 Trident had a £28m budget and employed 359 police officers. Over the last four years Hackney has seen 110 cases, 10% of Trident's case load, being investigated.

This debate on youth crime took place in Parliament in September 2010. No Hackney MPs were there (both probably busy with the Labour leadership)

But David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab) asked: "Can the hon. Gentleman confirm whether a decision has been made by Boris—the Mayor of London—to cut the marketing budget of Operation Trident? It is important that we should be able to communicate with the young people of London in order to deflect them from crime, so can the Minister comment on whether that is, in fact, true?"

James Brokenshire: "I am afraid that I cannot give him a direct answer to the specific point that he raises about any decision that the Mayor may or may not have made on Operation Trident. However, I should be happy to make inquiries and, as required, write to him if that would be of assistance to him."

It looks like similar cuts to Operation Trident's PR machine were done before, in 2008: "The cuts in adspend will mean less high profile campaigns such as the Metropolitan Police's Operation Trident campaign, created by Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, to fight gun crime."

The issue of advertising and challenging the perceptions of the black community and the police were addressed by the Met's armed police CO19 back in May 2010 (on the day of the London Fields Shooting). This highlighted a number of persistent beliefs within the black community about subjects like police corruption.

Smoking crack and cutting throats in Hackney

Well there's not much going on in Hackney. But in San Diego they're looking at a photo called: "Chris helps his girlfriend Mona smoke crack in their apartment in Hackney London":

It is one of several taken in 2009 by New York photographer Seb Meyer. His blog explains how he took the pictures and includes a bizarre run-in with Hackney Police officers.

A quote from Seb Meyer's blog: "When they (the police) couldn’t find anything, they started accusing me of paying for prostitution.

“You were seen going into a toilet with a known prostitute.”

“Who are you calling a prostitute?” shouted Sam.

“Samantha Johnson?”

“Yes?”

“You’re known to the police as a prostitute.”

“Ok. That’s true.”

They turned back to me. “I think you went into the toilet, smoked drugs, and got a hand job from this woman.”

For something a bit lighter, there used to be road in Hackney called Cut throat lane. Photographer Michal Jaworski points this out in his blog as well as this: I'd heard of trees called black poplars because they are very rare British trees. He says there are a few of them in Hackney.

Held hostage for 6 months?

A charity shop on Kingsland Road reported a burglary. The items stolen were spotted for sale at that peculiar 'market' on Kingsland road on Saturdays. The police were called. The police arrested the alleged burglars and visited the address they claimed to be their home. Here they found a 67-year-old man who, I've been told, claimed to have been held hostage by the alleged burglars for as long as six months.

Well something odd was going on but may be not a six month hostage situation.

A statement from Hackney Police said: "On June 17, 2010 police were called by a support worker to the home of the victim, a 67 year old man, to do a welfare check. The victim made an allegation of common assault against a 46 year old man who was living with him. Police have fully investigated this allegation and have also spoken to the victim's care worker. As a result of this incident, the locks of the victim's home have been changed and nobody other than him is now living at the address. The victim has been spoken to and does not wish the suspect to be arrested. A first instance harrassment warning has been issued and if the suspect re-attends the address, then he may be arrested for harrassment."

The 46-year-old man in question was also charged with burglary.

Blood and Property has heard that the 'hostage' victim may have had a habit of inviting random folk into his home and then being unable to get rid of them. There's no real moral to the story except that the life of Hackney police officer can get pretty complex even when nothing much has happened. Which reminds me I've yet to write up a court hearing featuring Dr Seray Wurie which should win a prize for surreal pointlessness.

999 call re weapon wielding kids on Middleton Road

I cycled through a gang of black kids/youths on the junction of Malvern Road and Middleton Road at 7.20pm this evening (Friday 13 August). One was carrying what looked like a sharp wooden stake several feet long, another had a piece of timber that he was carrying like a club. A couple of them were jogging up Middleton road towards London Fields as if looking for someone.

I think there were about 10 of them - it looked like more were arriving. When I cycled through them they were totally oblivious to me. Whatever it was that had their attention, it was so consuming that there was no need to conceal weapons, there was no need to be aware of periphery human beings like me.

Nothing else happened but when I was safely out of the way I called 999. The person I spoke to said the call wasn't a waste of time. Five minutes later I was cycling back to Clapton via London Fields and I saw a police car driving through the park, then I noticed several police vans parked along the side of the park.

As I turned towards them to see what was going on I passed a group of three girls, I heard one of them mutter "nosey". I turned to look at her and she repeated it directly at me. I asked her if she knew what had happened. I don't think she answered.

I asked the police why they were there and they said nothing had happened... but that they'd got some call. I told them I'd called 999 earlier and asked if they thought it had been a waste of their time. They said that that was probably why they were there, but no, it hadn't been a waste of time.

Hopefully the police got more than one call - I can't believe I would have been the only person to have noticed something like this. Or may be it happens all the time. I saw something similar about a week earlier on Hackney Road, Asian kids on bikes (one with a baseball bat) obviously chasing a couple of black kids up towards the farm. I didn't call 999 then but felt as if I should have done.

Hackney 'Dognap': £500 or I slice his head off

A plumber’s attempt to track down his dog after it went missing from a Hackney building site led to a dramatic police operation at an East London shopping centre.

The story also suggests that people in Hackney are more likely to perform random acts of unprovoked malice than kindness.

Wanstead-based plumber Chris (name changed) lost his 9-month-old terrier Herbert while working on a building site on Kenmure Road.

Chris said: “He comes everywhere I go, he’s just perfect, what I want a dog to be, he usually never leaves my side. But someone opened the door on the building site and after 3-4 minutes I called him and there was no sign. We all stopped work for the rest of the day to look for him."

The dog had disappeared and later Chris came back with 400 posters which he distributed around Hackney Central. It wasn’t long before his phone started ringing: “I was getting these horrible phone calls from people saying they were going to chop his head off. There were a couple of people who rang to ask if we’d found him but there were at least 10 nasty calls. “

When he received a malicious text message from an identifiable number he called it back: “I spoke to this girl who said she’d had an argument with her boyfriend and that he’d sent the text, she said it was the sort of thing he’d do. It seemed like I’d really scraped the bottom of the barrel of Hackney’s social underworld.”

On July 3, three days after Herbert went missing, Chris said: “I got this call from a youth saying “I got your dog, I want £500 or I slice his head off.” Chris asked the man what colour his dog was and when the question was ignored Chris assumed that the caller didn't have his dog.

The caller changed the price to £1000, then £1500, and then £2000 before setting a rendezvous in Asda car park in Leyton Mills.

Chris said: “He sounded like a really nasty piece of work. I very much doubted he had the dog but I just didn’t think that people should get away with behaving like that.”

So he called the police and was surprised by how seriously they took the situation. Minutes later he was met by a plain-clothes policeman in an unmarked car. The officer said he was worried about Chris’s safety – that the people involved may be carrying knives – but reassured him that if he was prepared to play along with the suspected dognappers the police would never be far away from him. The policeman said that there were already 25 officers in seven vans on stand by.

When Chris told the police that he didn’t believe that the callers had his dog, he was told that it didn’t matter and that the minimum sentence for this kind of offence was 5 years.

At 2.08pm he got the call and the first thing he was told was that the ransom had gone up again to £2500. Chris said: “I told him that I thought that he’d want more cash and that I’d brought along some extra to cover it.”

“And then he said “I’m parked in front of KFC in a red Passat, wearing a yellow shirt.”" Chris could see the car and the yellow-shirted passenger from where he stood. As he made his way toward it he passed the police car and said “red passat, yellow shirt” and heard orders being issued to the waiting units.

He said: “My heart was racing, it was pretty overwhelming.”

As he approached the car a large man got out and Chris asked him if he had the dog and the reply came back in a thick Irish accent: “I don’t know what you’re talking about”. The man started to walk away but before he'd got far the police vans pulled up and surrounded him.

Chris told the police that he didn’t think they’d got the culprit. He said that he thought the people who had called him were much younger and were probably in KFC or Burger King watching.

It soon became clear that the man with the Irish accent was picking up some kids and didn’t have anything to do with the phone calls.

He said: “The guy I was talking to sounded really young… but evil, one of those kids who don’t respect themselves or anyone else. The police took it very very seriously.

Chris said he was worried about possible repercussions because the people involved had his name and telephone number.

So what happened to Herbert?

It was only later that Chris’s girlfriend was called by a man named Kenny who said: “I got your dog, I took him to the vet in Holloway.” Chris asked him what colour the dog was and got the reply: “Him grey.” I said my dog wasn’t grey, but Kenny said: “Definitely your dog.”

It was the weekend an no vets were open but a couple of days later Chris got a call from the RSPCA asking if they were missing a dog called Herbert: “straight away I knew it was him because no-one else would have known his name – it was on his chip.”

A final call came from a woman who said she and her boyfriend (Kenny) had found Herbert in a fried chicken shop in Hackney Wick. The woman said that the manager of the shop was complaining that Herbert “was really annoying people” and they’d agreed to take him away. But she said that he’d been so hyperactive that they’d taken him to the RSPCA as soon as they could.

At least Waltham Forest police took the issue seriously - which is a lot more than can be said for this family in Willesden Father's fury at dognap scam (August 7 2010). Blood and Property has yet to receive a comment from Waltham Forest police but an officer believed to be in charge of the operation was contacted by the police press office.

Could this explain why they were taking it seriously: No lead in dognappings(April 2010)

Hackney shooting photographer threatened by police

According to this report on the National Union of Journalist's website a photographer for the Hackney Gazette was manhandled by a police sergeant and had photographs forcefully deleted from her camera.

I'm assuming that this happened soon after the shooting on Saturday (Hackney Hive version).

The NUJ reported: "A police Sergeant approached Valino telling her that she was disrupting a police investigation and to hand over her camera. After protesting to the Sergeant that she was in a public place, outside the cordon he had no right to take her camera, he grabbed her wrist and pulled out his handcuffs. Before he could put the cuffs on she handed him her camera. He then left for five minutes before coming back, bringing Valino inside the cordon and asking her to show him the images and deleting them. Valino was told that she could come back in a few hours to photograph the scene."

Hackney Vietnamese drug dealer kidnapped and murdered

Surrey Today reports that another man has been jailed for his involvement in the murder of a Vietnamese drug dealer who lived in South Hackney until his kidnap and murder in 2008.

Four men were sentenced to life for his murder and one for manslaughter in November 2009. Yesterday a sixth man, Hung Mai, 27, was sentenced to nine years, also for manslaughter.

According to court reports, Khach Nguyen, a 36-year-old father of three, was kidnapped from Hackney where he lived. He and his driver were taken to an isolated farm in Surrey where they were beaten and held to ransom before being released back in Hackney.

However Nguyen's injuries were so serious that he died later on the same day.

The alleged reason for his kidnap and murder was over £30,000 worth of cannabis that Nguyen was selling in Sutton but which, a court was told, had been stolen at gunpoint by another gang.

In 2009, Surrey Today reported on the murder trial: "Prosecutor Victor Temple QC said: "These six defendants were members of a well-organised criminal concern that specialised in large sale supply of cannabis."

"Mr Nguyen and his chauffeur Phuc Tran were the go-betweens in a drug deal due to take place near a McDonalds in Sutton. But they were held at gunpoint and robbed of the haul worth £30,000.

"Mr Temple said: "These six defendants, together with three or four others all came to the conclusion that Khach Nguyen and Phuc Tran had stolen or had arranged for others to steal £30,000 of cannabis belonging to their organisation.

"Both men were kidnapped and driven to a remote farmhouse building in Surrey."

Two Surrey Today reports: November 2009, murder trial and July 2010, manslaughter trial

One from the Hackney Gazette: August 2008

Two stabbings in Hackney on Sunday: London Fields and Stamford Hill

There were two stabbings in Hackney today at about lunch time. One was in London Fields ( near Westgate St) and a 24-year-old man is in hospital. A police spokesman said the victim has "reasonably serious" injuries but there is no murder squad so may not be life threatening. There were no other details about how the incident happened but the park was busy... did anyone see anything?

Hackney Hive provides details of the other Hackney (Stamford Hill) stabbing here.

This afternoon I cycled from my sister's in Haringey to London Fields. She lives near the scene of an attempted murder on Friday (which has been linked to murders in Cricklewood (the victim was Albanian) and East Ham (the victim appears to be from Serbia/Montenegro)).

On the way I stopped in Stamford Hill where a policeman told me a bloody pile of rags cordoned-off outside Barclays Bank in Stamford Hill was the debris from a stabbing (Hackney Hive reports here).

In London Fields, walking towards Broadway Market there was another cordoned-off area (near the concrete table-tennis table) and another pile of rags, the scene of another stabbing.

Hackney's 'groups of friends' problem. Diane on religion

Today's Hackney Gazette has a quote from Detective Chief Inspector John Macdonald who led the Eddie Thompson murder inquiry. In a piece on page three called "Assassination gun hidden in boy's bag" the Gazette refers to the murderers as "reckless gangsters".

Discussing the history of the gun used in the killing, DCI Macdonald opted for less inflamatory language: "I think that firearm was used by a group of friends as and when they needed it and used other people to hold it." Is he purposefully avoiding the word gang?

A couple of days ago Blood and Property asked whether the 15-year-old carrying the gun used to kill Eddie Thompson might have been the same 15-year-old described as a member of a Vietnamese gang by the Mirror's crime correspondent.


Diane Abbott on religion: The Church Times reports: "Diane Abbott, who was the first black woman to be elected to Parlia ment, said that more people in her constituency in Hackney attended a faith meeting on a Sunday than any type of political meeting; “so I take issues of church and faith very seriously.”

“The lesson for the Labour Party from Christian Socialist history is that we are all human beings,” she said. “We have to stay close to people, and listen and respect people. Politics can’t be about just the next opinion poll, but practice based on values.”

On her website Diane provides stats showing 47% of her constituents are Christians.

Back in February Diane told Blood and Property pretty much the same thing: "A large proportion of my constituents go to church so understanding religion is important to me. Huge amounts of money are being poured into the Christian Party here in Hackney, as your blog has pointed out. This seems to suggest religion may be on the agenda of politicians in the future but it will only really make a difference if candidates can win the support of people outside of their churches as well as within them."

Diane did not give away her personal views on religion and the supernatural when Blood and Property asked - except to say she hasn't had any supernatural experiences (Do Hackney Politicians believe in ghosts?)

But in a 2009 speech in parliament she said: "We have to look at how we work with the Churches. I admit that I am not a regular church-goer myself, but often the only bastion of order, values and boundaries in inner-city areas is the Church."

So she does go to church which is more than we know about Meg Hillier? When Blood and Property interviewed Meg she said: "I don’t really want to talk about my personal situation. It’s not relevant to my job." And on whether or not she believes in ghosts she said: "To be brutally honest I’ve got better things to do with my time than answer questions like that."