Knives, drugs and mobile phones were smuggled into prisons across London and the south east of England
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A gang who used drones to smuggle drugs, weapons and phones into prisons in a system likened to Deliveroo and Uber Eats for inmates have been jailed.
Shafaghatullah Mohseni, 29, orchestrated dozens of late night and early morning “drops” at prisons across London and the south east of England between December 2024 and February 2025.
Hashim Al-Hussaini, 28, Mohammed Hamoud, 22, Faiz Salah, 29, Zahar Essaghi, 51, Mustafa Ibrahim, 30, and Emanuel Fisniku, 25, assisted Mohseni, acting as lookouts and drivers, as well as receiving payments for the illicit shipments.
Harrow Crown Court heard at least two flick knives were among the contraband, as well as packages of drugs including cannabis, Xanax and Valium, and tiny mobile phones that could be hidden from guards.
Judge James Lofthouse said it was a “well-oiled conspiracy” which prison guards struggled to tackle – even if they had actually seen the drones making the drop-offs at cell windows.
Staff shortages meant that although guards could head to the cells and witness “prisoners stuffing items behind pipes”, by the time enough prison staff were available to conduct a search, the illicit items had vanished.
The judge said: “Those who conspire for profit to flood our prisons with drugs and mobile phones, and are heedless to whatever else including weapons they smuggle in, facilitate further criminality, and undermine the general running and good order of our prisons.”
He said inmates had items delivered “to order”, and criticised the “corrosive” impact on prison safety and security from drones arriving with packages “as if by Uber Eats or Deliveroo”.
Mohseni, referred to in court as the “grand delivery driver”, was sentenced to five years and three months in prison as the leader of the conspiracy, having received more than £30,000 in payments for the drone flights.
Al-Hussaini, Hamoud, and Essaghi were sentenced to 33 months in prison, Salah was jailed for 31 months, while Ibrahim received a sentence of 30 months in prison, and Fisniku was jailed for 27 months.
The Metropolitan Police said the gang was responsible for 75% of all drone drops into London prisons between December 2024 and February 2025.
All seven defendants admitted their roles in a “serious, organised and prolific enterprise” to supply Class B and C drugs, and conveying list A and B articles into prisons.
They would travel by car to the prisons, often in the early hours of the morning, and fly packages filled with contraband through cell windows.
The gang targeted at least nine prisons including Wormwood Scrubs, Brixton, Pentonville, Wandsworth, Norwich and Leicester, the court heard.
Opening the case on Monday, prosecutor Sam Barker said: “Operation Buzzbin was a major police investigation conducted by the Metropolitan Police’s Specialist Crime Command to investigate drones being used to convey drugs, mobile telephones, USB sticks and other contraband into prisons across the South East of England.
“In total there were 70 different visits by the conspiracy group to prisons between December 2 2024 and February 26 2025, so the conspiracy ran until the involvement of the police for a period of 86 days.”
Police arrested Mohseni, Al-Hussaini, Hamoud, and Fisniku while en-route to a drop at HMP Norwich on February 26 last year after being tipped off that a knife was going to be smuggled into the prison.
They found a JD sports bag in the car with a drone, two packages containing phones and cannabis, and a knife.
The prosecution has accepted that the conspirators “may not have been aware” that in one of the flights they conveyed a flick knife in one of the packages.
“But the fact is they did convey one of the knives,” added Mr Barker.
The conspirators were initially charged with conspiring to convey a knife into a prison, which has since been dropped as the defendants may not have packed the packages themselves.
Most of the 70 operations saw more than one flight take place, and the conspirators have been estimated to have made roughly 140 flights in total.
Along with cannabis, the conspirators also smuggled Xanax and Valium and were initially accused of smuggling cocaine, but this was later dropped.
One of the drones was recovered by police after it crashed into a woman’s backyard near HMP Wandsworth, the court heard.
She told officers that a man had knocked on her door to collect the drone in the early hours of the morning, but she had refused his entry.
Close relatives of prisoners were found to have sent large sums of money as payment to Mohseni – £26,785 from 14 individuals directly linked to a serving prisoner.
Mohseni was at the centre of a “web of financial transfers” which saw him receive money and then pay the rest of his co-conspirators.
Defending him, Michael McAlinden, said that Mohseni began the offending as a means to pay off his debts.
Mohseni, of Edgware, Salah, of north-west London, Essaghi, of north-west London, Ibrahim of Harrow Weald, Fisniku of Islington, Al-Hussaini, of Harrow, and Hamoud, also of Harrow were all told they must serve 40% of their sentences before being released on licence.
Concluding the sentencing hearing, Judge Lofthouse commended the work of Met Police officers including one who had gone to the Netherlands and China to secure key evidence from drone data records.
In July last year, the chief inspector of prisons Charlie Taylor warned of the increased risk drones would pose for smuggling drugs into prisons.
The watchdog chief said: “There is a level of risk that’s posed by drones that I think is different from what we’ve seen in the past, and both with stuff coming in and ultimately the potential for something even more serious to happen.
“What I’d like to see is that the prison service really get a grip of this issue and and we’d like to see the Government, security services coming together, using technology, using intelligence, so that this risk doesn’t materialise.”
