Here's who has been JAILED this week

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A MEMBER of a gang that attacked a G4S security guard in a broad daylight during a cash-in-transit robbery outside a Bradford supermarket was jailed for three years and four months.

Qasib Hussain, 23, of Idle Road, Five Lane Ends, Bradford, was one of three men who took part in the £12,000 raid outside Tesco Express on Bolton Road just after 1pm on July 27 last year.

In November, Mohammed Farid, also 23, of Newport Place, Manningham, Bradford, admitted his involvement in the robbery and was also jailed for 40 months.

A third unidentified man was part of the gang but still at large, Bradford Crown Court heard. Video footage of the robbery showed him bringing a hammer down either onto the security guard himself or his van.

Farid then threw gravel or wood clippings in the man’s face as he tried to get up.

The robbers fled in a red getaway car with a cash cassette containing just over £12,000. The police located the unopened canister because it was fitted with a sophisticated tracking device.  It was traced to a house in the area and recovered unopened along with a jacket with Farid’s DNA on it.

The security guard, who was not injured in the robbery, activated his alarm and noted down what he thought was the registration number of the getaway vehicle. It was discovered to be registered in a false name and address and later found burned out.

Hussain pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced on a video link to HMP Leeds where he was remanded in custody.

His barrister, Andrew Dallas, said the security guard was uninjured and so could not have been struck by the hammer. His van was scraped by the weapon during the robbery.

Hussain was no longer in the grip of a drug addiction and felt better in himself and more positive about the future.

“He intends to start a new life as soon as he can,” Mr Dallas said.

Judge Neil Davey QC said the gang lay in wait for the courier to rob him. He was targeted by the men.

Hussain, like Farid, was entitled to a discount of about 25 per cent on his sentence for his guilty plea, reducing the term of imprisonment from 54 months to 40 months.

A DRUNKEN man who racially abused and beat up a late-night takeaway delivery driver before shouting: “This is my estate,” was jailed for two years and eight months.

Regan Townley had downed seven pints of Carling when he launched the unprovoked attack on the older man, knocking out his tooth, bruising his eye sockets and elbows and fracturing his finger.

The victim had since given up his job working for the takeaway restaurant. He spoke of suffering blurred vision and sleepless nights after the attack, reliving the “torture” every day.

“I’ve never been so scared in my life,” he said in his victim personal statement.

Townley, 23, of Whitwell Grove, Elland, pleaded guilty to racially aggravated assault occasioning actual bodily harm at 1.20am on January 7, 2018.

He was also sentenced for burgling a takeaway business in Elland on January 16, 2020; assaulting a former partner causing her actual bodily harm on March 28, 2020; and possession of cannabis and riding a motorcycle in Brighouse with no licence or insurance, all on November 22 last year.

He had eight previous convictions for 12 offences, including threatening behaviour, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Paul Canfield said the delivery driver was assaulted by Townley after one of the three other young men with him approached his car and sprayed him with sticky liquid from a plastic bottle.

Townley then shouted racist abuse at him and punched him to the head and face, carrying on with the assault after the man slipped and fell.

He burgled the takeaway overnight two years’ later, forcing entry and crawling across the roof space, leaving his blood at the scene. He made off with the £800 CCTV system, £120 in cash and a charity box for a local hospice. He also caused £500 damage at the premises.

Two months later, Townley attacked a former partner, squeezing her throat and headbutting her in the face.

The final offences were committed in Brighouse when the police caught him with 18 small bags of cannabis while riding a motorbike that was unlicensed and uninsured.

His barrister, Ian Hudson, said the offences were of some age and no more had been committed in recent months.

Townley had found employment as a landscaper and he had a new partner and a child.

At the time of the offending, he was mixing drink and drugs. He was now motivated to keep out of trouble and there was a good prospect of rehabilitation.

Judge Neil Davey QC said there were too many offences to spare Townley an immediate custodial sentence.

He was seriously intoxicated when he attacked the delivery driver, racially abusing him and punching him to the head and face even after he fell to the ground.

The innocent older man was vulnerable because he was out and about on his own at night. The assault had devastated him and he had lost his confidence and given up his job.

A CANNABIS gardener caught with a roll of new £20 banknotes, a coffee table with tobacco on it and a key to the property was jailed for two years and four months.

Judge Jonathan Rose rejected any suggestion that Binh Nguyen had been exploited when he agreed to take up the £1,000 a month employment at the address, demanding an upfront payment first.

Nguyen, 31, of no fixed address, was the only one home when police attended at the address in Holmfield, Halifax, shortly after midday on March 26.

Bradford Crown Court heard that officers were acting on suspicions that cannabis was being grown at the address.

They were listening to the whirring of fans from inside when Nguyen appeared in the porch.

He panicked, froze and locked the door before inviting the police in, prosecutor Jade Edwards said.

The front room was partitioned by a plastic sheet from floor the ceiling and one section had a mattress, bedding, clothing and a coffee table with tobacco and other personal items on it.

Through a gap in the sheeting officers could see bright yellow lighting. Behind the screen were cannabis plants rooted in soil that were in the process of being re-potted, Miss Edwards said.

Nguyen was arrested and the rest of the house searched.

In the three bedrooms were a total of 142 cannabis plants of various sizes. Fifty were in a propagator and there were 30 roots in pots indicating an earlier harvest.

There were stripped cannabis stems in another bedroom and the electricity meter had been bypassed.

Nguyen told the police he had come to the United Kingdom six years after paying the “Vietnamese Mafia” for his passage here.

He had been working unlawfully in kitchens to pay off the debt but when the coronavirus pandemic ended that employment he felt he had no choice but to work at the cannabis farm.

He said he was being paid £1,000 a month and had demanded a down payment for starting the work.

Nguyen had no previous convictions, the court was told.

He pleaded guilty at the magistrates court to being concerned in the production of cannabis and possession of the money as criminal property.

His barrister, Imran Majid, said his was a lesser and not a significant role in the enterprise.

There were those much further up the chain than him.

But Judge Rose rejected any notion that Nguyen had been exploited.

“He was a cog in a criminal machine; a small but essential cog to make the machine work,” he said.

He told Nguyen he would be returned to Vietnam after serving his sentence.

“You may wish to tell your fellow countrymen that if they come here to grow cannabis they will go to prison and then be sent back,” he added.

A FANTASIST paedophile who tried to blackmail other men on depraved file-sharing internet sites was jailed for 27 months and recalled to prison on a life licence.

Naveed Ahmed had been freed from a 20 year jail sentence for only two months when he viewed and distributed vile images of young children being raped, Bradford Crown Court heard.

Ahmed, 40, of Mannheim Road, Manningham, Bradford, was given a life sentence in 2000 for arson with intent to endanger life, prosecutor Rebecca Young said.

He was released in February last year and by April he was viewing the images and making sick boasts on chat sites that he was abusing children himself.

He was arrested after his Facebook account was closed when he uploaded a Category A indecent image of a child on to it.

On June 5, the police went to his home and seized his phone containing two child rape movies and third indecent image.

Ahmed pleaded guilty to making three Category A indecent images of children and distributing a Category A image, between April and May last year.

Miss Young said there were 269 participants in the online paedophile group that Ahmed had joined.

He claimed to other like-minded deviants that he was himself abusing children but the tales were groundless fantasy, the court was told.

The day before his arrest, Ahmed tried to blackmail another man on the group, demanding £5,000 not to expose his paedophilia.

He was never charged with the offence and told the police he had turned to extortion because he needed money to feed his crack cocaine habit.

The court heard that Ahmed had been recalled to prison on a life licence.

In February, 2000, he was convicted of burglary and arson with intent to endanger life committed in December, 1998.

Miss Young said he ransacked a house and set three separate fires in it. Although the minimum term he had to spend behind bars was short, he was not released for 20 years because the Parole Board did not think it was safe to do so.

Derek Duffy, Ahmed’s barrister, said he had fantasied about abusing children but it wasn’t true.

He accepted that he had looked at all sorts of stuff on the internet but denied having any sexual interest in children.

Judge Jonathan Rose, who was provided with probation and psychiatric reports, said it was a complex case.

Ahmed had watched degrading and depraved videos and shared vile movies of children being raped. He was a fantasist who posed a danger to children.

“It’s a darkness of mind that is deeply, deeply worrying,” Judge Rose said.

The offences were committed just two months after The Parole Board had deemed it safe to release Ahmed after he had spent 20 years behind bars.

He would not be freed until it was again ruled that he was not a public danger.

Judge Rose made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order to protect children from Ahmed and he must sign on the sex offender register, both orders are for ten years.

Jailed at Leeds Crown Court

A Neighbourhood Policing Team officer was jailed for two years after a jury convicted him of distributing an indecent image of a child and storing hundreds more on his phone.

Jonathan Plummer, 35, a Police Community Support Officer with West Yorkshire Police, was found guilty of all seven charges against him following a trial at Leeds Crown Court.

Plummer, who worked in the Wakefield area as part of the Neighbourhood Policing Team and as a Cyber Prevent Officer, called himself Vile Degrader and fantasied about rape, the jury heard.

He had lost his job, his partner, his home and his car, his barrister Richard Canning said.

Judge Neil Clark made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for ten years and ordered Plummer to sign on the sex offender register, also for two years.

During the trial, the court heard that Plummer was into BDSM. He was a martial arts instructor with an interest in Samurai.

He was convicted of one allegation of distributing an indecent image of a child at Category A; three charges of making an indecent photo of a child; one offence of possession of prohibited images of a child (cartoons); and two charges of possession of an extreme pornographic image.

Prosecutor Louise Reevell said during the trial that indecent images of children, from babies to teenagers, at Category A, B and C, were found on Plummer’s personal phone.

There were also extreme pornographic images. One was a “snuff movie” showing a naked and bound woman being stabbed with a sword. She appeared to die at the end of the film but the police didn’t think it was real.

All the images were created between July 7, 2017, and August 13, 2018.

Plummer was arrested on August 14, 2018, and devices were seized from his flat, including his phone with the images on it.

There were 339 still and 133 movies at Category A; 258 stills and 25 movies at Category B; and 1,256 still and 42 movies at Category C.

Plummer had made searches for “rape, raping and raped.”

“He had an unhealthy interest in rape as well as child pornography,” Mrs Reevell said.

An audit of a police computer system had found that he had been looking at sexual offences and cases involving indecent images of children.

Mrs Reevell said his employment had nothing to do with these sorts of investigations but he was trying to assist in the covering up of his offending.

Plummer told investigating officers he was into BDSM but insisted that the indecent images and prohibited images of children were nothing to do with him.

He told the jury he had “many sexual preferences” but no interest in indecent images of children.

He may have used the name Vile Degrader “historically” as a link to BDSM but it was nothing to do with indecent images of children. He labelled child sexual exploitation “an abhorrent crime.”