Clirim Malecaj
An Albanian returned to the UK to deal high-grade cocaine to Manchester clubbers, despite having been earlier caged and deported for a similar crime.
Clirim Malecaj, 29, was put behind bars for six years at Manchester Crown Court in March last year after he admitted supplying and possessing cocaine.
Malecaj was one of 20 gangsters - many of them Albanian - sentenced for a plot to sell high-purity cocaine to top-end revellers frequenting the heart of Manchester.
The gang was unraveled by a Greater Manchester Police undercover operation dubbed “Crecy”, Mr Justice Spencer told London’s Appeal Court today.
Manchester Crown Court
Detectives posing as punters were deployed “in response to the growing problem of selling cocaine in Manchester city centre”, the judge added
“The transactions were then covertly recorded”, but lawyers for Malecaj, of New Bailey Street, Salford, insisted he only had a minor role in the conspiracy.
“Most of the dealers were Albanian in origin,” the judge explained, while the purity of the merchandise suggested they were “relatively close to the source of supply”.
Malecaj’s crime was worsened by his previous conviction for a similar offence involving the cocaine, the court heard.
He had been jailed and deported - before sneaking back into Britain to continue his criminal lifestyle.
Manchester Crown Court
Malecaj’s legal team, however, insisted that he had returned to the UK on the hunt for work, claiming he was a drug user rather than a commercial pusher.
His total six-year term was challenged on grounds that it was just too harsh, but the appeal was rapidly turned down by Mr Justice Spencer.
The judge, sitting with Lord Justice Davis and Mrs Justice Elisabeth Laing, said he was “not persuaded that the sentence was excessive”.
“It was certainly a stern sentence, but properly so,” the appeal judge concluded.
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