History

Link-Up Crew, or British Link-Up Crew, was the name given to an organisation that promoted dancehall music events in Britain and Jamaica. It was headed by Owen Clarke, also known as Father Fowl or The Father. Clarke, however, was also an international drugs baron and used the “British Link-Up Crew” as a front for a huge drug smuggling enterprise that relied on female drug mules.

Drug Supply

The gang acted as a wholesale supplier of cocaine (and crack) and had been a top priority for law enforcement throughout the 1990’s. It is believed that Clarke’s connections also spanned to South America and Africa, and he had been regarded as a target by MI6, Customs & Excise and the National Crime Intelligence Service prior to being hunted by Operation Trident in 2000. He lived what was described as a lavish lifestlye owning several luxury vehicles with personalised registrations. He organised large parties and music events in the UK (often Harlesden) and Jamaica, which police believed were fronts to aid with money laundering.

The gang used multiple methods in bringing cocaine into the UK, often being transported by female mules. The mules came frequently via plane, first to the European continent before either taking short flights into the UK or by travelling on Eurostar trains into Kent and London. Before Operation Trident began looking at the Link-Up Crew in 2000, a year earlier Clarke had escaped an attempt on his life after being shot in Willesden High Street by a teenager. Although he became the prime target of the Trident Operation, like all major players he was not actively participating in the hands on end of the business.

Trident began by targeting the geographically based sub-organisations of the Link-Up Crew, beginning with Nadia Codner who operated part of the business from Hackney in east London. Although she also avoided the hands on work, her downfall came when she was caught by a surveillance team making a rare drop off to a couple in Golders Green. She delivered two Adidas holdalls with false bottom.

Murder Blues – Kevin Forsythe & Owen Clarke 2

An extensive undercover surveillance operation witnessed Codner fly from Gatwick to Antigua, on the same flight as the couple (new couriers who she was supervising). Although they had ignored each other during the travel, Codner and the couple, the police had spotted them together when she supplied the holdalls. When the couple arrived back in the UK, the holdalls with the false bottoms were found to have eleven kilos of cocaine.

Although Codner had pleaded not guilty, after claiming that it was all coincidence, the jury did not believe her and she was found guilty after just 11 minutes of her trial in 2000.

The next lieutenants to fall were Jamaican’s Paul ‘Pepsi’ Hamilton and Vander ‘Luddy’ Anderson. The pair were based in North West London (Brent & Harrow), but were also responsible for supplying the Luton and Bedfordshire area. They were believed to have supervised mules arriving with ingested cocaine, keeping them in safe houses whilst awaiting for the drugs to pass. One address they frequented in Luton was a crack-factory. They were arrested in December 2001 after having made a delivery to the crack-factory where police uncovered one kilo of cocaine. Their replacements, Mikey McDaniel and Bibsy Findlay, were also caught soon after following continued surveillance.

Trident continued to monitor Clarke who it later transpired seemed to be supplying a number of UK regions including Birmingham (West Mids), Bristol (Avon & Somerset) and Leeds (West Yorkshire). Shenise Taylor was the Birmingham connection, Michael and Gifford Sutherland were based in Croydon, Clifton Rochester in Bristol, and Cleveland Dunbar in Leeds. It was estimated that a network of 20 mules brought £500,000 worth of cocaine into Britain every week in their stomachs or in false bottomed suitcases.

Clarke was eventually busted in 2003 when armed officers raided his home and recovered 50 kilos of cocaine. Police also recovered a further 51 kilos at a safe house in South Harrow. He was convicted of two charges of possession with intent to supply crack cocaine and one count of conspiracy to manufacture crack cocaine. He was jailed for 13 years in 2004. Despite owning numerous properties, two of which had within them £6million worth of cocaine, Clarke was ordered to pay back just £300,000.
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Murder

Although there were no murders directly related to the British Link-Up Crew reported in the media, at least five occurred involving members, or employees, of the organisation in London. The Link-Up Crew were believed to have carried out dozens of murders in the United Kingdom in the 1990’s and 2000’s. One of the most shocking and ruthless was that involving Link-Up Crew associate Anthony ‘Blacka’ Pinnock – also known as Bertram Byfield. He and his seven-year-old daughter were gunned down in a house on Harrow Road, Harlesden, by gang member Joel Smith (see Mus Luv Crew). A year earlier Jamaican DJ Horace Pinnock was shot dead outside the Plaz Hotel in Wembley following a robbery.

Those convicted for a gruesome triple murder on the Stonebridge estate in 2005 had also been associated to the Link-Up Crew.

Rohan ‘Chunky’ Chung left an eight-month old baby crawling in his dead mothers blood for 16 hours after shooting Connie Morrison, her sister Lorna, and their step-father Noel Patterson. His only motive was to take revenge on the womans brother, drug smuggler Morgan ‘Indian’ Morrison, who had allegedly ripped him off in a drug deal. Chung accused him of owing three to four kilos of cocaine, but because he was not home Chung instead murdered his family.

The bodies were dragged into the corner of the room and piled on top of one another at 59 Clark Court, Stilton Crescent, Stonebridge. It is thought that because the sounds of gunshots on the estate are so common, no-one bothered to make a report for 16 hours. The initial police suspects were Barrington ‘Fin-hand’ Beckford and Rohan Chung. Beckford, who walks with a limp and has a crippled hand, was not linked forensically to the scene but was jailed for possessing a firearm. Police found a single 9mm bullet matching one of the pistols used in the shootings, as well as crack-cocaine and scales, at an address where they believed Chung to be staying at Cossall Walk in Peckham.

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An unidentified woman, also a notorious drug dealer known as ‘the queen of rock in Ladbroke Grove’, gave evidence in the case. It was said that Morgan Morrison had gone to Jamaica the previous month to bring back drugs for Chung, the intention being that three female mules would bring over 4kg of cocaine for him. However, Morrison came back a day late from the trip and the package was never delivered.

Chung, who carried out the murders after being let loose in Britain by airport immigration staff, first entered the UK in 1993 but overstayed his six month visa. He was deported in 1994 but returned the following year and was arrested in 1995 on suspicion of attempted murder. At the time of arrest he gave the name Rohan Gordon, he was just 18. He went on to use a string of names to keep re-entering the UK, including Mark Russell, Rowan Williams, Tony Green and Rohan White. In 1995 he was caught with a firearm that had been used in a series of shootings in Birmingham and London that left one man dead and others wounded. The man who was killed was Timothy ‘Lips’ Thomas, shot dead trying to escape gunmen at his flat in George Street, Lozelles, Birmingham, in June 1995. The other shootings occurred in Detmold Street, Stoke Newington, and in Peckham High Road.

He was cleared of involvement in the shootings in June 1997 but received an eight year sentence for being in possession of a firearm. He was deported back to Jamaica in July 2000. He returned to Britain using his family name, Chung, and became heavily involved in drug dealing for the Link-Up Crew. He arrived back to Manchester in June 2004 on a flight from Paris, claiming to have missed a flight to Jamaica airport staff allowed him to walk out as long as he returned with 24-hours, he never did.

A month later he shot 17-year-old cannabis dealer Adrian Francis on All Saint’s Road, Notting Hill, west London. He was acquitted of attempted murder whilst Francis was left wheelchair bound. He was also linked to cop killer Gary ‘Tyson’ Nelson who murdered community police constable Patrick Dunne in south London. Michael Letts, who shared a flight back to the UK from Jamaica with Morgan Morrison, led Chung to the home of his three victims – police believe they opened the door because Chung was accompanied by Letts.

Triple killer Rohan Chung was sentenced to a minimum of 40 years. He was given a life sentence along with his accomplice Michael Letts, who will serve a minimun of 20 years before being considered for release.

Cedella Marley, Marcia Griffiths, Rita Marley & Sharon Prendergast

ALL NON-AFRICANS PART NEANDERTHAL, GENETICS CONFIRM

(A museum reconstruction of a Neanderthal/credit: iStockPhoto)

If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.

Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal’s Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.

“This confirms recent findings suggesting that the two populations interbred,” Labuda was quoted as saying in a press release. His team believes most, if not all, of the interbreeding took place in the Middle East, while modern humans were migrating out of Africa and spreading to other regions.

The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia. They went extinct, or were simply absorbed into the modern human population, about 30,000 years ago.

Neanderthals possessed the gene for language and had sophisticated music, art and tool craftsmanship skills, so they must have not been all that unattractive to modern humans at the time.

“In addition, because our methods were totally independent of Neanderthal material, we can also conclude that previous results were not influenced by contaminating artifacts,” Labuda said.

This work goes back to nearly a decade ago, when Labuda and his colleagues identified a piece of DNA, called a haplotype, in the human X chromosome that seemed different. They questioned its origins.

Fast forward to 2010, when the Neanderthal genome was sequenced. The researchers could then compare the haplotype to the Neanderthal genome as well as to the DNA of existing humans. The scientists found that the sequence was present in people across all continents, except for sub-Saharan Africa, and including Australia.

“There is little doubt that this haplotype is present because of mating with our ancestors and Neanderthals,” said Nick Patterson of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. Patterson did not participate in the latest research. He added, “This is a very nice result, and further analysis may help determine more details.”

David Reich, a Harvard Medical School geneticist, added, “Dr. Labuda and his colleagues were the first to identify a genetic variation in non-Africans that was likely to have come from an archaic population. This was done entirely without the Neanderthal genome sequence, but in light of the Neanderthal sequence, it is now clear that they were absolutely right!”

The modern human/Neanderthal combo likely benefitted our species, enabling it to survive in harsh, cold regions that Neanderthals previously had adapted to.

“Variability is very important for long-term survival of a species,” Labuda concluded. “Every addition to the genome can be enriching.”