Four men have been jailed for almost 30 years for kidnapping a 21-year-old man and torturing him in a shipping container because he was dating the sister of two of the gang. The victim was bundled into the boot of a black Audi A4 outside his home in Telford, Shropshire, on December 29, with his legs still hanging out, and driven to a secure storage unit in Eyton, where he was tied to a chair and assaulted.
The kidnappers—brothers Ehteshan, 22, and Shayyan Hussain, along with their distant cousins Faheem Chohan and Jawad Hussain—chose the shipping container because it was 'isolated, secure, out of public view and capable of being controlled,' prosecutor Jake Guise told Shrewsbury Crown Court. Judge Trevor Meegan said the attack was driven by 'perceived family honour' and involved 'a large amount of planning.' He added: 'He was degraded and filmed, threatened with death and made to believe he would not leave alive.'
“Four men jailed almost 30 years for kidnapping and torturing man in shipping container; separate case saw 12-year sentence for 2,000 litres of date rape drug in storage.”
The victim, who had previously been close to his attackers—they had gone on holiday together, eaten together and attended the same mosque—saw the relationship sour when he began messaging the Hussain brothers' sister. In the weeks before the kidnap, the gang waged a campaign of intimidation, driving past his house and following him on the motorway, and on one occasion confronting him with a baseball bat.
On the day of the attack, three men stormed into the victim's home in Arleston at 2.18pm, dragged him out, pushed his mother to the ground as she tried to stop them, and drove over her arm. They then demanded £20,000 from the victim's father, putting the victim on the phone to beg for the money. Haider Ali, 22—due to be sentenced on Thursday—arrived at the storage unit 20 minutes later, stayed for 10 minutes, then left with two kidnappers in the Audi, which they dumped at Lilleshall Golf Club. Ali returned to the unit at 3.44pm to collect the other two, leaving the victim locked inside and tied to a chair. Police identified Ali's car through CCTV and arrested him at 4.53pm on suspicion of kidnap. The victim was stripped naked and repeatedly punched, with the attackers recording themselves forcing him to apologise to Ehteshan and Shayyan's father.
In a separate case involving a storage container, a man was jailed for 12 years after more than 2,000 litres of gamma butyrolactone (GBL)—a date rape drug—were found in a storage unit he had rented. Police said the discovery of the vast quantity of the drug highlighted the scale of the operation.
The two cases, both involving storage units used for criminal purposes, led to combined jail terms of more than 40 years, though the full extent of the drug operation remains unclear as the man's identity was not disclosed.