Gang jailed over plot to spring dangerous criminal from prison van

Jailed: Ozcan Eren (left), Izzet Eren
Metropolitan Police
Hatty Collier20 June 2016
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A gang who hatched an audacious plot to spring a dangerous criminal from a prison van were today jailed for a total of 27 years and two months.

Izzet Eren, 33, assembled a five-strong team to break him out of the van as he was being transported from Wormwood Scrubs prison to Wood Green Crown Court.

The plan was foiled when armed police swooped on their vehicles as they were parked near the north London court on December 11 last year.

During the operation an officer shot dead one of the gang, Jermaine Baker, 28, from Tottenham, which continues to be investigated by the IPCC.

Judge Christopher Kinch QC, sitting at Woolwich Crown Court, south east London, today told the men who sat quietly in the dock that an attempted break out from custody was an "attack" on the criminal justice system which was also likely to threaten the general public and put security staff at risk.

The judge sentenced Eren, who is currently serving 14 years for firearms offences, to a total of seven-and-a-half years for the escape attempt to be served consecutively to his current sentence, which was imposed in December.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to escape and one count of conspiracy to carry imitation firearms with criminal intent.

The gang had hatched a plan to break him out of the prison van as he was on his way to court for the December sentencing hearing.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to several offences after police caught him – along with an accomplice Erwin Amoah-Gyamfi - on a stolen motorbike carrying a loaded pistol in Stamford Hill. A bag containing a loaded Skorpion machine gun was found nearby.

His cousin, Ozcan Eren, 31, from Wood Green denied the same charges relating to the escape plot but changed his plea part way through a trial. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Two other members of the gang, Nathan Mason and Gokay Sogucakli, all from Tottenham, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to the same offences.

Nathan Mason (left) and Gokay Sogucakli
Metropolitan Police

Mason, 31, was sentenced to six years and two months in prison and Sogucakli, the youngest member of the gang, was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in a young offenders’ institution.

Eren Hasyer, 25, of Kettering Road, Enfield, who was found guilty of conspiring in the escape plot after a trial will be sentenced on Thursday, the Metropolitan Police said. He was cleared of possessing an imitation firearm.

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