A suspected mastermind of an international drug-smuggling operation linked to the Akashas family in Kenya has been arrested in London, United Kingdom and is facing deportation to the United States.
Muhammad Hafeez is facing drug smuggling charges that could see him jailed for 30 years, prosecutors in New York said on Friday.
Prosecutors in the US said that the 58-year-old Pakistani citizen, well known as ‘the Sultan’, is accused smuggling several tons of heroin and methamphetamine.
Hafeez faces three counts in federal court in Manhattan, US each attracting a mandatory minimum prison jail term of 10 years.
From 2013 until his arrest, authorities said Hafeez conspired to import methamphetamine into the United States.
Authorities in the US say that, at one point Hafeez and others planned to establish a methamphetamine production facility in Mozambique, but abandon that scheme after authorities nabbed several tons of ephedrine from a firm in India that was to be used to manufacture the methamphetamine.
He is also facing charges of conspiring to import heroin into the United States in collaboration with Baktash Akasha , the head of an organized crime family in Kenya, and others.
Baktash Akasha was arrested in 2014 in a sting operation conducted by US authorities and was extradited together with three others to face charges in New York.
