In interviews with journalists, Huseyin portrayed himself as a kind of International Man of Violence, a gangster who had financed both the Turkish ruling classes and the separatists of the Kurdish Workers' party, or PKK - and who would not hesitate to order the killing of those who insulted his honour. "I would travel with a gun in one hand and a diplomatic passport in the other," he boasted.
One question has never been answered, however.
Why was Baybasin, along with many other members of the clan and some of his closest criminal associates, allowed to settle in Britain in the mid-90s? It is a question that has puzzled police officers for years. After all, one senior detective said, "we have enough organised criminals of our own without importing any more".
Low profile
The National Crime Squad estimates that up to 90% of the heroin entering this country was controlled by the Baybasin cartel up until late 2002, when it had a bloody falling out with its partners in the PKK. The gang controlled many of the refinement plants in Turkey, and could arrange for the drug to be smuggled across Europe. It would often have a grip on its wholesale distribution around the UK.
The arrival of the Baybasin clan also baffled the residents of Canons Drive estate, the affluent area of Edgware in north London where Baybasin bought a large detached house for his family at the tail end of 1994, paying cash. Not that the Baybasins were bad neighbours. They had their peculiarities, such as conducting their business conversations on mobile telephones from the bottom of the garden, but, as one resident said: "They keep a very low profile. If it weren't for the sound of the front door being kicked down by the police from time to time, they would be pretty good neighbours."
Rumours have swirled around the Baybasins. Some believed they were helping MI5 to keep a close eye on PKK activists among the Kurdish community centred on Harringay in north London; others suspected they were in the employ of some foreign intelligence service. The Baybasins have long operated in that murky corner where the worlds of politics, intelligence gathering and serious crime can intersect. There is reason to believe that MI5 asked for their help after the 7/7 bombings, while relatives of Huseyin say they have been asked to help Spanish and Dutch intelligence officials. On one occasion, they claim, a Russian intelligence officer came to London to ask them to help assassinate a pair of Chechens living in a hotel in Istanbul, a request which they say they declined.
The Guardian has discovered evidence which suggests that leading members of the gang were able to settle in the UK after Huseyin was recruited as an informer for Customs and Excise.
Firearms
The evidence emerged during immigration hearings which were held after his brother, Abdullah, applied for asylum. Abdullah had entered the country on a forged Dutch passport in late 1995, but made his application only after being arrested on firearms charges in March 1998. Police had found a loaded handgun next to his bed during a raid on the Canons Drive address.
The Home Office made no attempt to remove him until 2003, by which time he had served a 12-month prison sentence. It was not until December 2004 that his case went to an immigration tribunal. Sitting behind closed doors, the tribunal heard evidence that Huseyin's close associates and their relatives had been offered "sanctuary" in the UK after he agreed to tell customs what he knew about the involvement in heroin trafficking of senior Turkish politicians and officials.
According to one witness statement, sworn by a London businessman - a man linked to the family who is thought also to have worked as an informer for customs - an initial meeting to thrash out the plan was held with two named customs investigators in the Monument pub in the City of London. Huseyin was brought into the country via South Africa, Morocco and Gibraltar, and met undercover customs officers at a hotel near Tower Bridge.
Information
"My understanding of the deal between Customs & Excise and Huseyin Baybasin was that he would provide them with information and that they would allow the family to come to the UK as they would be at risk in Turkey," the witness said.
Despite the firearms conviction, despite giving evidence to the tribunal via video link from Belmarsh high security prison, where he was on remand on drugs and extortion charges, and despite the tribunal accepting there was "significant evidence" that he had been involved in international drug smuggling, the tribunal accepted that Abdullah was a genuine refugee and granted him political asylum.
Huseyin Baybasin would have been a precious asset for customs at the time that he was allegedly recruited as an informer, as he would have been privy to many of the secrets of those figures who inhabit what is known in Turkey as the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State: the politicians, police officers and intelligence officials involved in large-scale heroin trafficking. Much is now known about this Turkish netherworld, in part because of an extraordinary incident in November 1996 in which four people - the head of the country's counter-terrorist police, a beauty queen with criminal connections, a Kurdish politician known to be arming militia groups, and a heroin trafficker - were all killed when the Mercedes 600 in which they were travelling slammed into a truck.
The heroin trafficker, a man linked to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II, was carrying a police identity card. Two months later a court in Germany found that Tansu Ciller, former prime minister of Turkey, had been protecting heroin traffickers, an accusation that prompted official protests from Ankara.
Interviews
Huseyin Baybasin also began to reveal much of what he knew after being arrested during a "business trip" to the Netherlands less than a year after settling in the UK.
In a series of prison interviews he alleged that he had received the assistance of Turkish embassies and consulates while moving huge consignments of drugs around Europe, and that Turkish army officers serving with Nato in Belgium were also involved. "The government kept all doors open for us," he said. "We could do as we pleased."
Despite insisting that his trafficking days were behind him, Huseyin was jailed in 2001 for 20 years for conspiracy to murder, drug trafficking and kidnap. When he appealed against this sentence, it was increased to life.
In the spring of 1995, however, the insight which he could have offered into the then secret world of the Gizli Devlet would have been invaluable, not only to UK customs, but to any government department which was devising future diplomatic relations with Turkey. The following year saw a concerted EU-wide attempt to persuade Turkey to crack down on heroin trafficking. British ministers felt able to go further, openly accusing officials in Ankara of profiting from the trade.
Whitehall's gain was Harringay's loss, however. With Huseyin in a Dutch prison, other members of the gang began recruiting Turkish and Kurdish youths who helped extort money from London businessmen and women. Known as the bombacilars, or bombers, they used guns, petrol bombs and machetes to terrorise the communities around Green Lanes in Harringay. At the height of the dispute with the PKK, Scotland Yard ordered armed patrols into the area. The gang also continued to dominate UK heroin imports, which reached between 25 and 35 tonnes each year during the late 90s, according to police estimates.
Contacts
Members of the Baybasin gang also began to develop political contacts. First they cultivated a councillor called Alan Sloam, a well-known figure in north London Labour party circles, who was later to be barred from holding office for a year after being convicted of an attempted deception on a neighbouring council.
Sloam persuaded the family's MP, Tony McNulty, to take up the cause of Huseyin's wife, who was having difficulty visiting her husband in the Netherlands. Mr McNulty, who was elected to the Commons in 1997 and appointed immigration minister last year, has confirmed that he wrote a number of letters on her behalf. Claude Moraes, the Labour MEP and former director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, was persuaded to raise questions on Huseyin's behalf in the European parliament.
The gang also began to invest in legitimate enterprises. There were residential properties around Edgware and a car sales business in London. They bought a former rest home for retired policemen on the seafront at Hove, which they ran as a hotel. There were more hotels in Istanbul, and a marble factory near Lice. By early 2003, however, the National Crime Squad, an organisation which did not exist when the Baybasins first arrived, had begun to close in on the gang.
In April of that year, detectives hid a tiny video camera and a number of microphones inside the office at the rear of a Green Lanes sports club from which Abdullah was now directing the Baybasin cartel's affairs.
Over the next eight months, detectives gathered evidence of drug deals being discussed, guns being distributed, petrol bombs being assembled and victims being beaten. Police even watched footage of one of the bombacilars being stripped and threatened with a machete over some breach of gang discipline.
Although Abdullah has used a wheelchair since being shot in a bar in Amsterdam in the 80s, it was clear that mere mention of his name was enough to instil real fear.
"The violence could erupt out of nowhere," said Chief Inspector Robin Plummer, who ran the operation. "They seemed very anarchic at times, very disorganised, for organised criminals."
They also appeared to have been influenced by Hollywood: people who were clearly in awe would enter the room, kiss Abdullah's hand, and then retreat as he spoke in a whisper to one of his aides. Watching the surveillance video was, at times, "like watching a scene from The Godfather", said Mr Plummer.
Last month, 10 members of the gang were jailed at Woolwich crown court in south-east London for up to 15 years for blackmail, arson and firearms offences. A further six men were jailed for up to nine years for conspiring to supply heroin.
Abdullah Baybasin is due to be sentenced at Woolwich crown court for the drugs and blackmail offences on Friday.
Other leading members of the gang remain at liberty, and some are said by members of the Kurdish communities of north London to be reorganising the bombacilars. It appears certain, however, that police are monitoring them closely. "They are within the UK," said Mr Plummer, "but we prefer not to use the expression 'at large'."
