A Bradford-based Drugs gang has been jailed for a total of 50 years for flooding the UK’s streets with heroin with an estimated street value of up to £6.3 million.

Drugs baron Mohammed Arif Hassan, of Woodlands Street, Manningham, and brothers Hafeez and Rashid Rahman ran a “highly profitable criminal enterprise” and collaborated in trafficking nearly 90kg of the drug.

It was so successful they franchised out their heroin business to other cities across the UK – distributing millions of pounds of the drug throughout the country, Leeds Crown Court heard yesterday.

Hassan, 35, headed up the gang with his lieutenants Asim Khan, 32, of Woodview, Manningham, and 30-year-old Amur Fiaz of Windermere Road, Great Horton.

His Honour Judge Spencer said they had pretended to be “upstanding members of the community” while illegally trafficking drugs.

They used a flat in Bradford as a ‘bash house’ to cut the heroin for sale to other “casual contract” conspirators with Faisal Amin, 24 of Salt Street, Manningham, as the link between Hassan and his supplier, the court heard.

Meanwhile the Rahman brothers were operating a similar business based in Sheffield.

The joint investigation by Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) officers, West Yorkshire Police and other forces revealed a “clear trading relationship” between the two groups, with money and drugs regularly passing between them.

In four months to July, 2010, almost 90kg of high-purity heroin was seized at locations in Bradford, Sheffield and Birmingham, along with more than £250,000 in cash.

Hassan, Khan and Fiaz were arrested after searches uncovered documents, heroin and cocaine, cutting agents, scales, guns and large quantities of cash.

Evidence linked the Rahmans to Hassan’s gang and two months later Rashid Rahman was arrested with 2kg of heroin. Hafeez Rahman was arrested less than an hour later and, when officers searched his Sheffield flat, they found it was being used as a bash house to cut drugs to sell on.

Yesterday, His Honour Judge Spencer jailed nine men for pleading guilty to conspiring to supply heroin.

Hassan and Hafeez Rahman, 27, of Sheffield were both jailed for ten years. Khan and Fiaz were each given five-year sentences, Amin six years and 28-year-old Mohammed Jangir of Birmingham, four and a half years.

Arshad Mahood, 37, of Brackenhill Drive, Great Horton, was jailed for two years, along with Rashid Rahman, 26, and Sahib Hussain, 32, from Birmingham. Another man, Ilyas Tahir Karim, 41, of Dewsbury was sentenced to three and a half years.

After the sentencing, Gerry Smyth, of SOCA said: “These men were operating highly profitable criminal enterprises close to the top of the Class A drug supply chain and covering a large geographical area.

“The harm they had the potential to cause was enormous. Taking out their collective networks has interrupted a significant supply route.”