A former lawyer accused of plotting the murder of the leader of a north London gang in Moldova as part of a bloody feud fears he will be killed in a revenge attack, a court has heard.Â
Toper Hassan, 58, is fighting extradition to face a conspiracy to murder charge over the fatal shooting of 41-year-old Izzet Eren – the head of the Tottenham Turks organised crime group – in capital Chisinau on 10 July last year.
Kemal Armagan, who is said to be a leading member of the rival Hackney Bombacilar gang, wearing a camouflage outfit and riding an electric bike allegedly fired seven shots with a 9mm gun at Eren’s back and head, killing him instantly.
Hassan, who is married to Armagan’s sister, solicitor Reyhan Armagan, is said to have been recruited by his brother-in-law, who has been wanted by the Metropolitan Police since 2009, to organise logistics for the murder at a coffee shop.
Westminster Magistrates’ Court was told Eren was killed as part of a bloody gang feud in retaliation for the 2012 murder of the Armagans’s brother Ali Armagan.
“Over the past 16 years members of these families have been locked in a bitter and enduring rivalry in which they have murdered and maimed rival gang members, their families and innocent members of the public,” Hassan’s lawyer Peter Caldwell KC said in written legal arguments.
He told the court the “feud of bloody proportions” had played out “across the streets of London and in other countries”.
Hassan is said to have visited Moldova four times between 6 July 2023 and 3 July 2024 as he and others studied Eren’s way of life, itinerary and the route where he was traveling.
At the time of the murder, the UK was seeking to extradite Eren, who was suspected of being behind the importation of 156kg of heroin from Iran to Heathrow Airport, but he was released on bail pending an asylum decision.
Eren, a Turkish citizen, is said to have become the leader of the Tottenham Turks by 2013 and was deported from the UK in 2015 before smuggling himself back into the country later that year.
He pleaded guilty to firearms offences after he and another man were stopped by armed police carrying loaded guns with the safety catches off.
Jermaine Baker, 28, was shot dead by police in a foiled plot to free the pair from a security van near Wood Green Crown Court, where they were due to be sentenced, in December 2015.
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Eren was transferred to Turkey to serve the remainder of his sentence on 26 August 2019, but escaped a month later on 26 September.
He was arrested in Moldova in May 2022 and while in custody told a British embassy employee he had to pay other inmates for protection and was punched in the nose when he hadn’t, said Mr Caldwell.
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Hassan, a dual UK and North Cyprus national, was arrested at Stansted Airport on 30 August on a flight from Istanbul.
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His KC said the Met have issued Hassan with an Osman, or threat to life, warning, and he was appearing in court by video-link from Belmarsh prison “in part for his own security and welfare”.
Mr Caldwell argued Hassan’s life is at even greater risk if he is extradited to a Moldovan prison, where “it would be an easy matter for the Eren family to exact revenge against” him.
“They have the money, they have the resources, it would be much cheaper to pay off prison guards, to pay off those to do something risky, who are serving a life or long sentence, who have nothing to lose,” he added.
