Three Men Fail to Win Appeal After Being Convicted of Attempted Murder of Berkshire Taxi Driver

Coventry men Amjed Mahmood, 33, Jaspal Kajla, 37, and Imran Khan, 35, have consistently denied conspiring to kill taxi driver Qadir Hussain in connection with a dispute over land ownership in Pakistan. The three men were handed open-ended sentences at Reading Crown Court back in April 2012, all ordered to serve ten and a half years each after being found guilty of attempted murder. The police hold extensive evidence against the suspects including a recording of a conversation between Mahoom and Kajla in the back of a police vehicle. The men launched conviction appeals, feeling the trial judged them on unlawful evidence, breaching their human rights. Lord Justice McCombe said: “It is accepted that there was a failure to observe the limits of the authorisation obtained. The result was a breach of two appellants’ rights of privacy.” But he added: “In our judgment, on the facts of this case, it says nothing about the fairness of their trial. There was no misrepresentation, entrapment or trickery. The police had simply made use of the opportunity afforded to the two appellants to talk to each other. “As the recordings themselves demonstrate, the two men were well aware of the possibility that their conversation might be bugged. There was no oppression or coercion.”