Turkish Gangster Used Encrypted Phones to Plot Murder of Three Rivals With London Hitmen, Jury Told

Five men accused of conspiring to murder three underworld bosses in north London have gone on trial at the Old Bailey. But the jury has been told the man who ordered the “classic contract killings” had fled to Turkey.

An underworld boss used encrypted Encrochat phones to plot the murder of three rivals in London with a team of armed hitmen and fixers, a jury at the Old Bailey has been told.

Prosecutor Benn Maguire said Kemal Eren was not in the dock because he had fled the country and was believed to be living in Turkey.

The jury was shown two handguns which Mr Maguire said the police recovered when they swooped in October and December 2019, thwarting the murder plots.

Five men deny conspiracy to murder on the orders of Eren.

Mr Maguire said: "This trial centres on the intention of one man Kemal Eren, otherwise known as 'Fingers', to kill his rivals or competitors in the criminal underworld - classic contract killings."

He said Eren hired Warwick Burrows and Leon Smith to arrange the attacks on the intended targets and they in turn sub-contracted the killings to others.

Leon Smith, 39, Warwick Burrows, 47, and Matthew Watson, 32, deny conspiring to murder Ercan Garip between 19 September and 13 December 2019.

Smith, Burrows, Dario Barnaby, 30, and Courtney Reid, 35, deny conspiring to murder Sinan Ozger.

Burrows and Watson alone also deny conspiring to murder Beytullah Gunduz.

Opening the case on Thursday, 4 November, Mr Maguire said: “You will not be surprised to hear that criminals involved in really serious crimes are alive to and aware of police methods to investigate crime. They will go to great lengths to hide their activities”.

Mr Maguire said several of the defendants in this case communicated with each other and with Eren by encrypted phones using a system called Encrochat.

He explained: “Encrochat is based in Holland and has produced a customised version of the Android operating system. This is a secure system which allows users to encrypt or hide emails, messages and voicecalls to communicate with other Encrochat mobile handsets”.

Mr Maguire said Encrochat users its own servers, so information is not stored on the mobile phone network and he said it also included an “auto delete” facility, which meant messages were automatically deleted within a short period of time.

"There is also an option to manually delete message by tapping on the flame icon," he added.

Mr Maguire said: “The prosecution say that the defendants used those Encrochat phones to prevent police from analysing what they had been up to”.

But he said the police placed covert listening devices in the home of one of the defendants, Leon Smith, and this picked up his “unguarded conversations” with others.

Mr Maguire said when the police raided Smith’s penthouse apartment in Edgware, north London, they found his Encrochat phone and were able to read several crucial messages to and from Kemal Eren before they were auto-deleted.

Mr Maguire said one gun was found in the glovebox of a stolen Audi found in Enfield, north London, on 31 October 2019 and the other was found beneath the back seat of a taxi in which Barnaby was a passenger.

Watson denies possessing the gun - a Belgian-made Fabrique Nationale Browning 9mm - found in the Audi and Barnaby denies possessing the firearm found in the taxi.

All the defendants deny the charges on the 16-count indictment and the trial is expected to last up to eight weeks.