Inside the Mali Boys one of UK’s deadliest gangs as ‘ringleader’ convicted of double murder in blood thirsty gang war
THE “RINGLEADER” of one of the UK’s deadliest gangs has been convicted of two murders during a bloody tit-for-tat street war.
Hamza Ul Haq, 25, was part of a group that brutally stabbed to death 18-year-old Kacem Mokrane in Walthamstow, East London, on November 16, 2017.
Just four months later, he was involved in the mistaken identity murder of Joseph Williams-Torres, 20, who was shot dead after being ambushed as he sat in a van alongside a friend.
Both murders were in revenge over a fatal attack on fellow Mali Boys gang member Elijah Dornelly, 17, in May 2017.
Ul Haq was found guilty of Mr Williams-Torres’ murder and jailed for life in 2020.
And following a three-month trial, he was also convicted of Mr Mokrane’s murder last month.
After reporting restrictions were lifted by Judge Angela Rafferty KC at the Old Bailey on Monday, it can now be revealed Ul Haq is at the forefront of the notorious east London gang.
The Mali Boys run “Britain’s most dangerous street”, Vallentin Road, and are said to earn up to £50,000 a week from drugs.
More than 250 men and women belong to 12 gangs in Walthamstow, with those at the top of the Mali Boys originally coming to Britain as children from war-torn Somalia.
Families in the area are said to have become so terrified by the constant tit-for-tat street violence that they refuse to leave their homes at night.
The Mali Boys are said to be the “most business-driven, violent and ruthless” type of gang and keep away from social media in order to keep their activities secretive.
This includes using old Nokia phones to carry out daily activities as they are more difficult to track.
Some gang members are “ex-soldiers”
One rival gang member previously told The Sun: “Those people come from countries where there are pirates, where people are gang-raped and beaten up, and it’s all in front of them.
“Some are ex-soldiers who have seen people’s heads blown off. So they feel they can come and do it here.”
The gang are also known to use Facebook to monitor police and have used boys as young as ten to hang around police stations and note the number of officers’ private cars.
A study of London gangs published in 2019 found identified the Mali Boys as an example of how groups are becoming more organised and ruthless.
Professor Andrew Whittaker, of the London South Bank University, wrote: “Although the Mali Boys may appear to be a local phenomenon, there is growing evidence that they are part of a wider pan-London development as gangs become more organised.”
Commenting on how they had formed alliances with other gangs as part of efforts to build their drugs business, another researcher added: “Although the Mali Boys may appear to be a local phenomenon, there is growing evidence that they are part of a wider pan-London development as gangs become more organised.”
The murder of Jaden Moodie
The gang was responsible for the murder of 14-year-old boy Jaden Moodie in January 2019.
Graphic CCTV footage showed Jaden, who had links to a rival gang, being stabbed to nine times during a horrific 14-second attack in Leyton, east London.
The gang members had set out in a stolen Mercedes into rival Beaumont Crew territory in what became a “killing mission”.
Ayoub Majdouline, then 19, knocked Jaden off his scooter before the fatal attack took place.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 21 years in December 2019.
Five members of the gang were also jailed in January last year after they using 3,000 bottles of prescription medication to conceal vast quantities of class A drugs.
Brian William, Hashi Abdi, Oussema Oubari, Munta Hoque and Azman Ahamad were involved in the supply of drugs into Essex and were caught by police travelling to Essex in September 2020.
A large quantity of class A drugs were found in the front passenger seat of their silver Ford Focus, with further wraps thrown from the car prior to the search.
A later raid at an address in Romford found further drugs, along with scales, seven mobile phones and the medication bottles.
The five men were jailed for a combined 16 years.
It comes as Abdirisak Ali, 26, Luca Griffiths, 21, and Kamil Kazmierski, 23, were also found guilty of murdering Mr Mokrane in November 2017.
The trio were also associated with the Mali Boys.
The two murder came as part of a bloody feud with the neighbouring Priory Court or Higham Hill gang.
Mr Mokrane was attacked as he made his way to a local trap house in Higham Hill Road.
Two cars pulled up and 10 males got out and chased him down the road. Ul Haq was among those leading the chase as the attackers brandished knives, including a “Zombie flasher” or “pirate” knife.
Just 25 seconds later, Mr Mokrane was surrounded, pushed up against a wall and suffered serious injuries including an eviscerated bowel and stab to the leg. He died four days later.
The court was told the immediate trigger for the “revenge murder” was an acid attack in Subway and Downtown Pizza in St James, Walthamstow, two days earlier.
Ul Haq and others were squirted with acid and one friend was stabbed, though they survived, after a group of hooded males ran into the stores.
Murders were “revenge attacks”
Jurors were told that incident happened amid a “series of violent retaliatory attacks” between rival territorial gangs The Mali Boys, with whom the 10 attackers were associated, and the Priory Court/Higham Hill gang.
Allison Hunter KC, prosecuting, said: “As a group, they were reckless and ruthless, and swift to seek revenge for any perceived challenge to their territorial supremacy.
“They had grown increasingly angry, dangerous and confrontational since the murder of Elijah Dornelly which had marked the beginning of the tit-for-tat violence over the relevant period.
“Their eagerness to exact their swift revenge typically resulted in either the careless mistaken identification of their specific target, or else in acts of indiscriminate violence against any member of a rival grouping.”
Ul Haq, Ali, Griffiths, and Kazmierski will be sentenced for Mr Mokrane’s murder on June 28 at the Old Bailey.
Months later, Ul Haq and two other Mali Boys members shot dead Mr Williams-Torres as he was sat in a van with a friend.
The attackers wrongly identified him as a member of a rival gang, before shooting him in the chest and legs.
Loic Nengese and a then 16-year-old boy, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, were convicted alongside Ul Haq.
Nengese was jailed for life with a minimum term of 21 years and the boy for a minimum of 18 years.