‘Ringleader’ jailed over St Ives family dispute

A FATHER-of-six who led a violent gang through the streets of St Ives to settle a family feud has been jailed for a year.

Muhammed Nizan Hussain summoned relations from London and guided a 14-strong group to a property in Shakespeare Road following a disagreement over a perceived slight to his family.

A 19-year-old man was punched and kicked to the ground during the incident, which occurred on January 10 last year, and his mother and uncle were also assaulted as they attempted to protect him.

Hussain, 39, of Park Way, St Ives, pleaded guilty to charges of violent disorder and perverting the course of justice by making a false allegation and statement to police after the incident.

Jamil Abdin, 28, and Jabel Abdin, 23, both of Forest Gate, London, and Halim Uddin, 24, of Canning Town, all denied violent disorder but were found guilty at a week-long trial in February.

At a sentencing hearing at Huntingdon Crown Court on Friday (April 8), they were sentenced to nine months in custody, suspended for 18 months, and ordered to complete 120 hours of unpaid work.

Hussain was jailed for eight months for violent disorder, and four months for perverting the course of justice, to run consecutively.

Judge Patrick Moloney told the four men: “Literally taking the law into your own hands in this way will not be tolerated.

“The law is there to solve your problems without resorting to violence, and if members of the community get together in groups and go to threaten rivals groups then peace and law and order will break down.”

The court heard a feud between the two families had been ongoing for several years, but that the events of last January had been sparked by gossip surrounding phone calls Hussain had been seen making in his car.

Prosecutor Nick Hoffman said: “There was a chain of events which culminated on January 10 in violent disorder.”

Mr Hoffman said that Hussain called police on January 20 to report that a member of the other family had made threats to kill him.

Judge Moloney told Hussain he considered him the ring leader of the group, but that the four men were responsible for causing the injuries in a “group assault”.

He said: “I regard you as the ring leader, the man who caused this offence to happen. You tried to twist the law to your own advantage. That is completely unacceptable.”

Georgina Gibbs, mitigating for Hussain, said the incident had brought “great shame” upon his family, who would be put under strain by his custodial sentence.

She said Hussain, a taxi driver who suffered from health problems, had pleaded guilty and accepted responsibility for the charges, but added: “He went round to confront the family – there was not the intention only to go round and cause violence.”

Richard Witcombe, for Jabel Abdin, said his client was a young man “loaded with potential” and that custody would be “devastating” for his family.

Anthony Heaton-Armstrong, representing Jamil Abdin, made no mitigation after the judge ruled out custody, and Nicola Talbot, for Uddin, explained her client had not known what was going to happen, but had co-operated with police.