A group of men have been jailed after transporting one-kilogramme of cocaine from Bradford to Stoke-on-Trent.

Staffordshire Police explained that drugs were picked up from Bradford on two separate occasions and taken to Stoke-on-Trent, for the purpose of selling it locally.

Terence Thorley of Blurton, Sohail Ahmed of North Humberside and Faruk Miah of no fixed address have been jailed for a combined nine years.

A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police said: "Officers worked hard to build all of the evidence against the three men, where a number of charges were authorised."

The first pick-up happened in October 2020 when officers were told by West Yorkshire Police that a Seat Leon, likely to contain half-a-kilo of cocaine, was travelling into Stoke-on-Trent.

Officers stopped the car and found the drugs inside the glovebox, before arresting the registered keeper of the car: 44-year-old Terence Thorley.

The fingerprints of 41-year-old Sohail Ahmed, of Brough, North Humberside, were found on the drugs package and he was also arrested.

In December 2020, a similar piece of intelligence was reported to Staffordshire Police from West Yorkshire Police and a car which travelled to Thorley's house in Stoke-on-Trent from Bradford was tracked down and stopped.

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Another half-a-kilo of cocaine was found stuffed inside a spare tyre.

Thorley was arrested for a second time, along with the person who loaded the drugs into the tyre: 49-year-old Faruk Miah.

Phone evidence also showed that Ahmed and Miah had been in regular contact with each other as part of the conspiracy.

The three of them were jailed for a combined nine-year term at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court on Wednesday (18 March).

Ahmed and Miah both admitted supplying a controlled drug of class A: cocaine. They were each sentenced to three-years-and-three-months behind bars

Thorley admitted conspiracy to supply a class A drug: cocaine. He was jailed for three years.

A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police added: "We're disrupting organised crime groups (OCG) like this one every single day across Staffordshire.

"OCGs often exploit vulnerable local people and coerce them into a cycle of crime, where career criminals pick up the profits and leave the 'runners' to carry the risk of prosecution.

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"Intelligence around OCGs and drug groups operating in your area is absolutely vital in our continued efforts to combat organised crime in local communities."