A former British solicitor accused of plotting to murder a gang leader as part of a wave of revenge killings has been approved for extradition to Moldova.
Toper Hassan, 58, is wanted in connection with the shooting of Izzet Eren, the leader of the Tottenham Turks gang, in the capital Chisinau on July 10, 2024.
He is alleged to have conspired to murder Eren alongside Kemal Armagan, a senior figure in the rival Hackney Turks, who is wanted by police in connection with two London murders.
Hassan ran a firm of solicitors in Green Lanes, north London, until he was suspended from practicing by a disciplinary tribunal in 2008. He is married to Armagan’s sister, Reyhan Armagan, a solicitor based in north London.
Hassan is alleged to have travelled to Moldova four times to “organise logistics” for Eren’s murder while staying in an apartment with Armagan.
Armagan is alleged to have shot Eren, 41, seven times while he was sitting at a coffee shop the Moldovan capital. The killing was allegedly in retaliation for the murder of Armagan’s brother Ali in London in 2012.
Eren had been deported from the UK in 2015 but smuggled himself back into the country. He was later convicted of possessing firearms on the back of a motorbike. Police shot dead Jermaine Baker, 28, during an operation to foil Eren’s escape from a prison van in December 2015.
He was transferred to a Turkish prison in August 2019 but escaped the following month. He was arrested in Moldova in May 2022 but was released on bail pending an asylum decision. The UK was seeking to secure Eren’s extradition on charges of being behind the importation of 156kg of heroin from Iran to Heathrow airport when he was killed.
Hassan was arrested at Stansted airport in August last year, having arrived on a flight from Istanbul, Turkey.
He fought the extradition request arguing that he “would be prejudiced at trial through political weaponisation of the case”, adding that his safety would be at risk and he will face “inhumane treatment” in prison in Moldova.
Judge Paul Goldspring rejected Hassan’s challenge at Westminster magistrates’ court on Wednesday. He said that the alleged murder plot was in a “background of interlinked shootings and transnational retribution killings”.
Javon Riley, a violent career criminal recruited by the Tottenham Turks, was found guilty on Monday of attempting to murder three members of the Hackney Turks who were shot outside a restaurant in Dalston, east London, in May last year. He was also found guilty of the grievous bodily harm of a nine-year-old girl hit in the head by a stray bullet.
The final decision on Hassan’s extradition will be made by Yvette Cooper, the home secretary.