Dudley pair found guilty of killing taxi boss in 'tit for tat' feud between families

Mohammed Haroon Zeb, known as Haroon or 'H', was shot in the head on his 39th birthday in a drive-by attack in the Queens Cross area of Dudley on January 31, 2021. He was taken to hospital, but died the next day.

Hassan Tasleem, 24, of Richmond Road, and Gurdeep Sandhu, 24, of Blower's Green Road, were both found guilty of murdering the father-of-four in unanimous verdicts, after a trial held at Leicester Court sitting at Loughborough on Thursday. Both were also found guilty of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life and perverting the course of justice.

Shamraz Ali, 20, of Tanfield Road, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice in relation to the shooting. No verdict was reached for Mohamad Umar Rafiq on the same charge.

Cleared of murder were Choudhary Naheim Rashid, 48, of Kingswinford Road; Akarsh Tasleem, 26, of Shaw Road; Umar Ali, 21, of Blower's Green Road; Mohamad Umar Rafiq, 20, of Gammage Street; Shamraz Ali and Zaine Hussain, 22, of Aston Road.

No verdict of murder was reached in the case of Choudhary Akeel Hussain, 22, of Brook Street.

Rashid and Umar Ali were found not guilty of possession of firearms.

Akarsh Tasleem, Choudhary Akeel Hussain and Zaine Hussain were also cleared of perverting the course of justice.

The prosecution case was that the victim was killed as a result of an historic 'tit for tat' feud between two groups of families that escalated from street disorder with knives to murder and maiming.

Mr James Curtis KC, prosecuting, told the trial that the nine defendants were in it together along with one other man to murder the father-of-four.

The court heard how the murder was carefully planned and was carried out with a high degree of precision, with defendant Hassan Tasleem shooting the victim from a VW Golf, after anticipating Mr Zeb would arrive at a property in the area at a particular time.

Tasleem denied that he was the person who fired a revolver four times from the front passenger seat of a VW Golf shortly after 12.30am, and told the jury that another man who was not involved in the trial was responsible for the attack.

The court heard that the victim was shot days after Choudhary Akeel Hussain suffered a leg injury when he was struck by a car on January 20. That incident followed the Court of Appeal upholding the murder conviction of a man called Nabeel Choudhary, who was found guilty of the murder of Yasir Hussain, 34, in Lower Gornal, in 2018.

Mr Curtis had told the jury: “The murder was the latest spat in a long-running and escalating feud between two families in Dudley. It happened after a series of tit for tat allegations, perceived revenge atrocities, incidents of criminal damage passing back and forth.

“The allegations on both sides are inextricably linked between the two family groups going back over months and years. One atrocity by one group led to reprisals from another group. They didn’t let it go.”