A man convicted of the torture and murder of a former associate was jailed in Greece for his role in a huge drug conspiracy with links to the Calabrian mafia. Neil Jones was heavily involved in the twisted revenge plot to kidnap and kill 45-year-old Tomasz Samel, a dad and organised criminal, after he was deemed responsible for the loss of illicit cigarettes worth £1m.
Jones, 49 and from the Liverpool area, and Tobiasz Kozlowski, 39 and from Kirkby, were the "organisers" and were said to have "motive to punish" Mr Samel due to the financial stake they had in the cigarettes, which had been smuggled from Poland and held in a lock-up belonging to the murdered man. They travelled to Birmingham and enlisted hired help for £18,000, with three men posing as Interpol officers to kidnap and transport Mr Samel to the north west.
The Murder and Its Aftermath
Jones was among the men present as Mr Samel was stripped naked, tied to a chair and set on fire in a garage. The victim initially survived the torture and was dumped in a remote location where he was able to seek help. But he died in Whiston Hospital three months later having suffered burns to 75% of his body.
Following the murder, Jones initially fled to Ireland and then Europe before he went on to South America. He was later found in Greece and eventually brought back to the UK to face the charges linked to the murder of Mr Samel. The ECHO previously reported that Jones was serving a 30-year prison stretch in Greece for his role in a huge drug plot with links to South America and the 'Ndrangheta mafia clan.
The Greek Drug Conspiracy
Jones and three other men, all from Liverpool, were first arrested in June 2022 during a dramatic armed raid at a luxury rented villa overlooking the port city of Thessaloniki. The Greek police swooped after 300kg of cocaine was seized from a shipment of bananas sent from the Italian city of Calabria, the criminal territory of the mafia. Alongside hundreds of blocks of cocaine, Greek police seized a pistol and bullets, radio and positional equipment and more than 10 mobile phones.
The men were also said to be linked to another huge shipment of cocaine, around 700kg, which had arrived from South America via Italy. The raids followed a global probe involving the American Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Italian customs officers and Greek Police into an international drug trafficking ring sourcing cocaine in South America. The Greek authorities said the organised crime group was responsible for up to 10% of Europe's cocaine trade.
Expert Analysis and Sentencing
Dr Anna Sergi, professor of criminology & organised crime at the University of Essex, and an expert in European mafia groups, told the ECHO at the time that the involvement of British men in the trafficking of cocaine through Calabria was "puzzling". She said: "On a systematic level there has been no sign of any partnership between the 'Ndrangheta, or Cosa Nostra [A Sicilian based mafia group] or any of the big Italian mafia and British organised crime groups. I ran a project looking at this and Britain did not seem to have been infiltrated by the 'Ndrangheta, unlike almost every other country in Europe."
The 'Ndrangheta was for years seen as the weaker of the infamous Italian crime rings, but police crackdowns on the other groups led it to grow to become the most powerful mafia in Italy. They have been estimated to control between 60 and 80% of the European cocaine trade and link South American cartels and distribution networks on the continent.
Jones was eventually found guilty of murder after trial having already admitted conspiracy to kidnap and falsely imprisoning Mr Samel. David McLachlan KC, defending, said: "The reality is he knows and accepts he is likely to die in prison." Jones was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 34 years, while Kozlowski, who was convicted of the same charges, will serve a minimum of 33 years before he can be considered for release.
Mr Justice Wall, sentencing, said: "I am sure that the two of you intended that Mr Samel would die," adding the victim had been "stripped naked, and, while seated and defenceless, petrol was thrown over him and he was set alight". The judge said: "The level of his suffering between the time at which the injuries were inflicted and his death is difficult to imagine."
Kevin Wooden, aged 46, from Banbury in Oxfordshire and Kye Arthur, 35, from Bristol, confessed to the kidnap and false imprisonment charges and were found guilty of manslaughter. They were respectively jailed for 23 years and 22 years. The third man involved in the kidnapping has never been identified. Kozlowski's wife, Sandra Kozlowska, aged 38 and from Kirkby, received a three-year suspended sentence for assisting her husband after the killing.
The police investigation saw inquiries carried out in Poland, Greece, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, France, Scotland and Wales, where the gang had operations or had fled to in the aftermath of the kidnapping. Hannah Sidaway, from the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: "This case shows what can be achieved when prosecutors and law enforcement work together across borders. Support from our partners in Poland, Greece and the Dominican Republic, together with Eurojust, was instrumental in securing evidence, progressing enquiries across jurisdictions, and ensuring those responsible faced justice in the UK."
Chief Superintendent Scott Griffiths, who led the West Midlands Police investigation, said: "Tomasz would have suffered an unimaginable amount of pain when he was tortured, and his agony continued for the months leading up to his death. The violence that was inflicted on him does not bear thinking about, and those that were willing to do that to another human being are clearly very dangerous individuals. Our investigation has spanned many years and many countries, as we pieced together people's movements, mobile phone data, CCTV, and other information to build a picture of what happened on that night."
