Overview

• Judge Tom Bayliss imposed a life sentence with a minimum term of 34 years and 153 days for Syed’s role in the 2019 kidnapping, torture and murder of his uncle.
• Badshah’s body was found concealed behind plasterboard in a former Batley bank vault after an 11-hour interrogation that left him with more than 60 blunt force injuries.
• Syed led an organised crime network that smuggled tonnes of cocaine and heroin into the UK hidden inside frozen chicken consignments from the Netherlands between 2015 and 2019.
• He fled to Amsterdam and Albania after the killing before being arrested in Turkey in 2021 and extradited to the UK in April 2024.
• Family statements at the sentencing hearing highlighted the murder’s toll on Badshah’s loved ones, including his mother’s death from a “broken heart” and his widow’s birth of their “miracle baby” five years later.