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A DRUG kingpin arrested while partying at an Ibiza nightclub for a £20million drug ring he ran with his ex-girlfriend has been jailed.

The couple from Merseyside plotted to smuggle over 300 kilos of drugs in two lorries in the summer of 2022.

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Eddie Burton, 23, from Liverpool was jailed for 19 years at Canterbury Crown Court on Friday, September 26.

His glam ex-girlfriend, Sian Banks, 25, was sentenced to five years in February of this year.

Burton had been living in mainland Europe in 2022 when two lorries were intercepted at Dover Port containing heroin, cocaine and ketamine.

The first of those lorries was stopped by Border Force on July 3 and the second was intercepted the following month on August 12.

Overall, officers discovered a whopping 307 kilos with an estimated street value of £20million.

Burton’s fingerprints were found on both the drug packages as well as the modified fuel tank that was used to conceal them.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) launched a huge manhunt for Burton who was living between the Netherlands and Spain after he left the UK in 2021.

Burton was put in cuffs by Spanish police in August 2023 at the Pacha nightclub in Ibiza for unrelated drug dealing offences.

He had been using an alias to avoid being caught at the time but was extradited to Germany and charged with drug offences before he was returned to the UK in March last year.

Following that, Burton pleaded guilty to four counts of importing Class A and B drugs.

According to the MailOnline, Burton was involved in drugs from an early age and started dealing them at 10 years old.

Those who knew him said he was engaging in serious criminal activity while he was still at primary school and weren’t surprised by his life’s trajectory.

Whereas Banks had a love of luxury holidays and high-end goods with a fondness for men with money, according to those who knew her.

She was arrested in December 2023 before she pleaded guilty to seven charges including importing Class A drugs and money laundering earlier this year.

She had visited Burton in the Netherlands and Spain on a monthly basis between June 2022 and October 2023.

Her phone had also revealed that she had twice smuggled cocaine and ketamine into her luggage after visiting Burton in Amsterdam in August 2022.

Messages were also uncovered between the pair two days after the first lorry was intercepted.

They showed that Banks had flown to the Netherlands and helped prepare the first shipment of narcotics.

One of the messages to Burton revealed Banks was concerned her fingerprints were on the bags of ketamine.

He replied: “You’ve never been nicked or had ye prints took anyway so doesn’t matter.”

It was also discovered that banks had sold scam Covid-19 travel documents during the pandemic.

NCA Senior Investigating Officer John Turner said: “Burton, with Banks’ help, attempted to smuggle huge quantities of harmful drugs into the UK, believing he could operate with impunity overseas.

“Banks held a crucial role in the criminal enterprise, laundering the illicit profits and acting as the UK-based facilitator for the multi-million pound drug importations.

“The drugs, had they reached their final destination, would have had a destructive impact on our communities, fuelling violence and exploiting vulnerable people throughout the supply chain.”

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Sept. 20 (UPI) — Police in South Africa have seized crystal methamphetamine worth around $20 million at a lab on a rural property, according to law enforcement officials.

Authorities also collected weapons and cash while dismantling the clandestine drug manufacturing operation, located on a farm in the eastern part of the country.

Six people were arrested, five of which are from a “North American country,” police said in a statement. Two other suspects were able to elude police.

“Preliminary investigations revealed that the five foreign nationals in custody were in the country illegally. They are facing possible charges related to contravening the Drugs and Drug Trafficking Act as well as the Immigration Act,” police said in the statement.

Authorities said they were led to the laboratory by an anonymous tip.

Two Mexican nationals were arrested last year at a meth operation at an unrelated farm in a rural area in separarte part of the country.

“This massive success demonstrates that cooperation between police in Mpumalanga and other entities, both government and private, is bearing expected results. Police are working hard to rid the streets of Mpumalanga of all types of drugs, and dismantling a clandestine drug lab, which is the source of these drugs, is a step in the right direction,” South African Police Service Maj. Gen. Zeph Mkhwanazi said in the agency’s statement.

“We applaud the community members who continue to work with police and provide valuable tip-offs. Intelligence-driven operations are ongoing, and we, as police, will stop at nothing in our quest to collapse the illicit drug trade.”

West Ham have signed Leicester City goalkeeper Mads Hermansen for around £20m.

The Denmark international has agreed a five-year deal with the Hammers with a one-year option, after a fee was agreed on Thursday following several weeks of talks between the clubs.

The 25-year-old impressed for Leicester last season, despite their relegation from the Premier League.

West Ham were looking for a new goalkeeper after Poland’s Lukasz Fabianski left at the end of last season and Hermansen will compete with Alphonse Areola, 32, who played 26 times in the Premier League in 2024-25.

Casper Ankergren, who worked with Hermansen at Brondby, is West Ham’s goalkeeping coach under manager Graham Potter.

Hermansen made 72 appearances for Leicester, winning the Championship title in 2024.

He follows Wilfred Ndidi in leaving the Foxes after the midfielder joined Turkish side Besiktas on Friday having spent eight-and-a-half years at the King Power Stadium.

Ndidi had a relegation release clause of £9m.

Mahmoud Khalil, a former student activist imprisoned for more than three months, has filed a wrongful detention claim against the administration of President Donald Trump, seeking $20m in damages.

Thursday’s court filings allege that the Trump administration smeared his reputation, maliciously prosecuted Khalil and unlawfully imprisoned him.

The claim names the United States Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of State as defendants.

In an interview with The Associated Press (AP), Khalil said he hopes his claim will show that the Trump administration cannot bully activists into silence.

“They are abusing their power because they think they are untouchable,” Khalil said. “Unless they feel there is some sort of accountability, it will continue to go unchecked.”

Thursday’s claim is likely to be the precursor to a full-fledged lawsuit under the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Khalil, who served as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, said he plans to use any money he receives from his claim to help other activists whose speech Trump has attempted to suppress.

He also told the AP he would accept an apology and a revision of the Trump administration’s deportation policies. Khalil himself continues to face deportation proceedings as a result of his activism.

What happened?

Born to Palestinian parents in Damascus, Syria, Khalil was a face for the Palestinian solidarity movement in the US after the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023.

United Nations experts and human rights groups have warned that Israel’s tactics in Gaza are “consistent with genocide”, and Columbia University became the epicentre for global, student-led protests.

“I’m one of the lucky ones who are able to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, the folks who are getting killed back in Palestine,” Khalil told Al Jazeera in May 2024.

But Trump campaigned for a second term on pledges to crack down on immigration to the US and stamp out the antiwar protests, which he described as anti-Semitic.

Upon taking office in January, Trump issued executive orders setting the stage for the removal of foreign nationals deemed to have “hostile attitudes” towards the US or who were accused of supporting “threats to our national security”.

One of the orders instructed federal authorities to take “actions to remove such aliens” from the US.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” Trump wrote at the time. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”

Khalil was the first major arrest in Trump’s crackdown on the student protesters. Video shot by his pregnant wife, Noor Abdalla, on March 8 shows plain-clothed immigration officers handcuffing Khalil and leading him out of his university apartment complex in New York City.

He was swiftly moved from New York to New Jersey and then to Louisiana, where he was held at the LaSalle Detention Center in Jena ahead of his planned deportation.

Inside the legal proceedings

Lawyers for Khalil, however, swiftly filed two challenges: one against his deportation and one against his detention, in what is called a habeas corpus petition.

Because of the swift and clandestine nature of his departure to Louisiana, Khalil’s lawyers have said they did not know where their client was in the initial days after his arrest. Khalil is a permanent US resident, and his wife a citizen.

To justify his deportation, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio invoked a rarely used provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. That provision allows the secretary of state to remove any foreign nationals he believes to have “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.

Khalil has not been charged with any crime. The US, however, is a close ally of Israel and has provided military support to its campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 57,762 people.

On March 9, shortly after Khalil’s arrest, the Department of Homeland Security also issued a statement accusing Khalil of anti-Semitism, citing Trump’s executive orders.

“Khalil led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” the statement said. “ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting US national security.”

Trump himself called Khalil a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student” and a “terrorist sympathizer”.

“This is the first arrest of many to come,” the president wrote on social media. “We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity.”

But Khalil and his legal team have accused the Trump administration of violating his constitutional rights to free speech.

Since Khalil’s arrest, other foreign students have been arrested too, including Mohsen Mahdawi and Rumeysa Ozturk, who was reportedly imprisoned for writing an opinion article in her student newspaper against Israel’s war.

On June 20, a judge in New Jersey ordered Khalil’s release. He missed the birth of his first child while incarcerated.

ASTON VILLA want to hijack Bournemouth’s move for Rennes skipper Adrien Truffert.

Villa look keen on the left-back and could swoop for the 23-year-old if they can quickly sell a player.

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The Cherries are close to agreeing a £20million deal for France international Truffert.

They see him as a replacement for Milos Kerkez, who is expected to join Liverpool.

Truffert has scored two goals and provided two assists in 33 Ligue 1 games this season.

But the 23-year-old has understandably struggled to get into France‘s star-studded squad.

The full-back has made just one appearances for the Les Bleus, after receiving his first call-up fir two Uefa Nations League matches.

The switches get more complicated when you consider that Bournemouth were interested in Anfield left-back Andy Robertson.

The Villa Park outfit may struggle to bring the 32-year-old Scot to the West Midlands, considering Arne Slot’s stance on an exit.

Unai Emery is believed to be in the market for a new left-back with Frenchman Lucas Digne and Ian Maatsen failing to impress the Spaniard.

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Bournemouth are also in the market for Spanish keeper Joan Garcia, who was linked with Arsenal.

The 24-year-old is set to sign for Barcelona from Espanyol — but could then be loaned out for a season in the Premier League.