From November 28, 1988

A mafia-backed plot to flood Britain with Bolivian cocaine and a blundering Twickenham dealer’s role in tripping up the conspiracy were reported in the Comet in this week in 1988.

Britain’s biggest cocaine ring was smuggling £20m a week of the drug into the country inside heavy machinery, a trial at the Old Bailey heard.

A percentage of the weekly 100kg was about to be passed off to the IRA by the masterminds, the Giacolone crime family, according to evidence.

Huge amounts of cash were being made.

But an office manager from Twickenham, 58-year-old David Raftrey, was the catalyst for things going wrong.

He was described at his Old Bailey trial as spending more time consuming the “champagne drug” than selling it.

Raftrey told a co-conspirator he would sell as much of the drug as he was given, potentially two to three kilogrammes a week.

But mafia bosses were said to have been angered when Raftrey ran up a £50,000 debt and he was threatened with being “rubbed out”.

He considered going to police as he was terrified but before he could he was kidnapped and held prisoner for two weeks.

As Irish terrorist bosses were about to meet the Detroit mafia in Glasgow, Scotland Yard swooped.

One of the men was arrested with two suitcases full of pure cocaine worth £10m.

Another conspirator turned against the gang and gave a full confession, before being given a secret identity for life to protect him from reprisals.

Raftrey was found guilty by a jury, with others, of conspiracy to supply cocaine and was jailed for 10 years.

The judge told him: “In this case we find suppliers in the shape of both of you, who were so close to the source of supply that it is not easy – indeed, it is impossible – to separate them from the importers.”

A Scotland Yard detective, unnamed by the Comet, said: “It was the biggest seizure in Europe at that time.

“We prevented the Detroit mafia from establishing a foothold in the European cocaine market.”

50 YEARS AGO: November 30, 1963

An MP speaking in the House of Commons about crime figures was handed a note telling him his flat had been burgled. Twickenham MP Roger Gresham Cooke’s Westminster flat was ransacked and his CBE insignia, a pair of pearl cuff-links, an antique topaz tiepin and money were stolen. He said: “The biter has certainly been bit.”

25 YEARS AGO: November 28, 1988

Doctors at Kingston Hospital were making a desperate plea to root out skeletons in the cupboard in this week in 1988.

Physiotherapists reported a severe shortage of human skeletons available for study, due to supply from India drying up, and hoped former anatomy students may have a bone or two to spare.

10 YEARS AGO: November 28, 2003

Isolation and alienation among the 12,000-strong South Korean community was tackled this week with the launch of a new community project. Youth charity Oxygen encouraged youngsters to join in football tournaments, visit a nightclub and join an internet chatroom, with a full-time South Korean youth worker appointed.