A CONVICTED drug dealer who ignored a warning from a judge by dealing again is today back behind bars - this time for a six-year stretch.It took Hamza Ahmed, of Pelican Close, Ipswich, just over a year to be caught dealing heroin again following his release from prison, despite being warned by Judge Peter Thompson of the stiff penalties he would face if he continued to prey on drug users in the town.

A CONVICTED drug dealer who ignored a warning from a judge by dealing again is today back behind bars - this time for a six-year stretch.

It took Hamza Ahmed, of Pelican Close, Ipswich, just over a year to be caught dealing heroin again following his release from prison, despite being warned by Judge Peter Thompson of the stiff penalties he would face if he continued to prey on drug users in the town.

Today 28-year-old Ahmed is beginning a second term behind bars for dealing, after being caught with 23 wraps of heroin worth £1,000.

He had pleaded guilty to possession of heroin on the basis that the court accepted his version that his dealer had thrust the drugs upon him before escaping capture but the Crown failed to believe that account and instead insisted that he was the dealer.

A subsequent court hearing in June led to him being found guilty of intending to supply heroin.

During a sentencing hearing at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday, Judge Thompson sentenced him again and said: “I rejected your assertion of them (the wraps) being thrust upon you by your dealer before he decamped.

“You have a previous conviction for the same offence.

“On November 18, 2004 I sentenced you to three years. You've reoffended by again dealing in heroin within little more than a year after your release from a three-year sentence.

“I have little doubt on that occasion I said to you, you needed to get clean of drugs and stay away from the drug culture…and frankly straight away you went back to it.”

Earlier Michael Collis, mitigating, had appealed for Ahmed to be given the chance to get control of his drug habit. He told the court Ahmed planned to marry his partner of seven years immediately if he was released and said he wanted to put his drug-dealing past behind him.

But Judge Thompson said only a prison sentence would fit the crime.

In handing Ahmed his latest jail term, he said: “You will not be released for some considerable time.

“If you come out and if you come back to Ipswich and if you once again take part in drug dealing you know what the sentence will be - more than six years.”

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