this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you on the hour, which is straight after this programme. for 30 years, a brutal crime group has brought horror to these streets... he was my last—born. and i deservejustice for him, so does he! he never hurt anybody! ..carrying out the most extreme violence. .. a family member was called to a meeting, and dickie coggins

said that he organised the hit. now, the gangsters are finally behind bars... it's awful, it's shocking, i it's horrific and terrifying. ..their crimes exposed through 10,000 of their own extraordinary messages. they're ordering murders. they're talking about drugs. this is a window into this world and just how violent it is. we reveal the shocking story of the crime bosses who terrorised a city. a dangerous criminal is about to arrive at court. siren wails it's the trial of a major international drug trafficker, one of a series of prosecutions of gangsters. the story can't be reported

until this final case is finished. i've been investigating this organised crime group for two years. a succession of serious criminals have pleaded guilty and been locked up. this trial will finally provide a window into their world and how the police took them down. the man in the dock is edward robertjarvis, a major player in a fearsome liverpool crime group called the huyton firm. he's pleading not guilty to drug trafficking and blackmail. jarvis has a long

criminal history. he's already served time for trafficking drugs from venezuela in 2000. they had bought a yacht for £30,000 and equipped it to sail across the atlantic to pick up a large quantity, i think around 300 kilos, of cocaine. the smugglers were caught, and jarvis was sentenced by a british court to 28 years. but not all the gang were jailed. according to the officers who were working on it, a couple of the people with him would have been associated or key figures in what subsequently became known as the huyton firm.

the huyton firm is named after the part of merseyside where it's based. it supplied massive quantities of heroin and cocaine across the uk. the crime group has been running huyton for 30 years. at the top are two brothers that have remained under the radar all that time. they have a ferocious reputation for violence, and nobody in this area wants to talk to me about them because they're too afraid of what might happen. the brothers seemed untouchable. but that changed four years ago.

the prosecutions are all linked to a raid on a stash house where the huyton firm hid drugs. that's the house. that's the house where this all started. 103. hello? police. it's may 2020, and police are responding to a 999 call from the stash house. what injuries have you got, mate? just sit yourself down. two men have been attacked with a machete and an axe. is it still bleeding? right. but they won't tell the police what happened. any idea who was responsible for it? are you in dispute with anyone? have you upset anyone lately, or has anybody got a bit of beef with you? any information's

better than nothing. there's a trail of blood that leads to a manhole cover in the back garden. this is where the cocaine was hidden. nobody talks about the huyton firm. but this time, the police have a secret weapon. detectives can see the messages the crime group are sending each other. 0ne asks about the grip. that's the stolen cocaine. they realise more than 30 kilos are gone. that's £1 million

worth of drugs. the huyton firm were talking freely, because they thought their messages were completely secure. they were using phones running an encryption app called encrochat. it was supposed to be unbreakable. shouting police! but french police cracked the system. 60,000 encrochat phones were being used around the world, almost all for crime. in 2020, the french began sharing all the messages involving british criminals. as a consequence of this operation, our teams have dealt with, collectively, over 200 threats to life.

for ten weeks, the national crime agency could see what thousands of criminals like the huyton firm were saying. what we saw was this huge treasure trove of really detailed information about what these criminals were up to, what their plans were — the serious violence, but also just the huge industrial scale of the drugs trafficking that they were organising using this platform. after a successful challenge in court, panorama got access to 10,000 encrochat messages sent by the huyton firm. they give a unique insight into how organised crime really works.

the criminals hid their identities behind anonymous handles. but the messages show who's in charge. moonlitboat is the violent crime boss vincent "dicky" coggins. this is the first time that vincent coggins has been named and the first time that his picture has been made public. he runs the huyton firm with his brother, francis coggins. francis coggins is called mixedjet. we don't have his photo, but we do have pictures he sent and received. these are kilo blocks of cocaine. the coggins brothers were smuggling huge quantities of drugs.

this is them talking about one half—tonne deal. that's cocaine worth around £16 million. it's clear from the messages that i've seen that this is a very effective criminal business, high, industrial—scale trafficking of drugs with tentacles across the uk and internationally and obviously willing to resort to severe violence. this will place them, for me, in the upper tiers of organised crime in the uk. vincent coggins is now hunting the men who stole his cocaine. he's got hold of cctv footage

from a neighbour's house. it shows three masked men getting out of a van. a fourth is pretending to be a delivery driver. four minutes later, they make their escape with the huyton firm's cocaine. the messages show the video was obtained by a hit man for the huyton firm, thomas cashman. he was convicted last year of a notorious murder after nine—year—old 0livia pratt—korbel was caught in the crossfire of a gangland shooting. vincent coggins wants the video sent to everyone.

that includes a firm of lawyers... ..and a media company, that's asked to enhance the video. the brothers want the robbers identified. you've effectively got an organised crime group using the same sort of tactics and techniques that might be used by law enforcement. but their intentions are obviously very different, because they want to find out who's done it so they can, first of all, get their drugs back or the money or both, and then carry out retribution, serious violence, potentially murder, against the people that have done this. the encrochat messages show the threat of violence is very real. this is coggins ordering his

enforcer to help him scare a local businessman who owes him money. they'll decide together how to torture him. the messages say coggins then attacks the businessman with a knife. he says he's slashed him across the face, he's smashed his eyes and he's taken half of his ear and a half of his tongue off. you know, you can only imagine that scene. it's like something off a tv drama, but this is real. and i suppose this is what these messages are doing. this is a window into this world and just how violent it is. the brutality means victims are scared to talk

to the police. francis coggins has no serious recent convictions. neither does his brother vincent. but he's been charged with violent crimes in the past. one of the alleged crimes is terrifying. in 1990, a man claimed that vincent coggins had shot him and then threatened to cut off his genitals with a chainsaw. even serious criminals are shocked by the level of violence. hey. how you doing? yeah, i'm 0k. an insider who knows vincent coggins well has agreed to talk to me, but only if we protect his identity. and does he have a personal

reputation for violence? he'll give specific instructions. - for example, shoot him in the legs, shoot him l in the shoulders, mess him up. then there's other times where there will be - the order to kill. the insider believes that vincent coggins is capable of ordering the most extreme violence. in one particular case, a seven—year—old girli was doused in petrol in front of the mother to make - the mother tell them where the individuall was that they were looking for. she must have been hysterical watching the child there - with a guy standing next to her, all balaclavas, . with a cigarette lighter, i ready to light the child up. and that activity that they do, how is that viewed? it's completely unprecedented within the organised crime - world. it's diabolical. they are deeply, deeply hated by a lot of different people - because of the level- of depravity that they go

to to instil fear and terror. that fear has protected the coggins brothers for years. but they've also been protected by someone inside the police. in court, the prosecution said these messages appeared to show that the huyton firm had a contact who would check the police national computer for them. the gangsters called him piggy. this is the huyton firm asking for a printout on vincent coggins. and this is coggins reacting to being told there is tonnes of new stuff on his file.

it looks like a corrupt police insider tipped him off. even somebody at a low level in a police station can have access to a huge amount of information. it probably ensured that he was never caught. perhaps he would know if there was extra resources being put into him and he would move or change his routes, his transport routes. very, very handy for him to have somebody like that vincent coggins thinks he's identified some of the cocaine robbers. and he wants revenge.

he messages the gangs enforcer, paul woodford. coggins says they'll use a pineapple. that's a hand grenade. his messages are chilling. woodford, whose handle is kingwasp, agrees to kill their suspect. i've never seen or heard transcripts quite like that before. it is quite shocking. it takes you right into the heart of how people actually talk to each other, and you get a sense of the emotions, the anger, the feelings that were running through those people at that time.

paul woodford also has a terrifying reputation. he has a previous conviction for attempting to scalp a woman in 1995. and he's been an enforcerfor the coggins brothers for years. paul woodford has basically been their henchman - for many decades now. they've known each other since they were children. | you can see that he's very, - very dangerous, a ruthless man. you feel that, from what, i just a few seconds with him. woodford was convicted of firearms offences in the netherlands in 2010. police believed he led a hit team sent to murder a rival gangland boss.

woodford was also the prime suspect in the murder of a young british man in spain. christopher brady's torso was found on a beach in the costa del sol in 2002. he'd been tortured, strangled, and his dismembered body dumped at sea. woodford was never charged and no—one has been prosecuted for the murder. woodford was later charged with a different murder, this time in the uk. police thought he was the guiding hand in the shooting ofjason 0su outside his liverpool home in 2012. three men were convicted but woodford was found not guilty. these are your wee photographs of him? yes. that's him and tina when they were babies.

i do see him like you. that cheeky face! the pointy chin. jason wasn't involved in organised crime. he was a pilot. one day i said to him, "how do you fly a plane? it's amazing." he was like, "it'sjust like driving a car." i'm like, "come on!" he wasn't, like, boastful or anything. i'd be telling the whole world, you know? but he wasn't like that. jason was murdered in a gangland execution. the gunmen were after his brother, mark 0su — he'd fallen out with a major crime family. 0ne went one side of the car and one went the other! they thought mark was in the car with jason, butjason had dropped mark off to get a shower.

0therwise, he'd be dead, too. the 0sus believe vincent "dickie" coggins organised the shooting for the other crime family. a family member was called to a meeting and met dickie coggins and he said, like, who killed jason — he admitted it. what did, what did he say? what had he done? dickie coggins said that he organised the hit onjason for another crime family. i wantjustice before i go, for my baby. he was my last—born. and i deservejustice for him, so does he! he never hurt anybody! vincent coggins denies any involvement in the murder. vincent coggins has now

identified four targets for the stash house robbery. they include local drug dealers brian maxwell, and his son, brian maxwelljr. brian maxwell sr has a desperate plan to protect his family. his handle is retiredvermouth. he's willing to pay £1 million to keep his son alive. vincent coggins tells him it will all be over if he covers the cost of the stolen cocaine. half an hour later, coggins sends a very different message to his brother.

he won't make a move against the maxwells now, but he'll kill them in a few months, when it's all calmed down. what this shows me is it's an organisation, that all it cares about is making profit, protecting their criminal business and ruling, effectively, that local criminal community with an iron rod in the sense of, "if you attack us, "we will kill you." and that mindset comes through in the, in these messages, and that can't be acceptable. we now know that vincent coggins was planning to kill the wrong people. these four gangsters were later convicted of robbing the cocaine stash house. the maxwells had

nothing to do with it. but at the time, maxwell sr was so frightened, he agreed to pay coggins £1.36 million anyway. including £600,000 from selling his family home in widnes. maxwell sr agreed to sell the house and hand over the proceeds to the huyton mob, even though his son had nothing to do with the cocaine heist. that's how afraid he was of vincent coggins. the next day, vincent coggins tells paul woodford about the payments. woodford asks, "when the dust settles, "how many people do you want killed?" coggins replies, "four

dead men walking." they do business with violence. it is a world where a bullet in the head isjust literally another way of doing business, and that's the brutality of it. it's a world where there are no laws other than essentially what you could call the laws of the jungle. injune 2020, police started arresting thousands of encrochat users across the uk. police. police! after being confronted with their own messages, many pleaded guilty.

32 serious criminals linked to the cocaine heist have been convicted. they've been sentenced to a total of more than 350 years. they include vincent coggins, who's been sentenced to 28 years for drug trafficking and blackmail. and paul woodford, who got 2a years and six months. edward robertjarvis, a major player in the huyton firm, was convicted of drug trafficking and blackmail. he'll be sentenced later. most of the leaders of the huyton firm have been locked up, but not all. francis coggins is on the run. he's believed to be overseas.

the encrochat breakthrough has been a major victory for law enforcement. it's led to the conviction of 1,600 criminals in the uk, who've been sentenced to more than 10,000 years. encrochat changed the game, changed the odds, completely changed the landscape. and actually what it's done is it's opened up that world and shone a light on it like never before. the encrochat messages have revealed how organised crime groups like the huyton firm bring terror to our streets. these people are living beside us and we have no idea. they smile. they look normal. they look ordinary, as most monsters do. but all the while, they're

having these conversations and they're conducting this kind of violence as part of their day—to—day business. some of britain's worst criminals have been put behind bars. the fear now is that the next generation will be pushing to take their place.

live from london, this is bbc news. israel continues to issue mass evacuation orders to palestinians as airstrikes on the gaza strip rage on. hundreds of people die in devastating flash floods in the north of afghanistan. israel has continued its airstrikes on several parts of the gaza strip even as it continues issuing controversial evacuation orders to palestinians. the israeli military said its troops had found many tunnels used by terrorists at the rafah crossing into egypt. the israel defense forces have declared