Four men jailed after father-of-two tortured, set alight and killed in horrific gang attack

He died in hospital three months after the brutal attack on June 21 of the same year.

Mr Samel's killing was linked to the seizure of illicit and counterfeit cigarettes which had been smuggled into the UK from Poland.

The victim had a unit in Elkington Street, Aston, Birmingham, the court heard, where HM Revenue and Customs had seized cigarettes on February 22, 2019.

Neil Jones, 48, and Tobiasz Kozlowski, 38, who were among the main organisers behind the abduction and death of Mr Samel, were jailed at Birmingham Crown Court for life with a minimum term of 34 years and 33 years respectively on Friday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

The pair pleaded guilty to conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to false imprison before the trial began. Jones also admitted manslaughter.

Co-defendants Kevin Wooden, 46, of Alma Road, Banbury, Oxfordshire, and 35-year-old Kye Arthur, of Copley Gardens, Bristol, were cleared of murder but found guilty of manslaughter.

Tomasz Samel was kidnapped and set alight after a storage unit he owned was seized by HMRC

WEST MIDLANDS POLICE

They were sentenced to 23 years and 22 years, respectively, and were convicted of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to falsely imprison.

Kozlowski's wife, Sandra Kozlowska, 38, also of Crosland Road, Kirkby, was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, suspended for three years, after she was found guilty of assisting an offender by helping him to avoid detection by police, hiding evidence and moving money through bank accounts on his behalf.

Wooden and Arthur posed as Interpol officers wearing police-style earpieces and picked up Mr Samel from his address in Handsworth at 8.40am on March 27, 2019.

They placed him into a white Peugeot van and drove him to the Merseyside border, where he was tortured and burned, the West Midlands police said in a statement.

Kye Arthur (left) was sentenced to 22 years, while Neil Jones (right) was sentenced to life with a minimum of 34 years

WEST MIDLANDS POLICE

Later that day, at 11.10pm, he banged on the door of a remote property in Lancashire, where he told the homeowner he had been driven from Birmingham and tortured before being dumped by the roadside.

Chief Superintendent Scott Griffiths said his force's investigation spanned Poland, Greece, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Columbia, France and Scotland and Wales, where the gang either had operations or had fled.

He said: "Tomasz would have suffered an unimaginable amount of pain when he was tortured, and his agony continued for the months leading up to his death.

"The violence that was inflicted on him does not bear thinking about, and those that were willing to do that to another human being are clearly very dangerous individuals."

Tobiasz Kozlowski (left) was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 33 years, and Kevin Wooden (right) was setenced to 23 years

WEST MIDLANDS POLICE

Kate Seal, from the Crown Prosecution Service, said: "This was a brutal attack on a man who was kidnapped from his own home and subjected to horrendous violence.

"The CPS worked closely with West Midlands Police throughout this lengthy and complex investigation to pursue lines of enquiry and build a case using forensic, digital and witness evidence."

In his sentencing remarks, Mr Justice Wall told the defendants they had all chosen to involve themselves in a "truly horrific series of events".

He said: "I am sure that the two of you intended that Mr Samel would die."

"If you had intended anything short of death, you would have made some arrangement for his being returned to Birmingham after he was assaulted.

"Rather, you disposed of the van he was brought to Liverpool in and sent the kidnappers away without asking them to wait to take Tomasz Samel home."

The judges said life imprisonment was "richly deserved" for Kozlowski and Jones, adding that Mr Samel was "naked and outnumbered".

Of Wooden and Arthur, the judge said: "The jury's verdicts of guilty of manslaughter make clear that you knew that violence was to be meted out to Mr Samel after you had delivered him."

Addressing Kozlowska, the judge said her efforts to assist her husband were "persistent and varied and they allowed [him] to evade justice for some time".