R v Tunc Ahmet & Anor

A sentence is unduly lenient only where it falls outside the range that a sentencing judge, taking account of all relevant factors, could reasonably consider appropriate. Sentencing remains an evaluative exercise. The appellate court must allow for the trial judge’s assessment of competing considerations, and leniency alone does not justify intervention.

An alleged victim of human trafficking may have the protection in section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. However, section 1(4) permits identification in reports of separate criminal proceedings where the person is not charged with the protected offence. Anonymisation should not be ordered without a sufficient countervailing basis.

The respondents were convicted at Wood Green Crown Court of conspiracies involving commercial supplies of Class A and Class B drugs. Ahmet received a total sentence of seven years and eight months’ imprisonment. Gibbons received six years and six months’ imprisonment.

The Solicitor General referred the sentences as allegedly unduly lenient, contending that they did not properly reflect the respondents’ roles, the drug quantities, and other criminality. After the extempore judgment dismissing the reference, the court considered whether Ahmet’s alleged history of trafficking entitled him to anonymity when the judgment was published.

1. The court granted leave for the sentencing reference but dismissed it. Applying Attorney-General’s Reference No 4 of 1989 (1989) 11 Cr App R(S) 517, the question was whether the sentences fell outside the range reasonably open to the sentencing judge, not whether the Court of Appeal would itself have imposed longer terms.

2. The trial judge’s findings that Ahmet had a very significant role and that Gibbons had a lesser role at its upper end were not open to interference. They were founded on the judge’s knowledge of the trial and were not irrational, internally inconsistent, or inconsistent with an uncontroverted fact. The sentencing judge had taken account of the commercial scale of the operation, the other criminality, totality, and substantial personal mitigation. The sentences were lenient, but not unduly lenient.

3. Ahmet was prima facie within the protection of section 1(1) of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, because he had alleged human trafficking, an offence to which the Act applied. However, following the construction of section 1(4) in R v Beale [2017] EWCA Crim 1012 and R v Musharraf [2022] EWCA Crim 678, that protection did not prevent reporting of these separate drug proceedings against him. The court made no anonymisation order. Open justice and the public interest in reporting criminal proceedings supported publication without anonymisation.

• Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) — On the Solicitor General’s reference under section 36 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, the court granted leave but dismissed the reference: [2024] EWCA Crim 102. It subsequently declined to anonymise Ahmet in publication of the judgment.
• Wood Green Crown Court — The respondents were convicted of drug-supply conspiracies and sentenced. No citation for the sentencing decision was stated in the judgment.