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High life and £3m parties of a drug baron
By Adam Fresco

DRAPED in gold jewellery, a Jamaican drug baron known as ?Father Fowl? ran a string of beautiful young women smugglers who carried £500,000 worth of cocaine a week into Britain.
Owen Clarke delighted in flaunting his wealth by burning £50 notes and leaving the price tags showing on his handstitched suits.

As he was found guilty yesterday of running one of the most prolific smuggling rings this country has seen, detectives admitted that they could only guess at how much money he made.

Police have found some of the luxury cars he had imported into London and a cache of jewellery which included a diamond and gold crucifix worth more than £20,000, but they are trying to uncover the properties he owns around the world.

Revered by his followers, who would bow when he walked into a room, he was head of the ?Link-Up crew? in Jamaica that had its influence in the island?s notoriously violent politics, its music industry and drugs.

A muscular figure, Clarke showed no emotion at Snaresbrook Crown Court as he was told he faced years behind bars when he is sentenced on Tuesday.

He grinned when detectives described to jurors how Clarke ran his drugs empire like a well-ordered international business which stretched from the Americas through the Caribbean to every major city in Britain. Using false passports he would fly first class to South America to seal new drug deals and organise his trade routes.

The key was recruiting a network of 20 attractive Jamaican women to work as ?mules?. He would reward them with nights in five-star London hotels and shopping trips, but he would pay them in drugs not cash to keep them hooked. From safe houses his lieutenants moved shipments of crack cocaine across Britain on buses and trains while Clarke lived in a modest bungalow in the North London suburb of Sudbury.

He lived here for 14 years, had an English wife and children but had a string of mistresses, many of whom showed up during his trial wearing the extravagant jewellery he bought them.

In the biggest undercover operation run by Scotland Yard?s Operation Trident team, which investigates black on black gun crime, detectives pieced together the extraordinary lifestyle of Father Fowl. In Jamaica he would drive around in a Jaguar with the personal number plate 007 and was one of the island?s most successful music promoters.

His Link-Up gang took its name from the parties he would stage in Jamaica where fellow drug barons would brush shoulders with musicians as Clarke ostentatiously showed off his wealth.

Police believe that he made more than £3 million every night he hosted these parties at the 7,000 capacity La Russe nightclub.

?Although it is impossible to say how much he made over the years it must be in the hundreds of millions,? said one officer who watched Clarke work in London and in Jamaica.

Clarke was one of the last of his gang to be tried. He was found guilty yesterday of producing, possessing and supplying a class A drug. Across the world 30 members of his gang have been arrested and in this country alone 13 of them have been jailed.

These arrests forced Clarke to play a more active part in his organisation. He was under close surveillance in June last year when officers burst into a house and found him with crack cocaine.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...142467,00.html