Dog-fighting man handed prison term

A "key player" from the Black Country involved in one of Britain's major dog-fighting scenes has been jailed for four months.

Barkat Hussain, of Unett Street in Smethwick, Birmingham, was also banned from owning dogs for life after a district judge said he took "pleasure" in training animals to fight. Hussain, aged 44, had previously been jailed for six months in February 2006 for his involvement in a mass dog fight in the Alum Rock area of the city and banned from keeping any dog for five years.

But he admitted a string of other charges that up to December last year he kept three pit bull terriers in breach of the court order and trained them for fighting.

A raid on the premises in Dudley Road, Winson Green, where Hussain worked as a barber in December last year, found treadmills used for building dogs' muscles as well as medical kits including skin staplers, syringes, creatine powders, and a solution used by vets to put dogs down.

Two of the dogs in Hussain's possession, called Tiger and Ace, were kept in cages while another, Storm, was found tethered to an upstairs balcony with 59 separate wounds.

At yesterday's hearing at Birmingham Magistrates Court, district judge Mark Layton, said: "The pleasure you obtain comes from seeing the dogs inflict injuries on other dogs.

"You have received an immediate custodial sentence of four months' imprisonment. I am sure you expected it."

After the hearing, Chief Inspector Ian Briggs from the RSPCA's Special Operations Unit, which brought the prosecution, said footage had been retrieved from Hussain's mobile phone of a dog fight and said the sentence was "a great result".

Mr Briggs added: "Despite what he said about how much he loves his dogs, he never stopped doing it. He just went out and got more dogs. We do believe he was a key player in the dog-fighting scene in Birmingham.

"It's a great result. The more we can throw at him, the more difficult it makes it for him."