Birmingham man Yusuf Jamma was part of a ruthless and violent gang which had a reputation for terrorising residents across London.

Yusuf, of Whitmore Road, Small Heath, and his brother Mustaf, who remains on the run and is wanted by police in connection with the murder of Pc Sharon Beshenivsky, fled war-torn Somalia to come to live in London and quickly joined up with members of the notorious Thug Fam gang.

Yusuf was unanimously convicted of the officer’s murder and Muzzaker Imtiaz Shah earlier admitted the charge at Newcastle Crown Court.

The Thug Fam gang is mainly made up of young men with street names. The gun-toting criminals make money by robbing from drug dealers and holding up shops.

Members are marked with a Thug Fam tattoo on their left biceps and the group has a largely Somalian membership based in London. Some members made a rap CD boasting about killing police. It bragged on one track, called Real Killers: "I’ve got to pop shots, drop cops on the block."

In another, the singer raps about his love of weapons: "I’ve gotta gun. Till death do me part. Body like chrome, she like the way I walk, like the way I talk. She wants me to hug and squeeze her."

In recent years, Somalis have been connected with some of the most high-profile murders in Britain and been on the receiving end of criticism from senior figures in other ethnic minority communities.

Somali youths have also been blamed for a spate of street robberies in Southall, west London, and in south London there have been tensions between Britons of Afro-Caribbean origin and Somalis.

There are at least 100,000 Somalis in Britain, with up to 6,000 a year coming in as asylum seekers when the anarchy in their homeland grew worse in the late 1990s and early part of this century.

They did not as a rule move in among the settled Somali communities in cities such as Cardiff, Bristol, Liverpool, Hull and South Shields.

Somalia is considered to be one of the least stable countries in the world. There has been no government since the overthrow of the military dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.

The capital Mogadishu normally tops lists of the worst places to live on the planet. Even the limited government bodies that do exist consider it too dangerous to be based in "Mog".

Mustaf Jamma is still being hunted by police in connection with the murder. He was released from jail just six months before Pc Sharon Beshenivsky was gunned down in the street.

He was not sent back to his homeland when he was freed because Home Office officials ruled it would be unfair to deport him amid fears he would be in danger.

Six months later the 26-year-old, who had served half of a three-year sentence for robbery and burglary, is believed to have been involved in the murder of Pc Beshenivsky on her daughter’s fourth birthday.

Detectives pledged their investigation will continue until all outstanding suspects were arrested and placed before the courts.

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