A GANG leader who crucified a Scots drug dealer in a 13-day torture session was jailed for 25 years yesterday.
Steven Johnson, 49, masterminded the kidnap and maiming of dad-of-two James Ross in Portugal’s Algarve in 2010.
Ross, 27, from Wick, Caithness, survived the ordeal despite having body parts cut off with bolt cutters. He was also nailed to a piece of wood, burned with a lighter and beaten with a baseball bat.
Johnson had lured Ross to the Algarve on the pretence of giving him a job but instead imprisoned him in an isolated villa.
He believed his victim owed him money and had betrayed him by working for a rival gang of drug traffickers.
Ross only escaped Johnson and his henchmen when they crashed their car on the way to murder him and dump his weighted-down body in a pool.
He was found bloodied and staggering through a remote village after fleeing his captors.
Johnson, from Manchester, was given the maximum sentence possible in Portugal.
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He had denied attempted murder, kidnap, grievous bodily harm and drug trafficking at the trial in Loule in the Algarve but was found guilty.
Fellow gang member Callum McLeod, 45, from Stornoway, Lewis, was sentenced to 15 years, while Terence McGurck, 33, and William Quinn, 54, both from Coventry, got eight years, and Ronald Lee Rose, 25, also from Coventry, two-and-a-half years.
Ross needed extensive plastic surgery following his torture ordeal.
When he was discovered, his injuries were so severe locals thought he had been in a car crash.
He had his genitals burned with a lighter and crushed in a vice until he almost passed out from the pain.
He had his left eye burned and had his hands nailed to a wooden board in a sick crucifixion stunt.
He also lost two toes, a finger and one ear when they were hacked off with bolt-cutters and a knife during the attack.