A Birmingham man has gone on trial accused of being involved in one of Europe's largest dog-fighting syndicates.
Mohammed Farooq, 33, of Bordesley Green, is on trial at Lincoln Magistrates' Court along with Claire Parker, 44, of Kexby, Lincolnshire, and a 17-year-old boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons.
The trio were charged following an investigation by BBC's Panorama programme into links between a dog-fighter called Gary Adamson and a Northern Ireland gang with paramilitary connections, who supplied illegal American pit bull dogs and travelled to fights as far away as Finland.
In a video of the BBC programme Inside Out, the undercover reporter who investigated the dog-fighting ring can be seen chatting to 38-year-old Adamson as he brags about his three pit bulls.
The reporter met Adamson after he started drinking with the Farmers Boys, a dog-fighting syndicate based in a small town called Tandragee, in Co Armagh, Northern Ireland.
The reporter, Steve Ibinson, who has since died in Afghanistan, said: "He (Adamson) sees himself as the Don King of pit bulls.
He was very relaxed in the company of the Farmers Boys, who made it clear that he was their guy in the North East of the UK. For the Farmers Boys he was part of one of the biggest dog-fighting syndicates in Europe."
Ibinson went on to describe how a fight filmed in Finland had left some of the dogs involved so badly injured that they would have to be put down.
He added: "The last dog in that incident was killed by putting on to its tail a crocodile clip and another one on to its ear and then connecting it to the main electrical system."
Footage, filmed secretly by Ibinson, showed Adamson playing with three of his pit bulls.
In one clip Adamson, a part-time odd job man, said he was looking for a swimming tank in which he could train his dogs.
He kept them at the side of his house in Yarm, Cleveland, in reinforced pens.
