It was July 9, 2016, and the crematorium was packed with more than 600 people.

Many had travelled long distances to pay their last respects.

Car and scrap metal dealer Jamie Daniel had been laid to rest after a four-year battle with cancer.

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However, Daniel, 58, was no ordinary businessman and this was no ordinary funeral.

The presence of large numbers of press photographers outside Clydebank Crematorium was a testament to that.

Not only was Daniel a successful businessman.

He was also said to have been one of the most powerful and wealthy criminals the city had ever seen with connections across the UK and all the way to Pakistan.

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Daniel had died five days earlier at his £400,000 home in the city's upmarket Jordanhill after signing himself out of the hospital where he had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Glasgow Times:

Among the mourners, that day was his 26-year-old son Zander Sutherland, who was then serving a 13-and-a-half-year term for heroin dealing.

He was allowed out of Addiewell Prison, West Lothian, under guard on the morning of the funeral.

As Zander helped carry his father's coffin into the crematorium with family members, he was flanked by three G4S security guards who were chained to him throughout the funeral service.

Six months earlier at an appeal hearing in Edinburgh he asked for his sentence to be cut, claiming he was born into a life of crime and had been brought up by a criminal family.

He also claimed he had been under pressure to join the "family business", so wasn't entirely to blame for his actions.

Sutherland said he was only at the director level and not the Chief Executive.

His appeal was rejected and Sutherland told his 13-year term for dealing heroin was "reasonable".

Glasgow Times:

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However, appeal judge Lord Carloway added: "The appellant raised an interesting point about the effect of an offender coming from a criminally oriented family.

"It may be seen as reducing moral culpability but it is outweighed by the need to discourage endemic criminality."

Sutherland had been imprisoned in June of that year after admitting to dealing heroin between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

He had also been allowed to say a last goodbye to his dad, the previous week, after being let out with a police escort from the same jail.

On the day of his father's funeral, Elvis Presley's classic hit In the Ghetto was played over the sound system as the 600 mourners filed into the chapel building.

Two uniformed police officers stood guard as the prison van arrived first, followed by the funeral cortege carrying Daniel's coffin.

There was also a police van positioned outside the crematorium on the main road and one at the back of the crematorium building.

Mourners were led by Daniel's 41-year-old wife Debbi Mortimer, his three brothers, son Francis "Fraggle" Green and daughter Kelly Green.

The 30-minute non-religious service was conducted by civil celebrant Barbara Ogilvie.

She made no reference to Daniel's criminal past but instead described him as a loving family man loyal to his friends who had fathered 10 children and had 10 grandchildren.

He was also described as a scrap metal dealer who enjoyed bungee jumping, hunting, jet skiing, playing pool and supporting Rangers.

Ogilvie said Daniel was a man who was always on the go, with a mobile phone in his ear.

She added: "He was someone who liked to be in control and was usually two steps ahead of everyone else.

"Jamie also liked to win and always wanted people to be on time.

"His family nickname was Taz as in the Tasmanian Devil.

"Even the children called him that.

"You either loved him or hated him.

"But Jamie liked it that way."

Ogilvie also told a story about how Daniel hated to lose at pool even when playing with friends and would often change the rules as he went along to suit himself.

And if anyone complained he would retort: "My table, my rules."

A number of giant floral tributes, which variously said: "Dad", "Uncle" and Granda, were placed next to the coffin before cremation.

At the end of the service when a poem was read out, the packed crematorium broke out in applause.

Following the cremation, the mourners headed to a funeral reception at the Lorne Hotel in the west end of Glasgow.

So who was Jamie Daniel?

He had been born and brought up in Possilpark in the north side of the city.

As a young man, he was said to be into shoplifting, loan-sharking, and stealing car wheels and scrap metal.

One of his big earners in his early days was melting down aluminium beer barrels stolen from outside pubs.

In 1983, at the age of 25, he was jailed for four years in England for heroin smuggling.

Undeterred Daniel was said to have then built an international criminal empire and forged links with gangs in London, Manchester and Liverpool.

His underworld dominance remained secret until January 2003 when a newspaper named him for the first time.

At the time his criminal empire was said to be worth £16 million a year.

Over the years he earned the reputation as someone not to be crossed.

Two doormen who had attacked a family member at a Glasgow nightclub later were then said to have had their cars blown up.

And in 2000, he was linked to the murder of drug dealer Frank McPhie, a career criminal who was shot in the head by a sniper outside his Maryhill home.

McPhie was said to have assaulted a member of Jamie's family weeks earlier.

The murder to this day remains unsolved.

Daniel's main business latterly was said to be cigarette smuggling, earning up to £1m a month from the trade.

In the last few days of his life, he married Debbi at a registry office in Bearsden in front of 50 guests followed by a reception at a Chinese restaurant in the centre of Glasgow.

His death was the second big blow to his family in six years following the murder of family member Kevin "Gerbil" Carroll Carroll, who had two sons with Daniel's daughter Kelly, was shot dead in broad daylight while sitting in an Audi at a branch of Asda in Robroyston.

Nicknamed Gerbil he specialised in kidnap and torture.

Targets had boiling water poured over them or were threatened with guns, blowtorches and power tools.

His crew were known as the Alien Abduction Gang because their victims were often found wandering confused in their underwear, claiming to have no idea what had just happened to them.

Carroll had himself survived two shootings before he was finally killed, By the time of his death he was, according to police intelligence files, among the top 15 criminals in Scotland.

At the trial of one of the men accused of his murder, the names of 99 men who might have wanted him dead were read out.

Daniel spent his last years trying to hide from the limelight, but his temper let him down in 2010 when student Thomas Fullerton took too long pulling out of a junction near his Jordanhill home.

Daniel went berserk, chased after him, tried to reach into his car and grab him and battered the car with a metal pole. He was jailed for a year and served six months.

At Glasgow Sheriff Court Daniel admitted breach of the peace, as well as two charges of assaulting a fellow prisoner while on remand in Barlinnie Jail.

In the jail incident, he throttled Chinese inmate Chang Di Hi after a confrontation in which the other man had sworn at him.

Daniel was later admitted to hospital after suffering a heart attack.

The court was also told the Daniel family was involved in the "scrap metal business".

His QC Gordon Jackson apologised on behalf of his client for the road rage incident.

He said: "When I have spoken to Mr Daniel about this he accepts that he, in his own phrase, 'lost it'. He was having a bad day."

Turning to the Barlinnie incident, Mr Jackson said his client was "extremely unwell".

He added: "It is quite probable that he was in the process of having a heart attack."

Apart from the four-year sentence for heroin dealing in 1983, and the 12 months for a road rage attack, Daniel stayed one step ahead of the law.

In August, a 2019 Channel 5 TV documentary said Daniel was one of the country's most feared criminals.

It also claimed he had used contacts with a Scottish Asian family to ship large quantities of heroin from Pakistan into Scotland.

The documentary was due to be broadcast in 2018.

Ironically it was postponed for legal reasons because of the trial of six men accused of attempting to murder Jamie Daniel's nephew Steven "Bonzo" Daniel.

In the programme, former Detective Inspector David Moran who had investigated the murder of Kevin Carroll spoke frankly about Jamie Daniel.

Mr Moran said: "He had the reputation of being one or two steps ahead of the police and pretty much untouchable."