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Fingerprints discovered on gun bag

14/ 5/2008

THE fingerprints of a man accused of being part of the country's biggest underworld gun supply network were found on a bag containing a pistol, a court heard.

Police found the draw-string bag under the passenger seat of a car they stopped on the M62 between Manchester and Liverpool.

Giving evidence at Manchester Crown Court, a fingerprint expert said markings on the bag had sufficient similar features to `clearly and conclusively establish' Kaleem Akhtar, 29, had touched it. Akhtar, of St Brannock's Road, Chorlton, denies conspiracy to supply weapons with intent to enable others to endanger life.

A jury was told the bag - which also contained a silencer and ammunition {ndash} was found in a car driven by Michael Peake, who police secretly observed meeting Akhtar in Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, in February 2007.

The court was told Peake had come to collect the items for Paul Wilson, from Liverpool, and was heading back there when he was stopped by police.

Akhtar is accused of being part of a team which took delivery of batches of Russian Baikal semi-automatic pistols from Lithuanian men living in Essex, before repackaging them and selling them to criminals across Greater Manchester, the north of England and Scotland.

Described as an `assassin's armoury', the guns were originally manufactured as gas weapons, but had been converted to fire live bullets.

More than 50 weapons allegedly supplied by the gang were seized in police raids across Britain.

Proceeding