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Judge condemns gun-runners

4/ 8/2008

THE man who sentenced Kaleem Akhtar and his gang said gun crimes like theirs were `ruling and ruining' the lives of decent people.

Judge Clement Goldstone mounted a scathing attack on the seven men for giving criminals the means to maim and kill those who stood in their way.

"For several years the city of Manchester has lived with an unwanted reputation as a centre of gun-related crime," he said.

"Now it finds that it has been playing host to the operational headquarters of a gun-running enterprise.

"With the exception of Edgaras Malcevas, each of you falls to be sentenced on the basis that you intended that some at least of the weaponry with which you were involved should be used to endanger life.

"Each of you was, to a greater or lesser extent, involved in the business of ensuring that gang members and other heavy criminals could be armed with lethal weapons and ammunition for the possession and use of which there can have been only one purpose, the killing - or at least maiming - of those who stood in their way."

Judge Goldstone said the gang sold guns to drug dealers, robbers and racketeers, to the detriment of honest people in Greater Manchester, `whose lives are ruled and ruined by those who carry and use guns with impunity'.

"As with all business enterprises, financial profit was your aim," he told the men. "Although I accept in your case, Kaleem Akhtar, that having regard to your means and the wealth of your family, you were attracted as much if not more by the glamour and notoriety of being associated in this way with criminals and gangs.

"But the pursuit of profit or glory from a business in which it was an inevitable consequence and intended that lives would at least be put in danger {ndash} whilst its customers sold drugs, ran protection rackets, committed robberies and sought to put themselves above and beyond the reach of the law - mark the offences for which you face sentence as among the most serious of those which come before the court."