Merchants of death

The notorious gunrunners who supplied gangsters with their weapons

- NEAL KEELING

THEY supplied items of clout, kudos and lethal force to criminals. They were 'merchants of death' as one was branded, feeding gangs with firepower.

Mac-10s and Uzi sub-machine guns from war zones and Soviet bloc countries helped fuel Greater Manchester's gang wars in the 80s and 90s, before a new wave of armourers began converting gas-firing pistols from Eastern Europe after the millennium, triggering another deadly cycle.

Police cracked down on those supply lines, but now the hacking of EncroChat the private messaging system dubbed Gangster Whatsapp - has exposed the new breed of armourers who stepped into the void.

Here the M.E.N looks at the gun dealers whose offending lay behind an appalling wave of gang crime in the 00s - and the recent offenders who have followed in their footsteps.

KALEEM AKHTAR

Kaleem Akhtar's family was so well respected 4,000 people attended his wedding. But he harboured the most sinister of secrets.

Away from his job in his family's successful clothing business and his £350,000 Chorlton home, Akhtar was a lynchpin in one of the country's biggest gun-running networks.

The outfit Akhtar belonged to sold 'assassins kits' of self-loading Baikals and bullets, favoured by members of Manchester's Gooch gang. Akhtar, who called himself 'Big K, enjoyed the company of two girlfriends, big nights out in clubs, flashy cars and designer gear.

He had the key role in the operation, arranging for the kits, which would sell for £1,700 a time, to be brought from a Lithuanian connection in Essex before being distributed in the North and in Scotland. The gang's undoing came courtesy of a 2007 police surveillance operation which observed a series of secret handovers.