Two men jailed for possessing a lethal firearms arsenal

2:40pm Tuesday 2nd December 2008

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TWO Bury men caught with a lethal firearms arsenal have been jailed for a total of 17 and a half years.

Christopher Payne and Fation Peqici were found with Russian made self-loading pistols and a judge told them that “chillingly” each one had a silencer and 192 cartridges to fit them.

“Each pistol was potentially lethal,” said Judge Nigel Gilmour, QC, at Friday’s hearing at Liverpool Crown Court. While it was not suggested they would have used them “others would have been enabled to put people’s lives in danger”, he added.

Payne, aged 41, had denied possessing pistols and ammunition with intent to endanger life but was convicted after a trial. He was jailed for eight and a half years Peqici, aged 27, pleaded guilty to those offences and also admitted possessing a CS gas cannister and cocaine. He was jailed for a total of nine years. Peqici lived at a house in Wash Lane where Payne was a lodger.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that they were arrested after police officers, who had been secretly watching them, swooped when they arrived in Hindley, Wigan, on June 7 this year.

Peqici had been seen leaving his home in Wash Lane and driving to a house in Larch Gardens, Cheetham Hill, where he regularly stayed. He took a sports bag from the boot and entered the flat. He left half an hour later with the bag. He met Payne in a car park near Heaton Park and they drove to Wigan, said Guy Mathieson, prosecuting.

When the officers stopped the car they found the sports bag contained five automatic handguns, five silencers and four packets of live ammunition. When Peqici’s home in Wash Lane was searched, one item of body armour was found and at the Larch Gardens house another cache of firearms, silencers and ammunition was found hidden behind a bath panel.

Mr Mathieson added: “The defendants were concerned in the packaging and supply of firearms, silencers and ammunition to order.”

Phillip Boyd, defending, said that Peqici, an Albanian, had no previous convictions. He worked for a Land Rover garage in Bury.

He did not organise obtaining the firearms but he was just told where to take them and was doing so when he was arrested. He was a hard worker and regrets his involvement in these offences, said Mr Boyd.

He had been deported in 2004 for over-staying his visa but had formed a relationship with a British woman and after marrying her the next year in Albania he returned here and is a British citizen.

Defence barrister Michael Goldwater said that Payne, who also had previous convictions, was divorced who lived as a lodger with Peqici and his wife after his home burnt down.

He was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder against that background got involved in these offences.

After the case, Detective Sergeant Nick Edge, from the Greater Manchester Police’s Xcalibre Organised Crime Unit, said: “This was a significant recovery and both men appear to be big players in the supply and sale of firearms across Greater Manchester and beyond.