Walsall drug dealer guilty of attempting to buy sub-machine gun and supplying cocaine
A man has been found guilty of trying to acquire a lethal sub-machine gun that could have caused 'devastating loss of life' and dealing drugs.
Waheed Zaman, 42, of Brownhills, in Walsall, was convicted on Wednesday following a trial at Leicester Crown Court, sitting in Loughborough, of one count of attempting to acquire prohibited ammunition and three counts of supplying cocaine.
Another defendant, Aweis Bashir, 27, pleaded guilty at the end of a separate trial last week at the same court to counts of conspiracy to acquire prohibited ammunition, being concerned in the offer to supply class A and B drugs and encouraging or assisting the commission of an offence.
Zaman and Bashir operated on the Encrochat phone network that was being used by criminals, but has since been shut down after European police forces unscrambled it.
Both defendants initially denied that they were the individuals using the encrypted service, but the National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) were able to identify them and their offending activities using a combination of technical data and message content from both their personal devices and the specialist Encrochat phones.
West Midlands CPS specialist prosecutor Hannah Sidaway said: “These two defendants colluded to obtain and supply controlled drugs thereby blighting our communities. The Skorpion sub-machine gun could have been used to cause devastating loss of life.
"Such weapons should never be on our streets, and I hope these convictions send a clear message that such criminal behaviour will not be tolerated. We are committed to working collaboratively with law enforcement to expose and prosecute organised criminals to the full extent of the law.”
Zaman, of Deakin Avenue, in Brownhills, and Bashir, of Parrs Wood Road, West Didsbury, Manchester, will be sentenced at a later date.
