KESER: GUN DEALER CAGED AFTER POLICE STING
A gun dealer who sold three weapons to undercover police officers has been jailed for five years.
Evren Keser, 21, sold the deadly weapons for up to £2,000 in car parks around Hackney, east London, taking a cut of £200 for himself.
He was first introduced to an officer calling himself ‘Tom’ by a friend from the gym on October 8, 2010, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.
The three men arranged to meet at a car park in Joseph Court, Amhurst Park, where Keser arrived wearing rubber gloves and carrying a Glock-style self-loading pistol.
On closer inspection, Tom found it was an Italian-made 8mm blank-firing gun that had been converted to fire live ammunition.
Having paid £2,000 for the gun, the policeman kept in touch with Keser and arranged to meet him again in the same place at 10.50am on December 14.
Keser got into Tom’s silver BMW with another man he introduced as Nemo, who was carrying a sawn-off shotgun in a box.
The officer paid £1,500 for the gun and four cartridges and then asked if a friend called ‘Chris’ would be able to buy another weapon.
Keser agreed to meet up with Chris, another undercover policeman, at the Matalan car park in Hackney on March 17, 2010.
He told the policeman to drive to another car park in the nearby Buttermere Walk estate, where a youth on a bicycle delivered a sawn-off shotgun in a plastic binbag.
The single-barrel gun was supplied with three cartridges and a single solid lead slug.
At that point, waiting police officers moved in and arrested Keser, of (20) Carlisle Walk, Hackney, finding the shotgun in the footwell of Chris’ Jaguar.
He made no comment at interview, but went on to plead guilty to selling a prohibited firearm, two counts of selling a firearm and one of selling prohibited ammunition.
Passing sentence, judge Nicholas Huskinson said: ‘It’s not suggested that you made any use of the firearms.
‘As far as you were concerned, you were acting as a middleman providing a firearm to someone who might well wish to use it in anger.’
Ken Aylett, mitigating, said Keser had been put under pressure to sell guns by gangsters in the Hackney community.
Keser wrote in a statement: ‘I’m afraid of the people who are selling firearms. I’ve had some trouble with them in the past as they were making threats to my family.
‘At a previous address in Hackney, we as a family were targeted in an attack by gangs. They slashed my father’s face with a knife.
‘My mother was stabbed with a screwdriver and by disabled brother was also beaten, because he lived there and they wanted to drive us away.’
ends
