Chemist jailed over garden shed lab

A CHEMIST who unknowingly sold dangerous substances to terrorists from a laboratory in his shed has been jailed for eight months after ignoring police warnings over the case.

Gert Meyers, 55, ran a business importing chemicals from the Czech Republic to rebottle and sell in smaller quantities.

He even carried out experiments, mixing them in Tango bottles, in a case that echoed US TV series Breaking Bad, in which a chemistry teacher makes drugs for cash.

When police raided Meyers’s terraced home in Bridlington, east Yorkshire, in August, 40 houses were evacuated and a 200-yard cordon was set up.

Hull Crown Court heard he was ‘cavalier and reckless’ in the way he stored chemicals that could be used to make explosives, endangering his neighbours’ lives.

He had previously been warned by police about keeping chemicals, having legally sold substances to two people prosecuted for terrorism offences.

He claimed he had sold the substances to the men ‘in good faith’.

Meyers claimed he was a harmless hobby chemist and was only in trouble because of fears about IS.

He was jailed yesterday after pleading guilty to breaching the Poisons Act.

Judge David Tremberg noted he had not committed any offence in supplying chemicals but after the earlier case in which some ‘got into the wrong hands… that should have been a clear warning to you to comply with the law’.