CRIME GANGS OFFERED FREE GRENADE WITH EVERY GUN
Arms traffickers offer chilling incentives to Scots mobsters
Eastern European traffickers are offering gangsters two- for- one deals on guns and grenades, we can reveal.
Experts have warned organised crime gangs operating across the former Eastern Bloc are offering sweeteners to British criminals buying automatic weapons. Police fear firearms used in a series of recent shootings in Scotland may be traced back to the former Communist states of Eastern Europe.
Leading expert Helen Poole said: “I have heard you can buy an AK- variant and they will throw in a couple of hand grenades for free.”
Eastern European arms traffickers are offering gangsters two- for- one deals on guns and grenades, we can reveal.
Experts have warned organised crime gangs operating across the former Eastern Bloc are offering sweeteners to British criminals buying automatic weapons.
Police fear weapons used in a series of shootings linked to gangland feuds in Scotland will have been sourced in countries including Slovakia, Serbia, Albania and Montenegro.
One of Britain’s leading experts in firearms trafficking yesterday said weapons are streaming out of the for mer Communist states of Eastern Europe.
Dr Helen Poole, who leads the Centre for the Reduction of Firearms Crime, Trafficking and Terrorism, a research group which aims to reduce firearms offences, said eastern and south- eastern Europe is “awash” with weapons and many are being sold into Britain’s underworld.
The National Crime Agency believe 164 serious and organised crime gangs are operating from Scotland but linked to other outfits across Britain and mainland Europe trafficking drugs, guns and people.
Dr Poole, who is based at Northampton University and has advised the United Nations on arms smuggling, confirmed she had been told of incentive deals being offered by Eastern European gangs selling guns into Britain.
She said: “I have heard in southeast Europe you can buy an AK-variant and they will throw in a couple of hand grenades for free, like a buy one, get one free.
“South- east Europe, in postconflict zones, have long been a concern for the UK. There are large numbers of military-grade weapons available there, and they’re very cheap to buy.
“When you’ve got a conflict zone, they are awash with guns and then they start going out.”
Last year, police uncovered a cache of military- grade weapons owned by a Scottish organised crime group, including Scorpion sub- machine guns, a Beretta handgun, Glock pistols and a Yugoslavian military grenade.
The haul, described as one of the most sophisticated gangland arsenals ever seized was found in a Glasgow lock-up, hidden in a secret compartment built into a car.
The grenade found in the stash was a Yugoslavian M-75, which was the main grenade used by the Yugoslavian army.
Nine men were sentenced to 87 years between them for crimes after being caught with the weapons, cocaine and cash.
They included Steven McCardle, who was jailed for seven years after being caught with a Glock handgun.
Dr Poole said it is impossible to know how many weapons were circulating in Scotland’s gangland, but experts believe it has never been easier to buy illegal firarms and, they fear, the guns streaming out of Eastern Europe are helping fuel violence on Scotland’s streets.
Paul James, who set up the National Ballistics Intelligence Service, an agency which analyses firearms for police forces, said guns are being transported on boats, planes and even passenger coaches to the UK.
And he warned conflict zones such as Libya, Syria and Ukraine could be the next big source of illegal firearms.
Mr James said: “Guns come in very small shipments. Coaches are a popular way of doing it, as if you search a coach and there are 50 people on it, it’s very hard to find who owns them.”
Police Scotland’s Detective Superintendent Martin Dunn said: “The number of firearms we see in Scotland is still relatively low.
“Through close co- operation with wider law enforcement we have a much better intelligence picture which supports our operations aimed at those who would look to get their hands on firearms. We work hard to reduce any risk to the public.” A leading surgeon has told how a recent spate of gangland shootings has led to injuries he first treated during drugs wars in Miami.
Consultant surgeon Jim McCaul specialises in treating severe head and neck injuries at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital.
He trained in a Florida hospital, where he treated numerous shooting victims, and says, since returning to Glasgow six months ago, he has seen many similar injuries.
Mr McCaul, 49, a maxillofacial surgeon who is qualified as both a doctor and a dentist, said: “I am now operating on patients who are the victims of shootings as I saw previously in Miami.
“Those who reach hospital
I am now operating on patients here with the same gunshot injuries I treated in Miami – Consultant surgeon Jim McCaul
alive have considerable head and neck injuries.”
Speaking of his experiences in both Miami and Glasgow, he said whether a shooting was fatal or not depended on a number of factors.
“The extent of the injury depends on factors such as the weapon used and whether anything got in the way to slow down the bullet before it hit the victim,” said Mr McCaul.
“Anything that gets in the way of a bullet, such as a car window, slows it down.
“Knowing how to repair these injuries takes an understanding of ballistics and how much damage and trauma bullets can cause.
“I have operated on patients who survived more on luck than anything else.
“Some arrive at the hospital, still being able to speak.
“But we have to act fast and intubate them [insert a breathing down their windpipe] before the injured tissue swells enough to close over their airways.”
During his time at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, he assisted with operations involving patients who were shot by accident at home, to those caught up in armed hold-ups.
They included a woman who was shot in the back of the neck after she was held up at a drive-through cash point.
“She put her foot down on the accelerator and the gunman shot at the car, hitting her through the back of the neck, with the bullet shattering the front of her face as it exited,” he said.
“The window had slowed down the bullet and she survived.”
The Glasgow unit is one of the busiest in Europe and attracts surgical trainees from all over the world.
Half the head and neck injuries treated there are caused by violence or accidents. The remainder are people who have had cancer.
He said the team saw “skulls, jaws and cheekbones fractured by trauma from baseball bats, punches and knives.
“The others include those injured in car accidents or DIY jobs which went seriously wrong.
“I had a man who fell while cutting tree branches with a saw.
“It struck his face on the way down, but he survived. He was quite philosophical about it all.
“Others have been injured falling from ladders.”
Mr McCaul said that right-handed people are more likely to be injured on the left side of their faces.
“We are better at protecting our dominant side, and since 90-95% of us are right-handed, most assault blows strike the left side of the face.
“The opposite is true of left-handed patients.”
Mr McCaul said many of the techniques used today in operating on head injuries were pioneered during the First World War.
Surgeon Harold Gillies, a New Zealander, wrote the original rule book on rebuilding faces from his experience of operating on at least 4000 British and New Zealand soldiers who had been mutilated by bullets and shrapnel.
This was when tissue grafting was first used.
Injuries included noses, ears, jaws being sheared off and eyes sometimes gouged out by red-hot shrapnel, covered in mud containing bacteria.
Mr McCaul said: “Much of what we know today goes back to Harold Gillies’ First War surgery.
“There have been many advances since but his work was pioneering.
“The results of his surgery were remarkable for their time.”