Man 'armed criminals for decade'

Police said the seizure made London a safer place

A former gun dealer who hoarded London's largest known illegal arsenal had been arming the criminal underworld for ten years, police have said.

Robert Hills, 46, from Brentwood, Essex, kept a vast stock of guns, ammunition and ex-Ministry of Defence explosives in the loft of his elderly and frail mother's home in east London.

He admitted 40 firearms charges when he appeared at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court.

On Wednesday four other men involved in Hills's deals were convicted and all five men await sentencing.

He was a man dealing in potential death and is the sort of person best locked up for a long time

Detective Chief Superintendent John Coles
Scotland Yard

Judge Henry Blacksell QC warned them: "Lengthy custodial sentences are inevitable in this case."

The haul included sub-machine guns, pistols, armour piercing bullets, high explosive tipped rounds and ground-to-air tracers.

The explosives were discovered to be ex-MoD stock handed over to an unnamed company for disposal - the rest of the weaponry is believed to have been left over from the various Balkans conflict.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Coles, head of Scotland Yard's Serious and Organised Crime Command (SO7), said the arms were destined for the hands of criminals and their discovery had saved lives.

Police surveillance

He said: "Certainly, I have never known anything as big as this in all my 25 years of service."

Mr Coles added: "The implication is that Hills has been in this business ever since losing his licence to trade as a gun dealer in 1991.

"He was a man dealing in potential death and is the sort of person that is best locked up for a long time."

During the two-week trial, the court heard how six days of intensive police surveillance of Hills led police to the other four.

Hills lost his gun dealing licence in 1991

On one occasion, officers secretly watched Hills back his Range Rover into the driveway of his mother's home in Woodford Green, east London, and load a Yugoslavian machine gun into the boot.

Police followed him to a farm, where he and the other three men were seen transferring the weapon into a Ford Granada.

The men were arrested later that day and the huge arsenal was discovered at Hills's mother's home.

Hills's charges included two conspiracy counts as well as offences of possessing weapons and ammunition, doing so without certificates and possessing explosives in March last year.

Bail skipped

James Love, 53, from Chelmsford, Essex, bought a sub-machine gun from Hills.

Love's intermediaries were Steven Franks, 53, of Wapping, east London and Arthur Vale, 57, from Eltham, south-east London.

Leslie Wassell, 53, of Thundersley, Essex, acted in a similar capacity for Hills.

Actor Don Beech, of The Bill, appeared as a defence witness and told the court Wassell had discussed purchasing a tank in order to make a film.

Love was an antiques dealer

Franks, a tobacco retailer who owns shops in Belgium, skipped bail earlier this week and was not present to hear the guilty pleas.

The four were convicted of two conspiring counts concerning two weapons.

Love was cleared of two counts of possessing offensive weapons, a baseball bat and hammer found in his car after his arrest.

The three still in custody will be sentenced next month along with Hills.