A gun-wielding bank raider, who gave himself up after eight years on the run, has been jailed for nearly seven years.

Mohammed Shafiq used a blank-firing revolver to threaten women staff at a bank and a post office in raids less than three hours apart.

Prosecutor Anthony Kelbrick told Bradford Crown Court Shafiq committed both offences on July 4, 2000.

The first was at the Nat West bank in Manningham Lane, Bradford, at 11.30am. He pulled out a handgun with a three-inch barrel and pointed it at the head of a terrified woman cashier.

She shouted “raid” and dived to the floor and hid under her desk.

Shafiq fled, but at 2pm he struck again at the post office in City Road, Manningham. The sub-postmaster’s wife was on duty behind the secure counter when Shafiq walked in.

He produced a gun from his pocket and placed it on the counter with the barrel facing under the gap and calmly demanded money.

But he ran off when his victim pressed the alarm button.

Shafiq was traced to an address in Birmingham, where police found 45 .9mm blank rounds of ammunition and a receipt showing the rounds and a blank firing revolver had been bought from a shop two days before the offences.

Mr Kelbrick said Shafiq pleaded guilty to the two attempted robberies in April 2001 but failed to attend at court to be sentenced the following August. He gave himself up and was brought back before the courts in June this year.

Andrew Hatton, mitigating, said Shafiq could not cope with his double life and handed himself in.

He said that at the time of the offences he had mental health and financial problems. He came up with a poorly planned and executed offence to commit a robbery away from where he was living, having been brought up in Bradford until the age of 11.

Mr Hatton said Shafiq had used a blank-firing gun and the offences were inept.

Judge Roger Scott jailed Shafiq, 31, of Alum Rock, Birmingham, for six years and eight months and said he would be detained for two thirds of the sentence.

Judge Scott said they were serious offences and it was difficult to see how Shafiq would have been caught without DNA and possibly fingerprint databases.