A LOADED sub-machine gun seized by the police after a BMW was stopped on Bradford’s Rooley Lane had been manufactured using a 3D printer, a jury heard today.

A trained firearms officer who inspected the gun had never seen such a weapon before, prosecutor Stephen Wood KC disclosed.

Two Bradford men are on trial denying involvement in a plot to manufacture and transfer sub-machine guns made using 3D printer.

Christopher Gill, 35, of Dick Lane, Laisterdyke, Bradford, and Majeeb Rehman, 46, of Central Avenue, Little Horton, Bradford, are in the dock at Sheffield Crown Court with Sibusiso Moyo, 41, of Elloughton Grove, Hull.

Moyo and Gill plead not guilty to conspiracy with others unknown to manufacture prohibited firearms. All three men deny conspiracy to transfer a prohibited firearm, an FGC-9 hybrid carbine sub-machine gun, to persons unknown on May 17, 2022, and possessing ammunition, eight 9mm Luger cartridges, without a firearms certificate on the same date.

Moyo and Gill also deny two charges of having a prohibited weapon for sale or transfer.

Moyo pleads not guilty to possession of an identity document with improper intention.

The case, tried by The Honourable Mr Justice Hilliard, was today being opened by Mr Wood, leading counsel for the Crown.

He began: “Ladies and gentlemen, as you will come to see the prosecution say that this is a case all about the manufacture and transfer of prohibited weapons. By prohibited weapons, I mean sub-machine guns: weapons which you may conclude have no lawful purpose whatsoever. It is unlawful simply to possess them.

“The Crown say that the defendants Moyo and Gill were involved in the manufacture of these weapons and that on one occasion, the defendant Rehman was caught red-handed transporting such a weapon which was loaded with functioning bulleted cartridges and which he had just been handed by Gill.”

Mr Wood said that shortly after 7pm on May 17 last year, police officers were carrying out surveillance when they saw Rehman leave his home address and get into his blue BMW. Minutes later, the car was seen parked up on Darren Street in Bradford.

Gill then left his home carrying a blue Bag for Life. He got into the rear of the BMW and quickly emerged without the bag. At 7.28pm, the BMW was stopped on Rooley Lane by armed police. The blue bag in the rear offside footwell contained what looked like a magazine for a firearm with at least one round of ammunition in it.

The bag was left in place and Rehman was arrested. The BMW was taken to a police facility at Carr Gate near Wakefield. A search of the bag revealed a firearm that the trained officer had not seen before. It was manufactured from plastic and metal component parts. The barrel was metal and the stock plastic. On one side of the gun were the letters FGC-9 and the words ‘live free or die’. There was a series of letters and numbers JSTARK1809. Embossed on to the plastic was an image of an arm holding a curved sword; the image appeared to depict blood dripping from the sword, the jury heard.

The firearm seemed to the officer to be a small sub-machine gun type weapon. He took out a cartridge from the magazine that looked like it had been fired previously but then remade into a viable cartridge. He removed a total of eight rounds in all. The officer thought the magazine had been manufactured on a 3D printer, Mr Wood said. There was an image of a bird on the surface and a knurled grip around the middle.

Shortly after Rehman was stopped, police officers went to Gill’s home on Dick Lane and arrested him. In the loft at his address they found a blue holdall containing a firearm. Mr Wood said that with the complete carbine was a component part for another firearm. Coiled black material on a photo shown to the jury was the raw material used in 3D printing.

He continued: “You might consider that there’s a resemblance between the item recovered from the bag taken to Rehman’s car by Gill and what was recovered from Gill’s attic.”

The items were forwarded to Andre Horne, a scientist with expertise in the analysis of firearms and ballistics. The weapon recovered from Rehman’s car was a FGC-9, 9mm Luger carbine, Mr Wood stated. “The carbine had an overall barrel length of 11.3 cms and it was 51.9 cms in length overall. Most of the weapon had been produced on a 3D printer and had various metal parts added to it in the manufacturing process.”

Some of those metal parts appeared to be ‘homemade’. The barrel was crudely rifled. The magazine was also 3D printed.

The cartridges were each 9mm Parabellum calibre but of various brands. Mr Horne confirmed that they had been re-loaded. He took one of them apart and found it to be fully functional. Each of them was suitable to use in the recovered firearm. It was successfully test-fired using a 9mm cartridge.

Mr Horne stated that the main part of the weapon found at Dick Lane was a 3D printed partially assembled 9mm Luger FGC-9 carbine. The other section with the trigger visible was the lower receiver to a FGC-9 carbine. It too was the product of 3D printing.

Moyo was a DNA match for swabs taken from seized items, Mr Wood said. He alleged that he was ‘intimately involved in the manufacturing process.’ The trial continues tomorrow morning.