A FUGITIVE arrested as he sat down to eat his Christmas lunch has been jailed for 25 years after importing “assassin kits” into the UK.
Daniel Burdett was 28 years old and was with his family in The Hague (Holland) last Christmas Day. They were there to celebrate the season by having lunch at a 5-star restaurant.
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Instead, his five years on the run was about to end as he was held on a European Arrest Warrant in a joint Dutch-UK police operation, Manchester Crown Court heard.
He and his older brother, Richard Burdett, 35, were involved in importing guns, silencers and ammunition which were described in court as ready-to-use “assassins kits”.
Police intercepted the weapons during two shipments to the UK from Holland.
The first shipment was to Dover in April 2018 while the second arrived at Killingholme docks (North Lincolnshire) five months later.
Six guns were found in the first shipment, which was hidden in a trailer for lorries. It included Glock pistols as well as a Magnum revolver. All six guns had their serial numbers removed. Their barrels were threaded to attach silencers.
The second shipment contained ten Heckler-Koch pistols each with 25 live rounds and was hidden in a low-loader car.
Both shipments were linked to Daniel Burdett’s DNA, and Richard Burdett only to the second.
After an earlier trial, both brothers from Vauxhall (Little England) were convicted.
Judge Suzanne Goddard, QC, sentenced them to prison on Wednesday. She described both brothers as dangerous criminals and added that “both consignments contained lethal weapons.”
“These weapons were intended to endanger life or cause serious injury to somebody.”
Richard Burdett, a Dutch national, was stopped by Amsterdam police officers in July 2019.
Although he presented a legitimate British passport to prove his identity, it contained his photograph and was not authentic.
According to the court, he used it to travel to Ireland and Britain in an attempt to evade the police in the UK.
Richard Burdett was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for his role in the gun importations as well as the passport offense.
Daniel Burdett had gone on the run in 2015 after being accused of conspiracy to supply cocaine and ketamine drugs on a “commercial scale” in Bootle, north Liverpool.
For the gun importation offenses, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison and for the drug offences, which were consecutively served five years.
The sentence was handed down and neither man reacted.
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