An undergraduate at Wolverhampton University has been jailed to six years and eight months after using the DarkWeb to try and obtain an automatic pistol and ammunition.
Asaan Hussain 23, of Green Avenue, Hall Green, pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to import a pistol and ammunition, possessing a prohibited weapon and ammunition and possessing articles for fraud.
His plan was foiled after customs officers in America discovered the weapon hidden in a speaker earlier this year on July 17.
It was contained within a parcel addressed to a property in Bedworth.
West Midland police were alerted, and it was replaced with a “dummy parcel” minus the gun and ammunition.
Officers kept watch and the parcel was delivered to the address where Asaan’s girlfriend lived.
When Asaan arrived at the property armed officers forced their way in and he was arrested.
“They saw that the cardboard box that had been delivered had been opened and the speaker taken out.
The back had been removed by taking out six screws.
The defendant had opened it obviously expecting it contained a hand gun and ammunition,” said Matthew Brook, prosecuting at Birmingham Crown Court.
Mr Brook said police initially went to an address in Redditch before going to the property in Hall Green, his parent’s home, where Asaan lived in an annex in the back garden.
In a bedroom, they found a bag containing a stun gun with five cartridges and they also discovered a device for cloning credit cards and bank statements with other people’s names on them.
Asaan had left his lap top on and police were able to access it and discovered he had searched on the Dark Web for firearms and conversations he had had with a number of sellers.
In passing sentence Judge Roderick Henderson said: “You did your best to obtain this. It was not thanks to you that it was not delivered.”
Richard Butcher, defending, said Asaan had been living a “Walter Mitty double existence” while living with his parents
“It is hard to understand why a man with so much to look forward to should have gone down this path, seduced by the Dark Web and making these crazy searches which eventually lead to a weapon being obtained.”
