A CRIME boss branded 'merchant of death' by a judge after running one of the UK's biggest ever gun smuggling operations has been jailed for 30 years.

Michael Sammon, 49, from Longsight, was described by sentencing Judge Martin Steiger QC as the ‘ruthless and manipulative’ head of a ‘sinister commercial organisation’ who imported 274 blank-firing guns from Germany before converting them to shoot real bullets at an Ancoats workshop between 2004 and 2005.

Sammon – known in underworld circles as ‘Mickey the Fish’  showed no emotion as Judge Martin Steiger QC passed the sentence for conspiring to possess, import, modify and circulate the firearms, with 30 months to run concurrently for passport offences, at Manchester Crown Court.

His 42-year-old mistress Fiona McIntyre was jailed alongside him for a total of 30 months for assisting an offender and passport offences.

Who else has been sent to prison in January? Sentences and photo gallery

She had harboured him at the Hampshire caravan park she managed while he was on the run from justice and had showed a bogus passport to police who came looking for him.

At the time of his arrest at the Southsea Leisure Park in 2008 Sammon had been on the run for eleven years after being convicted in 1997 of a multi-million pound fraud.

It was while on the run for that scam that he joined forces with gangland armourer Robert ‘Bobby the Gun’ Tyrer from Gorton, in the plot to import the blank guns.

Tyrer recruited David McCulloch, a qualified engineer who was down on his luck, to convert the weapons to fire real bullets.

Tyrer purchased the guns for as little as £30 each in Germany and smuggled them into the country through the post after a courier was caught out at Dover.

The guns, which were sold to villains for up to £700, have been linked to a string of shootings, including the death of Kamilah Peniston, the Longsight schoolgirl accidentally killed by her older brother, Kasha Peniston.

Sentencing, Judge Steiger QC told Michael Sammon was a ‘merchant of death’ who had squandered his talents on crime.

He said the consequences of the trade in firearms were ‘sadly evident on the streets of Manchester, day in, day out.”

Detective Sergeant Jim Gray, from GMP's Xcalibre Organised Crime Unit, said: “It has taken a long time and a lot of hard work to catch up with Sammon, but his past has certainly caught up with him now.

Misery

"He was amongst some of the most wanted criminals in Britain and this gun-smuggling racket which brought the misery of guns to many people could not have operated to the extent it did without him funding it.”

Detective Superintendent Geoff Wessell said: “This case shows the continued efforts of the officers within Xcalibre, who will pursue anyone involved in such serious criminality. “These cases can be incredibly complex but we will not stop until everyone involved in the crime is caught and made to face justice. “Taking people like Sammon off the streets of Greater Manchester can only make it a safer place to live.”

Tyrer was jailed for 19 years and McCulloch six years in 2006.

Two other men, Colin Francis Hughes, 43, of Bedford Road, Lytham, Lancashire and Anthony Key, 48, of no fixed address, were both found guilty of assisting an offender. They will be sentenced later today.

Who else has been sent to prison in January? Sentences and photo gallery