A CONVICTED drug dealer freed from prison after receiving a royal pardon was jailed for 13 years at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday, for his part in a bid to sell guns to a Scot.

John Haase was sentenced for selling illegal guns and ammunition, including an Uzi sub-machine gun and Magnum revolver valued at #5000. Co-accused Walter Kirkwood, 46, of Hillfoot, Renton, Dumbarton, and Heath Grimes, 26, of Liverpool, were also sentenced for their parts in the plot.

Haase, a 51-year-old security firm director, from Liverpool, was told by Judge Bryn Holloway that without the intervention of police ''those lethal weapons and ammunition would have found their way into the hands of dangerous people'' in Scotland.

Haase received a seven-year term for gun-running and a six-year term, to run consecutively, after pleading guilty to a second charge which cannot be reported for legal reasons.

Kirkwood was given a three-and-a-half year term after pleading guilty to attempting to transfer the weapons to Scotland, and Grimes was jailed for four years after admitting transferring the guns and ammunition.

Haase was previously freed from prison in July 1996, after serving only 11 months of a lengthy term for heroin smuggling and spending two years on remand.

His sentence had been reduced to five years on the advice of Michael Howard, then home secretary, who exercised the royal prerogative to release Haase and his nephew, Paul Bennett.

His counsel yesterday, Lord Carlile, QC, said Haase had given ''a huge amount of information to the authorities''. Mr Howard, not a man ''given to bouts of light handedness or light-headedness'' had recommended the use of royal prerogative on the basis of information, he added.

David Steer, QC, prosecuting, told the court that customs and excise officers bugged the headquarters of Big Brother, Haase's security firm.

Officers filmed a meeting outside a Liverpool cafe between Grimes and Kirkwood, who had driven from Scotland.

They watched as Grimes passed a black sports bag through the car window and followed the vehicle along the East Lancashire Road to Kirkby, where it stopped at a set of traffic lights.

Armed police surrounded the vehicle and recovered the sports bag containing an Uzi sub-machine gun, Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, and ammunition. Kirkwood was arrested.

Mr Steer told the court that Haase was arrested more than a month later, in October 1999, when he arrived at Liverpool Lime Street station from London. Grimes was detained at his home in Liverpool the following day.

A search of a Big Brother office in Liverpool's Stanley Market uncovered more weaponry, including a double-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a Colt full-loading pistol and ammunition, said the barrister.

Lord Carlile said the gun selling was a ''one-off, opportunistic transaction to a specified customer''.

Brendan Carville, defending Kirkwood, said he had succumbed to temptation during a rare period of unemployment and was asked to participate. He found himself in a situation in which he was a fish out of water.