THE British Aerospace engineer accused of plotting to make guns with his brother in Holywood, Co Down, claimed yesterday he was too clumsy to make anything.
Mr Desmond Lindop (43), a quality systems manager at the Berkely ordnance factory in England, told his Belfast Crown Court trial: "I wasn't good with my hands."
Mr Lindop denies conspiring with his brother to make homemade sub machineguns, possessing 12 Stengun magazines, 400 bullets and 1,000 primers in April last year.
His brother, Denis Lindop (47), in whose Seaview Terrace home in Holywood the guns factory was discovered, is awaiting sentence after he admitted making guns for loyalist paramilitaries.
Mr Lindop denied that he had ever supplied his brother with materials for making weapons or that he ever suspected him of being involved in illegally making guns. Mr Lindop claimed he believed the opposite, as his brother was a firearms certificate holder and friendly with a neighbourhood policeman.
He further rejected suggestions that he had ever been in, or even knew of, his brother's secret workshop in the garage of his home where the home made submachineguns were manufactured.
But Mr Lindop did admit that he had brought his brother eight Stengun magazines, 400 bullets and 1,000 primers. He said his brother needed the magazines as part of a VE Day commemoration display and for a B Specials' museum he was helping to set up.
Mr Lindop claimed he believed he could bring the magazines into the North because he did not consider them to be firearm components. He claimed he also believed he had not needed a firearms certificate for the 1,000 primers, as one was not needed in Britain. Turning to the 400 rounds of .455 ammunition, Mr Lindop said he thought his own firearms certificate covered him for possession of the bullets and that he bought them for his brother to save him money.