THE BULLET; EXCLUSIVE A MURDER IN BRITAIN.. DEATH IN IRAQ.. ONE LINK..

Byline: By ROS WYNNE-JONES

IN a pretty British seaside town, an innocent man lies fatally wounded on his own doorstep, shot with a bullet from a .25 calibre pistol. His four-year-old son stands over him, screaming.

Almost 3,000 miles away, in a secret "closed market" in Baghdad's poverty-stricken Sadr City district, ammunition is on sale to militants determined to sabotage any chance of peace in Iraq.

The serial numbers on the bullets link the two continents.

The bullet that killed 30-year-old father-of-two Alistair Wilson and the bullets destined to kill in Iraq come from the same factory in the Czech Republic.

The munitions trail was uncovered by a Daily Mirror-Oxfam investigation into a black hole of 10 billion bullets, ammunition that costs a thousand lives a day.

According to a shocking new Oxfam report, the global bullet trade is out of control, fuelling conflict and human rights abuses internationally - and feeding the gun crimewave in the UK.

While 14 billion bullets are made every year - two for every living person - only 17 per cent are registered. This leaves up to 10 billion available to a black market exploited by international militias and gangsters, UK gun criminals and illegal armies.

Oxfam is calling for Britain to take a lead at this month's UN conference in New York, where guns and ammunition will be under discussion.

Campaigners want Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett to push countries to adopt a new global set of rules on arms and ammunition. Labour promised to push for an Arms Trade Treaty in its 1997 manifesto.

"The bullet used to kill Alistair Wilson was made by the same Czech company that made a bullet freely available on the Baghdad black market," says Oxfam's Anna Macdonald.

"From the war-torn streets of Baghdad to the sleepy suburbs of Britain, innocent people are paying with their lives for lax controls on the global bullet trade."

DESCRIBED as an upstanding member of the community by Scottish police, Alistair Wilson had been bathing his two sons before bedtime in November 2004 at his home in Nairn on the Scottish coast when the gunman called.

Hearing a noise, his wife, Veronica, found her banker husband lying on the floor in a pool of blood. Alistair was taken to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness where he died.

Despite the biggest manhunt in the history of Northern Constabulary - an investigation that has so far cost pounds 1million - detectives are as baffled today as they were when Alistair was first shot.

Veronica Wilson says: "What happened is with us every day. It is still very unreal and will be until someone is captured and we can mourn." The gun - a German prewar semi-automatic pistol - was found by council workmen in a drain near the murder scene.

Police traced the bullet used to Sellier And Bellot, an arms manufacturer based in the Czech Republic - and the source of the bullets on sale on the black market in Baghdad.

Our investigators visited the secret market in Sadr City where every type of munition is available for a price.

"It used to be an open market," one man explains. "Now, it is hidden and dangerous. You need the right contacts. You ask for what you need, go back four days later and the weapon or the bullets are waiting for you."

The Iraq bullet is sold by S&B as "law enforcement or military ammunition" rather than as a "hunting and shooting" sports bullet.

Experts suggest this is the type of bullet supplied to the Iraqi police for their Glock 17 pistols. They could have then leaked on to the black market.

Dr Salam Ismael, of Doctors For Iraq, and a former doctor at Baghdad's Medical City Hospital, says the threat posed by bullets is now worse than ever.

"In Baghdad, a bullet costs about 16p. Since most gun crime victims are killed using between four and 12 bullets, the average cost of a human life in Baghdad is pounds 1.30," he says. In the early days of the conflict, most munitions were believed to come from military stockpiles, but high-quality, new ammunition is now widely available in the Iraq capital.

"As doctors, it is now almost impossible to work in the city," says Dr Ismael. "Gunmen come into our hospitals and put guns to doctors' heads. They say they will shoot the doctor if the patient dies. They demand operations are carried out.

"In the streets, people are dying every day from illegal bullets. Militias, gangsters, doormen, taxi-drivers are all armed."

EVERY year, millions of bullets fall into the hands of human rights abusers. The Control Arms report details how illicit ammunition has flooded into conflict-ridden countries including Somalia, Sierra Leone and Liberia in the past five years.

At least 76 countries manufacture ammunition, and the number is increasing as more countries acquire bullet-making equipment. Globally, 33 million bullets are produced every day.

"New ammunition stocks are either being smuggled into Iraq from neighbouring countries or leaking from the vast supplies imported by coalition forces to equip the new Iraqi security forces," the report says.

Anna Macdonald, Oxfam's Control Arms campaign manager says: "Every year, hundreds of thousands of men, women, boys, and girls are killed because of the uncontrolled proliferation of arms and the ease with which ammunition can be bought.

"If no progress is made at the UN conference this month, irresponsible sales of weapons and ammunition will continue to fuel suffering and poverty around the world."

TO find out more log on to www.controlarms.org

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CAPTION(S):

VICTIM: Just one of the many to die in Baghdad' VICTIM: Dead banker Alistair Wilson with wife Veronica' DEADLY: A detective with the gun that killed Wilson