A young carer accused of helping import machine guns says a violent gang threatened to shoot her and her 84-year-old grandmother if she did not repay a £20,000 drugs debt.

Emily Ciantar, 20, is standing trial at the Old Bailey on joint charges with three men and a woman who are all also accused of conspiring to import machine guns and ammunition in parcels from Germany for London criminals.

Wandsworth prisoner Alexander Mullings, 23, known as Smokey, admits co-ordinating the delivery of parcels from his prison cell using a secret mobile phone, but claimed he thought the guns were imitations.

Earlier in the trial the court heard that evidence from Mr Mulling's phone showed he used Youtube to search for footage of the Czech-made weapons which can fire 850 rounds a minute.

They were featured in the Matrix and The Dark Knight movies.

Nov 28: Inmate on trial for 'masterminding Scorpion machine gun-running ring' from his prison cell

Dec 3: 'Boil in oil' threat to dealer organising machine gun importation from Wandsworth Prison

The other defendants, all Londoners who were outside prison, were allegedly involved in collecting and distributing the weapons and ammo.

Mr Mullings has claimed he was co-ordinating the packages, which he believed contained imitation firearms, to help "close friend" Miss Ciantar repay some of the drugs debt while she found somewhere safe to live.

Giving evidence yesterday Miss Ciantar, who cares for her elderly grandmother, said she started storing drugs for dealers at her gran's Holloway home.

She said she was operating a drugs phone line last year after a north London gang began bullying her and threatened to shoot her and her disabled grandmother if she "snitched" on them.

She also claimed she has been gun-butted, threatened with a knife, and told she would have acid thrown in her face in numerous threats from "Man X and his friends" which began in January this year .

That was the same month she was told to start collecting and delivering packages containing guns and ammo.

Three shots were allegedly fired through her grandmother’s front door in February while Miss Ciantar was living in Birmingham on bail in relation to another drug charge.

Police seized three Skorpion machine guns imported from Germany between April and June this year - one during a Mitcham drugs raid, one from the Parcelforce depot in Coventry and another on delivery to an address in Holloway.

Miss Ciantar had moved to Mullings’ mother’s house in Sutton in May, the court heard.

She was arrested in June at her Holloway home, where police recovered five mobile phones and eight SIM cards.

In a later raid of the Sutton house where she had been staying police found more than £8,000 in cash and 31 mobile phones.

On a memory card in one of the phones, a Blackberry, police found photos of a hand holding a Zoraki pistol, or imitation pistol.

A tattoo, seen on the wrist of the hand holding the gun, was identical to one on Ciantar’s wrist, the court heard.

Her grandmother, a wheelchair user from Cyprus who speaks limited English, told the court yesterday how one morning in February she woke up to find three bullet holes in her front door and bullets on the floor.

She also said she had once seen her granddaughter covered in blood but said Ciantar told her not to call the police because someone would kill her.

Asked by prosecuting barrister Benedict Kelleher why she was scared and wanted to move house, Mrs Veli said: "Because Emily is crying, is scared and I’m scared because if Emily doesn’t look after me, who’s going to look after me?"

Mr Kelleher asked Ciantar why she would not let police examine a phone she claimed contained threatening text messages from Mr X.

She said "I was scared".

Mr Kelleher said: "You won't show us because you think if you show us the phone we'll realise and find the evidence that it's all concocted by you and Mr Mullings."

But Ciantar replied: "That's not true." She has denied all charges.

Also accused are Mitcham man Spencer Inglis, 24, Finsbury Park man Joseph Macgillivray, 55 and Islington woman Sarah Anderson, 24.