PICTURED, THE MOMENT SENIOR KINAHAN CARTEL FUGITIVE IS ARRESTED
Criminal’s afternoon in the pub ends in a jail cell
THIS is the moment police captured a senior associate of the Kinahan cartel near his Lanzarote bolthole.
Gary Vickery was filmed being handcuffed moments after his arrest as he was led to a police car and driven away so he could be fingerprinted and have his mugshot taken.
Vickery, 38, who is a partner-incrime of Kinahan cartel boss Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh, has agreed to be extradited to the UK, where he is a wanted man, following his appearance before an extradition hearing via video link on Thursday.
A source at the Audiencia Nacional court in Madrid revealed: ‘He was remanded in prison pending extradition after consenting to being returned to the UK.’
He is believed to have been sent to the prison officially called Arrecife Penitentiary Centre, although it is known more commonly as Tahiche jail due to the village near which it is located on the island of Lanzarote.
The arrest was carried out on Wednesday, by the same Civil Guard, or Guardia Civil, unit that detained Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch in a Costa del Sol restaurant last August.
The same officers were filmed walking up to Vickery as he sat drinking in a pub.
In their first official comment about Wednesday’s detention, the force said in a statement early yesterday morning, identifying Vickery only by his initials, as is normal in Spain: ‘The Civil Guard has held Irish national GFV, aged 38, on an International Arrest Warrant issued by the British authorities.
‘The arrested man has been investigated over the smuggling of large quantities of cocaine as well as money laundering.
‘This person was a member of the criminal gang led by Thomas Kavanagh, the right-hand man of the Kinahan clan in the UK, where he worked on several occasions in their name with regards to organised crime.’
Kavanagh, 53 – the brother-inlaw of Regency Hotel murder victim David Byrne – and Dubliner Daniel Canning, 41, are facing up to 20 years in jail after pleading guilty last June to conspiring to smuggle millions of euros worth of illegal drugs from Europe into the UK.
Canning was arrested in August after flying into London but Vickery failed to leave his Lanzarote bolthole to appear at Ipswich Crown Court in England. The case was adjourned and the arrest warrant was issued.
The Spanish police statement continued: ‘The trial took place in July and he [Vickery] didn’t appear in person, doing so only online. He claimed it had been impossible for him to do a PCR Covid test in time.
‘The judge decided as a result to issue an arrest warrant. This arrest is a result of cooperation between the Civil Guard and the [UK] National Crime Agency, which informed the Civil Guard Central Operative Unit’s Fugitive Task Force about his possible whereabouts and the fact that an International Arrest Warrant was about to be activated’
Another insider said Vickery was with his son and daughter when he was held.
The source further stated: ‘He lived in a nice house in the municipality of La Asomada and was very well-integrated in the local community.’
‘He had his [pleasure boat rental] business in the municipality of Tias.
‘The arrest occurred on the terrace of a bar near to his place of residence.
‘Uniformed officers from the Civil Guard’s Command post on the island of Las Palmas participated along with the fugitive task-force team.’
The force described Thomas Kavanagh as the man ‘considered the most important representative of the Kinahan clan in the UK’.
They added that the arrest of Vickery was a major boost to the fight against crime following Kavanagh’s jailing.
Regarding Vickery’s detention, they said: ‘This important arrest by the Civil Guard Central Operative Unit’s Fugitive Task Force comes on the back of the detention in August of Gerry Hutch, a well-known rival of the Kinahans in the fight for control of organised crime in Ireland.
‘The detainee has been handed over to the Audiencia Nacional court, which has remanded him in custody ahead of his extradition to the United Kingdom.’
‘He was integrated in the community’
Vickery had previously pleaded guilty to having a prime role in conspiring to import class A and B drugs into the UK.
The large-scale shipments were worth more than * 27.2milliion and he admitted laundering the Kinahan cartel’s cash.
NCA deputy director Matt Horne said on Thursday of this week: ‘I’d like to thank the NCA officers here in the UK, and our international liaison team in Spain, who have worked closely with colleagues in the Guardia Civil to locate Vickery.’
The inquiry resulted in a major blow to Kavanagh’s crime network in October 2017, when the NCA seized around *5.5million worth of drugs and more than *250,000 in cash from raids across the English Midlands and Dover.
Kavanagh is also currently serving a three-year sentence for possession of a firearm after a modified pink stun gun was found in his mansion near Birmingham.
The prison holding Vickery was in the news last May when a representative of the Spanish prison guards’ union complained that an inmate had injured three workers, and that a female prison worker had been threatened with death by a Moroccan inmate.