Elite unit nabs Irish gangster in Spanish hotel raid
THIS IS the dramatic moment a senior member of the Kinahan gang was arrested in his Spanish hotel bed earlier this week.
Armed officers held the man after storming his room as he slept beside an unidentified woman at the hotel in the Costa Dorada resort of Salou, 100km south of Barcelona.
Footage released by police showed the elite team – carrying semi-automatic weapons with flashlights on them – running into the room after receiving radio orders to strike as colleagues went in through a back terrace.
They can be heard shouting, ‘Las manos, las manos’ – Spanish for, ‘Hands up, hands up’ – before yelling in English, ‘Don’t move.’
The 34-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is wanted on weapons and drugs charges. He was driven to Madrid after his arrest for an extradition hearing. It was not immediately clear yesterday if the man, who is also a suspect in the 2010 murder of gang boss Eamon ‘The Don’ Dunne, had consented to extradition or opposed his forced return to Ireland at the behind-closed-doors hearing.
The hotel where the arrest took place has not been named.
Yesterday, Spanish police revealed they had come close to catching the ‘major league’ gangster in November last year at Malaga Airport, but he escaped after crossing a motorway as officers closed in on him when he went to meet relatives arriving from Ireland. The European Arrest Warrant was issued after two guns and cocaine were found in his car during a 2013 search.
A Spanish police spokesman, confirming the Costa Dorada hotel arrest, said: ‘Spanish National Police officers have arrested an Irishman born in 1982 on foot of a European Arrest warrant at his hotel in Salou near Tarragona. The warrant was issued by Irish authorities for illegal possession of firearms and drugs offences.’