Four major criminals arrested while preparing gangland hit

FOUR of the country’s most dangerous criminals linked to the Kinahan cartel were arrested last night preparing to carry out the murder of a drug dealer connected to the Hutch gang.

The four have been arrested for conspiracy to murder, having been caught with a handgun and silencer in a car.

The Mail can reveal that armed officers swooped on the car when it stopped at Philipsburgh Avenue during the arrest operation, at around 8pm in Fairview, north Dublin.

It was a planned, intelligenceled operation.

Not all four were arrested in the car with the weapon. Two of the gang were arrested elsewhere on the southside of the city, it is understood.

Officers from Special Crime Operations, assisted by the Emergency Response Unit and Armed Support Unit, carried out the raids and arrests.

Their target was ‘minutes away’ from the car’s location and gardaí believe his ‘death was imminent’.

Detectives had learned the four men were on their way to murder a well-known violent drug dealer from the Ballybough area.

This dealer, in his late 20s, has served various prison sentences, including one for stabbing a woman.

It is understood he had recently been formally warned by gardaí that his life was under threat.

He is closely aligned to the Hutch gang but is also ‘widely hated’ and has suffered violent attacks during his many stints in prison.

However, the calibre of the four men in custody is ‘about as significant as they come without being an actual Kinahan in cuffs’, said a senior source last night.

One of the four men is considered ‘a psychotic killer’ behind one of the most gruesome and unsolved killings of a woman in recent Irish history. He is the suspected hitman in various gangland murders. He has only been recently released from jail and is ‘as dangerous a criminal that exists in this country’, said a source.

The second man is his younger cousin, and a significant criminal. The third is a cousin of a major Kinahan lieutenant and a senior lieutenant and dealer himself.

The fourth man arrested is also extremely well-known to gardaí for involvement in major gangland crime.

Gardaí confirmed the arrests last night, stating the men’s ages as 23, 35, 37 and 38 years.

A senior source said: ‘Some of these four are household names. All are extremely well known to every garda in Dublin City... These were some of Dublin’s most senior criminals caught red-handed on their way to kill a well-known and well hated Hutch-associated drug dealer.’

Gardaí released a statement last night on the arrests.

Assistant Commissioner John O’Driscoll said this was the latest in over 40 foiled gangland assassinations.

He added that An Garda Síochána will continue to target those criminals who ‘consider themselves to be beyond the law’.

The Hutch-Kinahan feud has so far claimed 12 lives, including two innocent men.

It began when Gary Hutch, a nephew of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch, was killed in September 2015 in Spain in an attack ordered by the Kinahan drug cartel.

‘As significant as they come’