Ex-British army man among three arrested over foiled hit
THREE men, among them a former soldier in the British army, were in custody last night being questioned about conspiring to murder a man as part of the on-going Hutch-Kinahan feud.
They were arrested in an underground car park on Saturday morning when elite gardaí seized four weapons and foiled an alleged planned hit on Patsy Hutch, a brother of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch.
A fourth man, a 41-year-old ‘New INLA’ figure from Tallaght, was arrested driving a car close to the scene of the other arrests and he was also being detained for the same offence.
Senior sources said last night that the Tallaght man is suspected of organising the “logistics” of the foiled hit, including sourcing weapons, vehicles and personnel to be used in the murder venture for the Kinahan cartel – at least the fifth time that Patsy Hutch’s life has been saved since the capital’s deadly feud kicked of.
Two of the men who were in Garda custody last night are brothers – they are Gary Thompson (34) and Glen Thompson (23) from Plunkett Drive, Finglas, Dublin.
Glen Thompson was convicted in July 2014 of selling cocaine and ecstasy to undercover gardaí on three occasions between December 2012 and April 2013.
Dropped
While well known to gardaí, Glen Thompson has never been accused of anything nearly as seriously criminal as his older brother Gary.
Gary Thompson had been charged with the 2009 gangland gun murder of criminal Graham McNally, but the charges against him were dropped without explanation at the Central Criminal Court in December.
A former soldier in the British army aged in his late 30s was also arrested in the underground car park of the Belmont apartments in Gardiner Street shortly after 7.30am on Saturday following a massive surveillance operation involving hundreds of gardaí, which had been ongoing for weeks.
The Irish Independent can reveal that the former soldier is Robert Brown, who spent around a decade in the British army and served in tours of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Brown has a current address at Phibsborough Road, but is understood to be originally from Hardwicke Street flats in Dublin’s north inner city.
He has been a long-time close associate of figures in the Kinahan cartel.