Drug gang broken up
Suspect John Gilligan was acquitted of the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin
LARGE quantities of drugs and a pistol – the same model as the one used to murder Irish journalist Veronica Guerin in Dublin in 1996 – were found by National Police when they arrested a notorious Irish gangster in Alicante province.
The suspect was not identified by Spanish law enforcement but details they gave of his criminal past matched that of John Gilligan, aged 68, who was acquitted of her murder in 2001 but then sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2001 for smuggling hashish into Ireland.
His sentence was reduced on appeal and he was released in 2013 after 17 years in custody since his arrest.
He then survived being shot four times while at his brother’s house the following year.
According to the National Police, they disbanded a gang of drug and weapons traffickers and intercepted four packages in the post which contained four kilos of marijuana and 15,000 tablets of a sedative medication.
A spokesman for the force
said the suspects arrested were a violent gang who had been sending illegal merchandise in the post from Spain to the UK and Ireland.
Officers searched four homes and found another 4kg
of packaged marijuana buds and 11,000 additional tablets.
They also found the abovementioned pistol, a Colt Python, buried in a garden, and said its possible connection with the murder of Mrs
Guerin was
The police operation began last year after officers discovered that a gang led by a wellknown Irish criminal had become established in Torrevieja being investigated.
and Orihuela Costa.
They contacted other police forces and international cooperation enabled the other suspects to be identified.
Intelligence work in Spain, in collaboration with Irish officers, revealed that members of the gang based in Ireland were going to make a weapons deal there.
That operation resulted in police seizing three pistols loaded with 9mm Parabellum ammunition.
Having subsequently seized the packages of drugs in the post, the National Police investigation culminated in the gang being completely disbanded, said the spokesman.
Six suspects were arrested and, in addition to the drugs, officers searching the four homes also seized two vehicles, 10 mobile phones, various accounting and postal documentation, and tools for vacuum packing and handling the drugs.
Brian Meehan was the only person convicted of Veronica Guerin’s murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1999.