'It's inevitable' - Kinahans will return in cuffs or body bags
The Kinahan cartel leaders will be brought back to Ireland in handcuffs or body bags, a top-level former garda who pursued the drugs gang for years said this weekend.
Retired Garda Assistant Commissioner Pat Leahy said it is an ‘inevitability’ cartel boss Daniel Kinahan, his father Christy and brother Christy Jr will be extradited to Ireland ‘unless something happens in the criminal world that interferes with that process’.
He told Extra.ie: ‘You don’t know what could happen between the international or transnational groups.
‘It’s a dangerous world to operate in, and we could find some morning we hear somebody has been shot or disappeared and that could interfere with the normal judicial processes. For me, that is the only thing that might interfere with them being brought home.’
Daniel Kinahan. Pic: Collins
This week marked 10 years since the audacious Regency Hotel attack that rocked the country and transformed Ireland’s gangland landscape.
The Kinahan cartel rapidly and dramatically commenced a series of murderous retributions after Daniel Kinahan narrowly escaped the attack, in which his friend and cartel lieutenant David Byrne was murdered.
Pat Leahy – who has a PhD from DCU in community policing – was chief superintendent in Dublin’s north inner city when the Kinahans launched their deadly revenge campaign.
A total of 18 people were murdered during the feud that began in Spain with the shooting dead of Gary Hutch in September 2015.
‘We had 11 murders in 2016. It was relentless killing and we’d never seen it before and I’m not sure we’ll see it again for some time,’ Dr Leahy said. ‘We had five more murders in 2017 which was still hugely unacceptable in a city the size of ours, but then it went downhill after that in terms of numbers.
‘We had lots of successes on the Garda side and a lot of the key players – the second- and third-tier key players [in the gangland feud] – have been taken out of circulation.’
Christy Kinahan Jr
The former senior garda noted that, historically, big audacious attacks would usually result in rival sides lying low for a while.
But just three days after the Regency attack, the Kinahan cartel assassinated the brother of rival gang boss Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch.
Dr Leahy recalled: ‘Nobody would have envisaged, based on previous experience, that the response was going to be so swift and so deadly.
‘A few months into this, our view of it was that somebody had given an order to kill them all, because it was relentless.’
The retired Assistant Commissioner said the force had ‘fabulous detectives’ working on feud investigations, but senior officers were worried about the safety of the community and uniformed gardaí on the streets.
‘They [gardaí] have to go forward into danger no matter what happens, so we were truly worried for them at times,’ he said.
Dr Leahy said a turning point in the feud was when US officials announced sanctions against top Kinahan figures. He credited the late Assistant Commissioner, John O’Driscoll, for setting up the international policing structures that now exist.
‘There was a lot of integration at international level with policing, beyond what we would have been used to for sure.
‘One of the key changes was getting the United States on board and when they imposed sanctions – sanctions we could never have imposed ourselves because we wouldn’t have the clout internationally.
‘Ultimately, that commitment from the US and that relationship we now have… it will result in the key players in the Middle East being brought back.’
The former assistant Commissioner said that, while he is ‘sure’ the Kinahans are making plans to attempt to evade justice, ‘the leverage is there now to drop the net on them’ wherever they are.
He added: ‘It really is a waiting game now for gardaí [awaiting the return of files from the Director of Public Prosecutions].
‘They will be very, very tight with the information and the intelligence and that is necessary.’
Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch campaigning in Dublin. Pic: Brian Lawless/PA Wire
Dr Leahy also said the decision by Gerry Hutch to contest last year’s general election in Dublin Central had taken ‘everybody by surprise’.
He said Hutch ‘probably’ ran for the Dáil for security reasons.
‘The biggest view we had of the Hutch side was Gerry himself going for election. That caught everybody by surprise. He could absolutely go again too.’
He came close to winning a Dublin Central seat in the general election of 2024 and it has been reported that he may run in the by-election for the seat vacated by former finance minister Paschal Donohoe.
‘He probably feels there is a measure of security and protection around being an elected representative,’ Dr Leahy continued. ‘And he may not be wrong in that because to assassinate an elected representative is a big step to take and he may feel he has a chance to achieve that.’
While he is confident the Kinahan cartel leaders will be brought to justice, Dr Leahy worries that, in the long term, the feud will become ‘inter-generational’.
‘This was a single group imploding and it was personal. That is why it was so violent,’ he explained. ‘These people knew each other intimately. They went to school together, lived around the corner from each other.
‘There are a lot of people in prison at the moment whose families have been devastated, and to suggest it is completely over and nothing will happen… I couldn’t make a definitive statement like that, because it was so personal and so brutal.
‘It will be inter-generational; there is no doubt about it. These things don’t go away and there must be some sort of communitywide trauma counselling in relation to this rather than leaving it to individuals to find it for themselves. They are traumatised, there is no doubt about it.’
