A suspected major Irish criminal has been arrested on the Costa del Sol over the murder of a Dublin gangster in southern Spain last year, which has sparked a gangland feud that has claimed 11 lives.
Up to 60 officers from the Garda Síochaná and Ireland’s Criminal Assets Bureau joined the Spanish Guardia Civil in carrying out raids in Marbella. Parallel searches also took place in Dublin.
The joint Irish-Spanish security operation included raids on a boxing gym in Puerto Banús as well as properties in Marbella. One man has been arrested and fake identity documents have been seized.
The operation was directed at a criminal cartel controlled by convicted drug smuggler Christy Kinahan, whose gang in Ireland are involved in a murderous feud with rival north Dublin criminal Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch.
The arrested man is 34 and from the south inner city of Dublin. Gardai have confirmed that he was detained in connection with the murder last September of Gary Hutch, who members of the Kinahan cartel believed betrayed a drugs shipment from South America that was intercepted in Spain.
The murdered man’s uncle, Gerry Hutch, swore revenge against the Kinahans and exacted it in February when a number of armed men stormed a Dublin hotel shooting dead David Byrne, a member of the rival crime gang loyal to Christy Kinahan.
Eleven men have subsequently been murdered in the gangland feud including at least two innocent victims shot dead by mistake. All the fatalities, barring David Byrne and the two innocent men, have had connections to Hutch or were related to him.
