Mum blames gang feud for gardai abuse

Irish Herald

By Eimear Cotter

Wednesday November 19 2008

A MUM who abused gardai told a court she is living in constant fear of her life, due to a feud between rival gangs in her area.

Joanna Daly (37) said one of the gangs threatened to kill her and her 18-year-old son, who has been dragged into the feud.

Daly said she has contacted Dublin City Council and is trying to get a new home for herself and her two teenagers.

Daly admitted to threatening and abusive behaviour and refusing to follow a garda's directions at Shangan Road, Ballymun.

She said she feared for her safety and the safety of her children and her behaviour was due to a belief that the gardai were not doing enough to help her.

Garda Robin Faughnan said gardai were called to Shangan Road, Ballymun on July 14 last to deal with a public order incident. The garda said Daly, who had taken drink, was continually abusive to gardai. She was directed a number of times to go inside her house, which she did, but she came back out and continued to abuse gardai.

Knives

Defence lawyer Brendan Foley said there was a feud between gangs in two areas near to where Daly lives, and her son has become involved in the feud.

Mr Foley said that, on the evening in question, a group of men carrying baseball bats, carjacks, knives and wheel braces pulled up outside Daly's house on Shangan Road, Ballymun.

The men threatened her and told her to send out her son so they could kill him. When she refused to do this they said they were going to kill her.

Gda Faughnan agreed with Mr Foley that the people were outside Daly's house, but said they were there for two or three minutes, and Daly's abusive behaviour lasted four or five hours.

The defendant said her windows had been smashed by these gangs and she was living in fear for her life. She also said she was trying to move away from the area.

The court heard that Daly had seven previous convictions for public order matters.

She is a recovering heroin addict, and is on anti-depressants and valium. She is also a mother to two teenagers. A third child and her former partner had both died as a result of an addiction to heroin.

Judge John Lindsay sentenced Daly to one month in prison suspended for six months.

- Eimear Cotter

Geoghegan murder suspects flee to Britain

Sunday Tribune

Mick McCaffrey Security Editor
Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy: top priorityGardaí have identified two prime suspects for the murder of rugby captain Shane Geoghegan last week and believe the pair have fled to Britain.
The Sunday Tribune understands the man who pulled the trigger is in his early 20s and from Dublin's north inner city.
He is related to slain gangland executioner Paddy Doyle, who was shot dead in Spain last February.
The man is not well-known to gardaí and is believed to have got involved in organised crime following Doyle's murder.
He has previous convictions for minor offences and was not on the garda's radar before last Sunday morning's murder.
Sources say he moved to Limerick two months ago and has been living with a member of the McCarthy-Dundon crime gang.
It is believed he carried out the killing as a favour to the Limerick gang. He was spotted by gardaí at Sheriff Street in Dublin within the past 10 days.
Paddy Doyle and his crime associate, 'Fat' Freddie Thompson, had built close ties with the Dundon gang and gardaí say the Limerick and Dublin outfits are effectively intertwined, which is making the investigation more difficult because it spans garda divisions.
The Dublin suspect was driven to the scene of the murder in Dooradoyle by a
19-year-old from the Prospect area of Limerick.
The man is well-known to detectives in the city and is a lieutenant in the Dundon-McCarthy gang.
He assumed more responsibility in the gang after the jailing of key members over the past two years.
The two hitmen drove to the Clonmore area of the Kilteragh housing estate with the intention of murdering a 33-year-old member of the Keane/Collopy gang.
The man has lived in the area for several years and has been the victim of three previous attacks in which bullets were fired at his home.
Because the gunman was not a local and did not know the area, he mistook the innocent 28-year-old Shane Geoghegan for his intended target and shot him five times with a Glock pistol close to the home he shared with his fiancée.
The intended target of the attack has now gone to ground.
After the botched assassination, the two men are believed to have immediately travelled to Liverpool and are thought to be staying in a safe house while senior gang members decide what to do next.
The intention of the assassination had been to weaken the Keane gang before its leader, Christy Keane, is released from Portlaoise prison next February.
The Dundon gang has managed to weaken its rivals significantly and wants to take control of drug dealing in the city.
The Geoghegan murder has had the opposite effect, however, and has resulted in the city being swarmed with uniformed and plain-clothes gardaí.
Garda commissioner Fachtna Murphy is under significant political pressure to solve the murder, and the fact that more than 30 homes in Limerick, Cork and Dublin were raided last week shows the investigation is the force's top priority.
However, senior sources say it will be very difficult to bring those responsible to justice because it is likely the murder weapon will never be found and the killers are believed to have left few forensic clues at the scene.
November 16, 2008

Irish police seize yacht with cocaine worth more than £500m

Two Britons held in drugs haul from Caribbean boat off the coast of County Cork

Jenny Percival and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Friday 7 November 2008 09.47 GMT

Police guard the yacht Dances with Waves as it is towed in to Castletownbere in County Cork, Ireland. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

A luxury yacht packed with cocaine worth more than half a billion pounds was towed ashore under armed guard today after it was seized off the Irish coast.

Gale force winds and seven-metre-high waves had hampered the capture of the yacht, Dances With Waves, but this morning it was anchored in an isolated part of the small fishing port of Castletownbere, in County Cork.

A section of the harbour was sealed off as customs and police officers began stripping down the vessel.

Police would also begin questioning three men – two Britons and one man originally from Dublin - who were arrested and brought ashore last night after armed authorities stormed the 60ft cruiser in international waters 150 miles off south-west Cork.

The trio, aged between 44 and 52, had been at sea for more than a month.

The yacht, which is understood to have been registered to a UK port in the past, is laden with cocaine that could total 1.7 tonnes and could be worth as much as 700m euros (£572m). The haul is one of the largest drugs seizures in Europe this year and is expected to eclipse last year's record find off County Cork.

Today's haul was intercepted when authorities launched an operation codenamed Sea Bright after receiving intelligence from European anti-drugs officials. The yacht had been under surveillance since it left the Caribbean.

The Irish taoiseach, Brian Cowen, and the justice minister, Dermot Ahern, have praised authorities for the success.

Last year a cocaine batch of the same size and valued at 440m euros washed up on the Cork coast near Mizen Head after an elaborate trafficking scam fell apart.

The smuggling ring was foiled when a boat used by the gang broke down in a heavy swell, and overturned, dumping 62 bales of high-grade drugs into the sea.