Family put drug dealer on missing register

By Tom Brady

Monday January 22 2007
A DUBLIN drugs dealer, who is alleged to have been murdered in Spain, has been officially reported missing by his family.

Gardai say the man is now officially on the missing persons list after his disappearance was reported by his family to Finglas station in north Dublin.

Gardai have been liaising with police in Madrid and making inquiries into the drugs underworld here to verify reports he had been shot dead in the south of Spain. Police have been unable to unearth any evidence to confirm the allegations which have been circulating since the start of the year.

Criminal sources have told gardai that the trafficker, who is in his late 40s and a native of Finglas, has been murdered as part of a drugs row.

The man has been living in Spain since September but has returned to Dublin regularly over the past four months.

He was last seen in the Finglas area about a month ago.

There are no details about where the shooting is alleged to have taken place or where the criminal had been living in southern Spain.

The man is regarded as a major supplier of drugs, mainly cocaine and cannabis, to gangs operating on the northside of Dublin.

He is linked to a gang, which has been involved in a bitter feud with the outfit led by crime boss, Martin "Marlo" Hyland, who was murdered by two of his own associates in Finglas last month.

The missing man is particularly close to a Dublin man who was believed to have been the intended target of a murder attempt on the northside last November.

But the plan was foiled after members of the garda's organised crime unit and the emergency response unit stopped a van and a motorcycle at Botanic Road in Glasnevin and arrested two men.

No guns were found and the two suspects were not charged in connection with the murder bid. However, subsequent searches of a number of houses in the Duleek and Clonee areas led to the discovery of a cocaine processing plant.

- Tom Brady