Kinahan loses final appeal, set to face trial in Ireland

Daniel Kinahan, one of the leaders of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group, has lost his final appeal in Dubai and is to be sent home to face trial here.

The Gardaí, the Defence Forces and the Departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs are making preparations to extradite him but no timeline has been finalised for his return.

He will remain in custody in Dubai until he is handed over to the Gardaí which is expected in the next six weeks.

Mr Kinahan could have consented to his extradition but instead he fought against it for the past three months, a fight he has now lost.

He was arrested in Dubai on 17 April as part of a bilateral agreement between Ireland and the United Arab Emirates and has been detained there since.

The 48-year-old is wanted in Ireland to face a charge of directing the activities of a criminal gang and is due to be tried before the Special Criminal Court.

He is expected to be escorted back in the same way that Sean McGovern was extradited in May of last year.

McGovern was flown home on an Air Corps Casa 295 which flew out of Baldonnel to pick him up in Dubai.

It stopped to refuel in Marseille in France and in Larnaca in Cyprus on both legs of the journey.

Mr Kinahan is one of the three leaders of the Kinahan Organised Crime Group who moved to the United Arab Emirates from the Costa del Sol in Spain following the murder of his friend and fellow gang member David Byrne.

Mr Byrne was shot dead by the rival Hutch Organised Crime Group at the Regency Hotel in February 2016, but Gardaí said that Mr Kinahan was the primary target and only got away because he took a left turn and the gunmen turned right.

The murder escalated the ongoing Hutch Kinahan feud which has so far cost 18 lives and led Gardaí to focus on the leaders of both organised crime groups.

Over the following years, the Government and Gardaí built relationships with international law enforcement agencies in Europe, the Middle East and the United States.

The US Treasury then sanctioned the leaders of the Kinahan gang, Christopher senior, Christopher junior and Daniel Kinahan, and offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his arrest.

Mr Kinahan was arrested in Dubai earlier this year following an intensive Garda investigation and the submission of a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The DPP directed that he be charged with the organised crime offence and Gardaí secured a warrant for his arrest in the High Court here. It was then transmitted to the authorities in the UAE.

Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan has been in contact with the authorities in the UAE following Mr Kinahan’s arrest to thank them for their co-operation but insisted that the objective of the Government is to have him extradited so that he can face charges here.

He stressed that nobody has been convicted of anything yet.

Minister O’Callaghan has also previously said that the arrest shows that "persons against whom serious charges are laid, can't evade responsibility and can't evade facing trial because we have agreements all over the world with other countries."

Mr Kinahan will be the second senior Kinahan gang member to be extradited from the United Arab Emirates.

His right-hand man, McGovern, was extradited last year and pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court to two charges of directing a criminal gang in relation to the surveillance of rival Hutch gang member James 'Mago’ Gately and the murder of an innocent grandfather Noel Kirwan.

McGovern was jailed for 24 years last month.

Senior Kinahan gang members Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh and Liam Byrne have already been convicted and jailed in the UK, while over 50 Kinahan gang members have been jailed in Ireland over the last number of years for a variety of organised crime offences, including murder.