Arrest made in connection with Dublin gang hotel shooting
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Version 0 of 1. A man has been arrested in Northern Ireland over a televised armed assault on a boxing bout weigh-in in Dublin which sparked a gangland feud that has so far claimed ten lives. The 46-year-old was detained on Monday evening in Strabane, Co Tyrone. The Police Service of Northern Ireland carried out the arrest operation using a European Arrest Warrant that may see the suspect extradited to the Irish Republic. He has been detained in connection with murder and firearms charges, the PSNI said. The arrest warrant allows for suspects to be extradited between EU states. The man arrested will appear at Belfast recorder’s court on Tuesday morning. In the attack at the Regency Hotel in north Dublin in February, 33-year-old David Byrne was shot dead and two men were injured. The attack was filmed and photographed as a live TV stream was recording a weigh-in ahead of a boxing bout taking place in the Irish capital that weekend titled “Clash of the Clans”. Video and still photographs captured the armed assault including men dressed like armed Irish police officers carrying AK47 rifles into the hotel. One of the gunmen involved in the shootings was seen dressed as a woman. The killing of David Byrne was carried out by gangsters loyal to convicted arch-criminal Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch. The Regency Hotel ambush was a revenge attack for the killing the previous September of Gary Hutch, a nephew of ‘The Monk’. Gary Hutch was murdered by associates of Costa del Sol-convicted Irish drug smuggler Christy Kinahan. Kinahan’s associates believed Gary Hutch had betrayed a drug shipment in Spain. However, the ensuing gangland war following the Regency shootings has resulted in ‘The Monk’/Hutch crime gang sustaining all of the casualties since the David Byrne murder at the hotel. Ten men are dead including Gerry Hutch’s brother as well as an innocent man, Trevor O’Neill, whom members of the Kinahan gang shot dead in front of his wife and children in Majorca last month. They had mistaken O’Neill for being a member of The Hutch gang. |