Veronica Guerin murder suspect flees Ireland after two attacks

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/18/veronica-guerin-suspect-john-gilligan-flees-ireland

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A gangland boss accused of ordering the murder of the investigative reporter Veronica Guerin has fled Ireland after two attempts on his life since his release from prison this year.

John Gilligan was seen boarding a ferry to Britain in the early hours of Monday, St Patrick's Day, after travelling to Dublin Port with an armed garda escort. He was in a wheelchair and looked gaunt after surviving two gun attacks over the last three weeks in Dublin.

In the second attack, on 1 March, he was wounded in the upper body and leg, and had to undergo bouts of physiotherapy at the James Connolly hospital.

At the weekend his bodyguard, Stephen "Dougie" Moran, was shot dead in Dublin. Moran had been seen driving Gilligan around the city in a black C-class Mercedes.

Following Guerin's murder in 1996 the government set up the Criminal Assets Bureau, which was given unprecedented powers to seize money, properties and other resources from Irish gangland bosses, whose wealth was amassed mainly through drug dealing.

Gilligan became one of the most high-profile Irish gangland bosses in the 1990s and his activities in the drugs trade were exposed by Guerin in reports for the Sunday Independent. He threatened her and her young son shortly before the journalist was shot dead in west Dublin in 1996.

In 2001 Gilligan was acquitted of ordering Guerin's murder. The judge said he had "grave suspicions" about Gilligan's involvement in Guerin's murder, but the uncorroborated evidence of Gilligan's former criminal associates was not enough to convict him of murder.