MEN'S DEATHS LINKED TO GANG REVIVAL

Dublin may be witnessing the emergence of a new generation of drugs gangs
who are prepared to carry out such crimes as the murder of the two young
heroin couriers found in the Grand Canal, writes Jim Cusack, Security
Correspondent

One of the rarely discussed side-effects of the State's recent increase in
economic wealth has been a rising interest in recreational drugs. Demand
for cocaine, in particular, has grown in the recent past. Demand for the
commonly available drugs such as cannabis and heroin also remains
consistently high.

Despite the panoply of antidrugs legislation and structures, and the
successes of Garda and Customs officers in seizing drugs and making
arrests, gardai point out that there are still plenty of young men and
women prepared to take risks because of the vast profits involved.

Patrick Murray and Darren Carey, the two young men who were found in the
Grand Canal near Newcastle, Co Dublin, had been involved with Ballyfermot
based drugs dealers. But they are believed to have become involved only
recently in drug trafficking at a serious level.

Mr Murray was arrested with another young man as he arrived from Amsterdam
with a half-kilo of heroin, worth perhaps pounds 30,000 at street prices.

It is suspected that they had been seriously in debt to the gang, which is
not wealthy and could ill afford the loss of the consignment. It appears
the gang decided to kill the two youths over the debt.

There have been six or seven such killings in the State over the past year,
in what appears to be a trend back towards the higher level of
drugs-related violence of the mid-1990s.

Between 1994 and May 1996, when members of one drugs gang murdered
journalist Veronica Guerin, there were more than a dozen drugs-related
assassinations in Dublin.

That spate of killings coincided with the emergence of two or three major
drug-dealing gangs in the city. In that period violence increased in
parallel with the growth in the quantity of drugs flowing into the city.

After Ms Guerin's murder, the Garda moved against the gang which was
responsible for her killing and completely wiped it out. In the wake of
this major investigation, several other drug dealing gangs were trapped in
the Garda net.

The criminal assets legislation also forced all of the city's major drug
dealers to flee the State.

Dublin gardai say that the city is now experiencing the emergence of
several new gangs seeking entry into the drugs market on a large scale.
Some of these gangs were responsible for the spate of armed robberies over
the past year, seeking cash to finance their drug trafficking.

The Ballyfermot gang which is suspected of being involved in the murders of
the two youths at the Grand Canal is led by a man in his 20s who is a
second-generation criminal. His father was well known to gardai in the west
of the city as a robber and associate of another local criminal family
which worked closely with Martin Cahill.

It is believed that this man's son has built up his own local drugs network
and may have recruited the two young men who were murdered at the Grand Canal.

It is also thought possible that both father and son were involved in the
drugs enterprise that fell through when Customs officers seized the heroin
at Dublin Airport on December 3rd last. Both the father and son are said to
be extremely violent.

One senior garda pointed out yesterday that lives can be lost for
relatively small sums of money. Three weeks ago Joseph Vickers, a
small-time drug dealer who appeared to be trying to escape from his
background, was attacked and beaten to death at the caravan where he lived
in Greystones, Co Wicklow. The gang which attacked him was motivated by the
loss of drugs worth only a few thousand pounds at street prices.

In November Martin Nolan, a 34-year-old Waterford man, was abducted and
also beaten to death at Ballygarron Wood near the regional airport. He was
due to appear in court the day after he disappeared, on charges of
possessing ecstasy.

He, too, had fallen foul of a gang of small-time drug dealers over a debt
of only a few thousand pounds worth of cannabis. His body has not been found.

On October 6th a drugs gang led by members of a criminal family from
Walkinstown in west Dublin were involved in a fracas with members of the
splinter republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA),
during which one INLA member, Patrick Campbell from Belfast, died from
injuries inflicted with a machete.

Gardai believe that the INLA is still intent on avenging Campbell's death
and fear there could be further deaths or injuries arising from this incident.

During the investigation of the Campbell murder, gardai discovered that the
INLA had been taking protection money from drug dealers in Dublin. They
discovered a memo from Dublin INLA members to the organisation's leadership
in Belfast detailing payments described as donations from "businessmen".

The list of names proved useful to detectives investigating drugs networks
in the city.

A north Dublin drugs dealer, Pascal Boland, was shot dead at his home in
January last year. A rifle, four shotguns and a pistol belonging to the
gang that shot him were recovered by gardai in November.

Another murder in the city tied directly to a drugs debt was that of Thomas
Reilly, who was shot dead at his workplace at Premier Dairies in
Rathfarnham in March. He too owed a relatively small amount of money to a
Tallaght drug dealer, and may have been killed by a professional assassin
hired by the dealer.

Outside Dublin, gardai report that drugs abuse is continuing at quite high
levels.

Gardai in Galway reported last month that since the assignment of an
additional 10 officers to the local drugs unit, some 60 suppliers in the
city had been arrested. This marks a 400 per cent increase on the previous
year in the amount of drugs seized.

Gardai in Cork and Limerick have also had considerable success against
quite major drugs dealers operating in both cities. Yet local gardai report
that drugs are still available in quite large amounts, although not on the
scale encountered in the mid1990s.

One of the most depressing aspects of the drugs trade, particularly in
Dublin, is the use of heroin by teenagers. A report by the European
Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, published in November,
confirmed a trend noticed by gardai over recent years.

Young people in socially disadvantaged areas of Dublin are twice as likely
to have tried heroin as their counterparts in other European cities. A
sample of 16year-olds across Europe showed that in Ireland some 2 per cent
had taken heroin, compared with an EU average of 1 per cent.

The new young dealers will almost certainly be looking to these teenage
heroin addicts as a primary source of income.