Pubdate: Thu, 20 Oct 2005
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Angelique Chrisafis
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)

RISE AND RISE OF DUBLIN'S VICIOUS DRUG LORDS

Dark Side Of Ireland's Economic Boom Is The Growth Of High-Octane Gangsterism

Mark Glennon knew what was coming. He slept in a bullet-proof vest and his 
west Dublin council house was a fortress of bullet-proof glass, CCTV 
cameras and reinforced doors. To maintain his edge, and his trigger finger, 
he fuelled himself with cocaine. But last month Glennon, 32, became the 
latest in a long line of drug dealers with reputations for extreme violence 
to be shot dead in Ireland's gangland wars. He was gunned down in broad 
daylight outside his home in Blanchardstown, Ireland's silicon valley, an 
area of conspicuous wealth.

Nearly 10 years after the crime reporter Veronica Guerin was shot dead for 
pursuing Dublin's drug barons, Ireland's criminal gangs are more dangerous 
and unpredictable than ever, according to residents on their estates. They 
are heavily armed with automatic weapons from eastern Europe. They are high 
on their own cocaine supply and turning over ever-increasing profits from 
drugs and spectacular armed robberies - some making in six months what the 
godfathers of Guerin's time made in two years. Thirteen men have been shot 
dead in gangland-style killings this year, 11 in Dublin alone. Politicians 
say people are so inured to the turf wars that it now merits little 
attention when the bullet-riddled corpse of a drug dealer is discovered.

The government, which had prematurely declared last year that the fight 
against gangs was nearly won, is now cracking down, and police are seizing 
weapons - 500 this year - from sawn-off shotguns to M16 rifles and 
armour-piercing bullets. Amid the clamour for police to be seen to be 
addressing Ireland's armed robberies, two post office raiders, one an armed 
drug dealer and another unarmed man, were gunned down by undercover police 
in an ambush in May.

Crossfire

Amnesty International is demanding an independent inquiry and the men's 
families are planning a case for the European court of human rights 
alleging excessive force. Politicians and commentators are warning of the 
dangers of civilians getting caught in the crossfire.

The new generation of Irish druglords, known as the "mini-godfathers" or 
the "Celtic tiger cubs", are not the character criminals of the desperate 
days of 1980s Ireland, men like "the general", Martin Cahill. Unlike the 
abstemious Cahill, who carried out one of the world's biggest art heists, 
the new breed are described by those who live among them as "cocaine 
androids", whose personalities seem to have been formed by the drug they 
use and peddle.

Their lives are fast and short, their violence is said to be almost 
psychopathic. Some who lost kidneys in shoot-outs continued to wage war on 
their rivals unworried by their colostomy bags, pumping themselves with 
steroids to compensate for ill health.

Ireland has the third highest cocaine use in Europe. Seizures of the drug 
have gone up 800% in the last five years. "People get shot and we don't 
even hear about it. It just becomes commonplace - drug-related and part of 
a feud," said one community worker on Blanchardstown's sprawling estates, 
driving past landmarks of recent feuding. There are flowers at a tree where 
a young man bled to death after he was shot in the legs. At a parade of 
shops, another group of men were lined up and shot for stepping out of 
line. The local hospital is becoming expert at gunshot wounds - admissions 
have gone up fourfold in four years.

If this sounds ominously like Belfast, but in a wealthier setting, it is 
because the new gangsters have begun to ape paramilitary methods of 
intimidating their own communities. Joan Burton, Labour MP for 
Blanchardstown, said: "Dublin is seeing a mixture of guns and paramilitary 
culture."

Some gangsters even claim to be in the IRA - boasts sometimes not without 
credibility as the IRA has long "licensed" criminals in Dublin, taking a 
cut of the action in return for protection. "There is a quasi-social and 
political control associated with thuggery and crime," Ms Burton added. 
"There is harassment and intimidation across the estates."

There is a hard core of 15 to 30 gangs, and some are branching out into 
multimillion euro cash-in-transit robberies. Irish people, once among the 
poorest in Europe, are now second richest in the world, according to the 
United Nations; with so much money sloshing around, it seemed inevitable 
that an high-octane criminal culture would develop. But although the tiger 
brought jobs, Ireland now has one of the widest gaps between rich and poor 
in the developed world.

Torture

Not far from where Mark Glennon was shot is the council house that once 
belonged to John Gilligan, head of the gang responsible for shooting Guerin 
in 1996. He was acquitted of ordering her murder, but is serving a 20-year 
term after being convicted of running the biggest drugs empire Ireland had 
known.

Glennon and his brother Andrew, known as "Madster", were the second wave of 
drug dealers on the local patch. Once part of the notorious "Westies" gang, 
which dominated the area by torturing its rivals, the Glennons broke off 
and challenged their former bosses. They were suspects in the 2003 murder 
of a leading "Westie". But the Glennons did not last long. Andrew was 
killed five months before his brother, in April, when a rival gang 
surrounded his car and riddled him with bullets. But the Glennons had 
associates prepared to avenge them, and locals fear the feud is not over.

Blanchardstown is in no way unique. Drug gang wars have spread across the 
city - and into Europe. Last month a Cork drug smuggler's corpse was found 
in the freezer of an apartment in the Algarve in Portugal. Michael "Danzer" 
Ahern's head was said to have been severed as proof of his death.

Last year the "Westies" leaders, Shane Coates and Stephen Sugg, went 
missing from a villa near Alicante in Spain. They are presumed dead, 
perhaps killed in a row over drug importation.

But on their old turf some residents fear that they staged their own 
disappearance and could return. "Their families haven't seemed to be in 
mourning," said one local man. Others feel that, like Mark Glennon, they 
would be unable to stay away, whatever the risk.
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