One-time senior Kinahan cartel member Declan ‘Mr Nobody’ Brady has been further sentenced to a nine-year prison term for facilitating the “depraved” murder of Christopher (aka Noel) Kirwan.
Mr Kirwan was shot dead after he was pictured attending the funeral of a Hutch family member, despite having no connection to either side in the notorious gangland feud.
At the Special Criminal Court on Monday, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said Brady was involved in attaching a tracker device to Mr Kirwan’s car, which assisted the Kinahan crime organisation in carrying out the “callous” murder in December 2016.
Mr Kirwan was murdered by the crime gang outside his home on December 22nd, 2016, while sitting in his car after he had been photographed in newspapers attending the funeral of his neighbour, Eddie Hutch, a brother of Gerard Hutch. Mr Kirwan’s partner Bernadette Roe was in the passenger seat of the car but was not injured in the shooting.
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In previous cases connected with the murder, the non-jury court heard that most of the local community had attended the funeral and if Mr Kirwan had “taken two steps forward”, he would not have appeared in the photograph.
Mr Justice Hunt said Eddie Hutch was a “long-standing” friend of the deceased and that the murder represented the “depravity presented by all members of that [Kinahan] organisation”.
The judge said Mr Kirwan had been killed in a “pre-planned, execution-style murder that was not spontaneous”.
Brady “must have known the nature and extent” of the group, which Mr Justice Hunt said was an aggravating factor in sentencing. The judge noted that Brady had concerns regarding recriminations should he expressly disassociate himself from the Kinahan crime gang.
In April, Brady’s counsel told the court that his client had a “very, very significant change of heart in his attitude to the commission of offences”. He said Brady had considered giving sworn testimony of his intention to cut his ties with criminality but harboured concerns that if he were to do so, he might be the subject of recriminations.
Mr Justice Hunt said Brady was “well above the level of a foot soldier” in the Kinahan organisation and that “at the time, he was a trusted operative” with a “considerable amount of insight of the organisation he chose to serve”.
The killing had tragic consequences for the Kirwan family, whose pain and trauma continues to this day, said Mr Justice Hunt.
Mr Justice Hunt fixed 13 years’ imprisonment as a pre-mitigation headline sentence before discounting three years for Brady’s guilty plea. Mr Justice Hunt noted that Brady had previous convictions for firearms and money-laundering offences relating to the Kinahans.
Mr Justice Hunt said the court would suspend the last year of the 10 years in the interests of rehabilitation but that this was conditional on Brady’s dissociation with the Kinahans.
Brady (56), of Wolstan Abbey, Celbridge, Co Kildare, pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court in July 2019 to supervising a firearms arsenal, including an assault rifle and thousands of rounds of ammunition that had been stashed in a Dublin business park. He was sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison, with the final year suspended, for that offence. While in prison in 2021 Brady pleaded guilty to laundering more than €400,000 in crime cash through multiple bank accounts in 2017. He was sentenced to eight years and three months, with the final year suspended, to run from April 23rd, 2021 when Brady first entered his plea.
Monday’s sentence will run concurrent to these terms and was backdated to April 30th last.
Mr Kirwan (62) was shot six times as he sat in his car on December 22, 2016, at St Ronan’s Drive, Clondalkin, Dublin 22. Two men have previously been sentenced for their roles in connection with the murder.
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