Irish criminal Gary Hutch was shot dead in Spain by an international crime gang who tried to murder him last year because they suspected he was an informer, Garda sources believe.
A previous attempt had been made to shoot him dead in Marbella in August of last year. However, on that occasion well known boxer Jamie Moore was wounded in the legs instead.
The Garda and police in Spain believed at that time Hutch was wrongly blamed by an international crime gang for supplying information to the police that resulted in the seizure of a major drugs haul destined for the UK.
Hutch had fled to Amsterdam in the aftermath of last year’s murder bid and had travelled home to Dublin a number of times in the last 12 months because he feared for his safety in Spain.
However, he had returned to live there and it is believed the gang who tried to kill him last year were behind his murder on Thursday morning.
The 34-year-old from Dublin's north inner city was an armed robber and drug dealer and a nephew of suspected armed robber Gerry Hutch, also known as The Monk.
Gary Hutch's brother Derek Hutch is currently serving 16 years for a variety of offences including the manslaughter of a man stabbed to death, coordinating a botched robbery in which an accomplice was shot dead by the Garda, and a separate charge of possession of a firearm.
Gary Hutch was gunned down beside a swimming pool in a communal area of the Angel de Miraflores apartments complex, near Marbella on the Costa del Sol.
It is understood Hutch had been living at the apartment block where he was shot at about 11am on Thursday and that the gunman open fired on him in a garage or basement area of the complex.
He survived the initial shot and ran into the swimming pool area to get away from the gunman, who was masked and wearing gloves.
However, he was fatally wounded when the gunman ran after him and discharged a number of shots.
The killer escaped on a waiting motorbike and was driven from the scene by an accomplice after what appears to have been a well-planned murder.
Hutch, from Champions Avenue in Dublin city, was a member of a crime syndicate in the south of Spain based around the Marbella area that is led by a number of Irish men but which has links globally.
The gang is regarded as the main drugs wholesaler supplying the Irish market and has been targeted as part of Operation Shovel, an international operation aimed at disrupting its routes and confiscating its assets.
In May 2010, 33 suspected members of the gang were arrested, many of them in Estepona, Marbella, Fuengirola and Mijas in Spain.
Hutch was the sole suspect arrested in Ireland as part of the operation, which involved 700 police officers in five countries.
Among those detained in Spain was Dubliner Christy Kinahan, a 53-year-old father of three. The convicted drug dealer was the key target of the raids and is the head of the gang Hutch was working for at the time of his death.
The crime syndicate’s members have been increasingly drawn into gun violence on the Costa del Sol, with Hutch the third Irish man connected to the gang gunned down in the area.
Hutch was on the scene when close associate and multiple murder suspect Paddy Doyle (27), from Portland Place, Dublin, was shot dead near Marbella in February 2008. His younger brother Barry Doyle (29) is also a hired killer and is currently serving life for the 2008 murder of Shane Geoghegan in Limerick.
Hutch was also associated with Dubliner Gerard Kavanagh (44), an enforcer and debt collector for the Kinahan gang who was shot dead in Spain last September.
In 2006 when a young Dublin man was shot and wounded in the city, he named Hutch as the person who tried to kill him. However, the witness later resiled from his evidence, claiming he had only named Hutch as the gunman to get revenge on him after hearing rumours he was having an affair with his girlfriend.
“I couldn’t tell you, I could have said Mass and I wouldn’t have known,” the shooting victim said in court when asked to confirm that while he was in the Mater hospital, he had told a garda Hutch had shot him.
In 2001, Hutch was jailed for six years for his role in the robbery of jewellery worth £32,000 and £5,000 cash from a businessman in Malahide, north Dublin.
The man was in bed with his wife when they woke up to find four masked men in the room, brandishing a shotgun. They handcuffed the man, brought him downstairs and forced him to open his safe. Hutch never entered the house, but acted as the getaway driver.
He was on bail at the time in relation to other theft charges, for which he was later jailed for four years.
Despite a judge ordering that a four-year and six-year jail term should run consecutively because the jewellery raid was carried out while Hutch was on bail, he was freed from prison in 2006.
Since then had spent much of his time living in Spain, working in the drugs trade. He also spent some time in Ireland and was involved in organised crime in Dublin.
When a bank official was kidnapped at a house in Co Kildare six years ago and threatened that he must go to his place of work at the Bank of Ireland vaults on College Green in Dublin's south inner city and take money for the gang, Hutch was a chief suspect.
The official was told his girlfriend’s family would be harmed if he did not comply. A total of €7.6 million was taken, almost all of which was never recovered.
