Courts

Jailed senior Kinahan gang member should not be extradited to UK, High Court hears

Peter ‘Peadar’ Keating is facing life imprisonment in UK for allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice

Peter ‘Peadar’ Keating was jailed for 11 years by the Special Criminal Court in Ireland in September 2021 for directing the attempted assassination of a rival Hutch gang member. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien

Paul Neilan
Wed Mar 20 2024 - 19:06

A jailed senior Kinahan gang member accused of conspiring to amass an arsenal of guns in a botched plot to get a reduced sentence for cartel drug lord Thomas Kavanagh should not be extradited to the UK, the High Court has heard.

Peter ‘Peadar’ Keating, who is wanted in the UK, is facing life imprisonment there for an allegation of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Kavanagh (56), a senior Kinahan cartel international drug trafficker, was jailed in England in March 2022 for 21 years for importing cocaine and cannabis worth more than €35 million into the UK.

Kavanagh, who pleaded guilty to drug trafficking, was described by the UK’s National Crime Agency as the “top man” in the UK for the Kinahan organised crime group.

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Senior Kinahan cartel member Keating was jailed for 11 years by the Special Criminal Court in Ireland in September 2021 for directing the attempted assassination of rival Hutch gang member James ‘Mago’ Gately.

Keating (43), formerly of Rowlagh Green, Clondalkin, Dublin 22, had pleaded guilty to directing the activities of a criminal organisation between December 7th, 2016 and April 6th, 2017, within and outside the State. This involved the “ongoing targeting” of Gately in the context of a feud between the Hutch and Kinahan crime groups.

A warrant was issued for Keating’s extradition by Westminster Magistrates Court in November 2022.

It alleges that a weapons arsenal had been amassed by Keating and others, who allegedly sourced the firearms from the Netherlands. This was part of an alleged plot to hand them over to UK authorities in a bid to demonstrate Kavanagh’s co-operation and help him receive a lesser sentence.

The warrant states that Keating is wanted for nine alleged offences, one of which is a charge of perverting the course of justice that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Keating is accused of eight charges of conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition on dates between January 9th, 2020, and June 3rd, 2020.

The warrant reads that French police hacked an EncroChat messaging system used by suspected crime syndicates in the spring of 2020 and passed on their intelligence to authorities in the UK.

The warrant alleges that Keating was the user of the handle “short-texture”, according to chat logs accessed by French authorities.

The warrant accuses Keating of “organised criminal activity” in allegedly “procuring firearms and ammunition” and of a “leading role in the sourcing of firearms and ammunition”.

The warrant also alleges that Keating and others – including Liam Byrne and Thomas Kavanagh’s son, Jack – conspired to possess the arms and ammunition with the aim of assisting Thomas Kavanagh to reduce his sentence by purporting to assist police.

“Keating was instrumental in carrying out directions for [Thomas] Kavanagh and in arranging with third parties for firearms and ammunition to be procured from the UK and abroad to reduce Kavanagh’s sentence,” the warrant alleges.

At the High Court on Wednesday, senior counsel Ronan Munro, for Keating, submitted to Mr Justice Patrick McGrath that there were two aspects to the conspiracy charge in the warrant – the conspiracy agreement itself and where it took place.

Mr Munro said the warrant had been issued by a magistrate that made specific references to the firearms charges taking place in England and Wales.

Mr Munro said there had been “no location” in the warrant as to the specific whereabouts of Mr Keating during the period between January 2020 and when the arms cache was discovered in May 2021.

Mr Munro said that his client could not have been in England or Wales for 10 months of that period, as he was taken into custody in Ireland on July 1st, 2020.

Counsel said differences between the legal system of Northern Ireland and that operating in England and Wales, who share a single legal system, meant that Northern Ireland had been treated as a “foreign territory” by the issuing state in the warrant.

Mr Munro said if it was the case that Keating was in either the Netherlands, Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland for the duration of the alleged offending, then his client should not be surrendered to England. Any agreement into any alleged conspiracy entered into by his client or the discovery of the weapons in Co Armagh were therefore both outside the jurisdiction of the warrant, said counsel.

Mr Munro said that intercepted text messages did not prove the location of his client, who was an Irish citizen who could not be said to have been an “ordinary resident” of the UK because he was in jail in Ireland.

“He [Mr Keating] wasn’t conspiring to do anything and certainly was not in the UK. That’s just plain wrong,” said counsel.

Mr Munro also said recent reports on English prisons, which were “heavily critical” of conditions, could also amount to inhumane treatment should his client be incarcerated there.

Counsel cited incidents of overcrowding, violence and staff shortages, noting in 2003 a German court refused to surrender a man accused of drug-trafficking to the UK due to prison conditions.

The hearing in front of Mr Justice Patrick McGrath continues on Thursday.

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