Garda detectives are to travel to Iceland next week to interview dozens of people about the disappearance and potential murder of Jón Jónsson, who disappeared in Dublin five years ago.
Mr Jónsson went missing after visiting from Iceland with his partner to play in a poker tournament.
His family believes he may have been murdered by a paid hitman in a case of mistaken identity. One line of investigation is the hitman intended to target a different Icelandic man visiting Ireland at the time.
Gardaí have recently stepped up their investigation into Mr Jónsson’s disappearance. Several fresh searches have been conducted in Dublin in recent months and there has been extensive co-operation with Icelandic police.
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This weekend, a Garda team will travel to the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik where they have arranged to interview at least 35 people connected to Mr Jónsson or who may have knowledge of the events surrounding his disappearance.
The visit is being facilitated and organised by Icelandic police. It is separate to ongoing co-operation between the two police forces regarding the murder of two French citizens in Reykjavik last week who had been living in Ireland.
Gardaí involved in the Jónsson case believe there are people who may have knowledge of the man’s disappearance who are not comfortable speaking to Icelandic police. They hope they will be more willing to speak to Irish officers.
The visit is expected to coincide with a renewed public appeal for information in Iceland including a press conference.
On Thursday, Icelandic police said the courts have approved the Garda visit and Icelandic officers will be available to assist their Irish counterparts. The interviews will be carried out by gardaí but under close supervision by Icelandic authorities.
Gardaí will not have any powers to arrest or charge people.
In April, investigating gardaí carried out four new searches in Dublin with the help of cadaver dogs.
The searches were carried out at several locations after people provided information to gardaí following the airing of an RTÉ documentary podcast series on Mr Jónsson’s disappearance.
Gardaí also travelled to the headquarters of Europol in The Hague in the Netherlands where they met Icelandic police and formulated a strategy to step up the investigation.
During the meeting, gardaí provided their counterparts with a list of people in Iceland they would like to speak to.
Mr Jónsson, a father of four and taxi driver, vanished on February 9th, 2019, after leaving the Bonnington Hotel on the Swords Road in north Dublin.
He left the hotel on foot at about 11am and was recorded by a security camera 200m away passing the entrance to a nursing home next to the hotel.
Beyond those images gardaí had no information about where he went and no trace of him has ever been uncovered. He had never been to Ireland before, had no friends or family here and had never gone missing before.
