A senior member of the Kinahan crime gang has been arrested by armed Spanish police who raided his hotel room while he was still in bed.
Armed officers arrested the Irishman on foot of a European Arrest Warrant at the unidentified hotel in the Costa Dorada resort of Salou.
Footage released by police showed the elite team — carrying semi-automatic weapons with flashlights on them — running into the room after getting radio orders as colleagues went in through a back terrace.
They can be heard shouting in Spanish, ‘Las Manos, Las Manos’ — English for ‘Hands up, hands up’ before yelling in English, ‘Don’t Move’.
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The 34-year-old Irishman, wanted on weapons and drugs charges, appeared to be asleep at the time although the television in his hotel room was still on.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is also a suspect in the 2010 murder of Eamon ‘The Don’ Dunne .
He was driven to Madrid after his arrest for an extradition hearing. It was not immediately clear if he had consented to extradition or opposed his forced return to Ireland at the behind-closed-doors hearing.
On Saturday Spanish police said they had come close to catching the man in November last year at Malaga airport. He escaped after crossing a busy motorway as officers closed in on him when he went to meet relatives arriving from Ireland.
A Spanish police spokesman, said: “The warrant was issued by Irish authorities for illegal possession of firearms and drugs offences, relating to a search on the suspect’s vehicle in 2013 in which Garda found two loaded guns and cocaine.
"Investigators were made aware that the fugitive had left Ireland to head to Spain in May 2016 using a a passport issued by the Irish authorities which he had in a false name.
“Efforts to locate him centred on the province of Malaga due to his alleged links to the Kinahan organised Irish crime family.”
The Irishman had checked into the hotel in Salou using a false identity. His detention was the work of Special Operations Group GEO officers based in Catalunya .