GARDAÍ ARE investigating if the back garden of a house in a Dublin suburb was effectively being used as a firing range by criminals who wanted to test guns and improve their weapons handling.
A total of five people have been arrested in connection with the investigation.
One of those arrested is a target of a specialist Garda unit investigating organised crime in the city.
He was a close associate of the murdered gang leader Martin “Marlo” Hyland.
Armed gardaí from the organised crime unit backed by the emergency response unit forced their way into a house in Cabra, north Dublin, at about 11pm on Thursday.
They were acting on information that there were guns in the house.
Three men were in the back garden of the property and tried to quickly dispose of two handguns and a silencer when the gardaí moved in.
One of those men is in his 20s and is suspected of being involved in the crime gang based in Finglas, Dublin, that was led by “Marlo” Hyland.
Hyland was shot dead almost four years ago.
The suspect was one of a large number of people investigated for the murder of Baiba Saulite in 2006.
The Latvian mother of two was gunned down in her home in Swords, Co Dublin,.
The Garda believes that Ms Saulite was murdered in a contract killing on behalf of a man known to her who had wanted her dead as a result of a personal dispute.
The Marlo Hyland gang and a group of Limerick criminals are believed to have helped organise and carry out the murder.
The other two men arrested in the back garden of the house in Cabra are also in their 20s and are associates of the chief suspect.
A couple in their 40s, who are believed to live in the house, were also arrested.
All five people at the Cabra property were detained under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act and can be held for 72 hours without charge.
They are being held at Store Street, Mountjoy and Finglas Garda stations, all in Dublin.
As well as the two guns and silencer, gardaí also found ammunition and a small number of spent cartridges in the back garden of the Cabra house.
The weapons have been sent to Garda Headquarters in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, for ballistics testing in an effort to determine if they had been fired in the garden just before gardaí arrived at the scene.
One line of investigation is that the three men were handling and practice-firing the guns in the garden with the silencer attached.
