Daniel Kinahan is currently being held in Ireland’s highest security as prison insiders and crime expert have warned rival gangs could be plotting on the demise of the alleged crime boss
Alleged crime boss Daniel Kinahan is currently being held in Ireland’s highest security prison and officers inside are monitoring his every second – because rival gang members “want him dead.”
Former boxing promoter Kinahan, 49, has been locked up in Portlaoise Prison, Ireland’s highest security jail. His family’s cartel is alleged to have raked in nearly £1billion over the years from drug trafficking and organised crime. They are also believed to have strong ties with the Glasgow-based Lyons crime family.
The prison the suspected boss is in was built in the 19th Century and has housed some of the most notorious paramilitaries. Kinahan now finds himself inside the walls of Portlaoise alongside some of Ireland’s most notorious prisoners guilty of rape, murder, terrorism and drug-trafficking.
Kinahan is staying in one of the prison’s three Block A, dedicated to inmates unable to mix with other prisoners.
This is due to risks they may pose which can include gang affiliations or from belonging to organised crime groups. Sources have claimed the primary concern surrounding Kinahan’s stay in the prison is the potential he may be “got at” by one of his enemies.
Kinahan has voiced concerns he may be targeted inside the prison. While in Dubai’s Al Awir Central Jail, before his extradition to Ireland, he stated: “If I happen to fall and bang my head when I have handcuffs on me, I didn’t fall.” He added: “If I end up hanging myself, killing myself, poisoning myself, it didn’t happen. I’m not suicidal.”
Speaking to the Daily Mail a source with links to the Kinahans stated: “The [Kinahan] cartel basically control much of the prison system in Ireland so any threat to Daniel when he comes off segregation will be negligible.”
The source added: “I do know the cartel are not worried in the slightest about anything the Hutch camp might be thinking about. They are seen as done now.”
Chris Dalby, a director of World of Crime, a think-tank researching organised crime has pulled back the lid on the potential enemies Kinahan could face inside Portlaoise.
Dalby stated: “Kinahan has a lot of potential enemies – and not just Irish criminal figures.
“He helped to create the biggest alliance of top-level drug traffickers in European history. So Kinahan is a man both within Ireland and internationally who has a lot of information on Irish organised crime, British organised crime, European and South American crime.
“He has connections to everybody really – the Italian mafia, the Albanians, the Dutch Moroccan mafia, the Colombian cartels. He really is a broker of organised crime.”
Dalby added: “A lot of people might be nervous about what he could reveal.”
He stated: “So I would not be surprised if the Irish Government made a risk assessment and thought ‘a lot of people are going to benefit from this person being dead’.”
Standard procedure at the prison dictates Kinahan is placed on suicide watch on arrival and is also checked every 15 minutes during his first two weeks inside.
The alleged crime boss is to spend the majority of his time in his cell and will be able to wear his own clothes – which have been carefully examined by prison staff.
A prison source has stated: “Portlaoise is about as controlled an environment as the Irish authorities can provide, and that is precisely why he is there,” reports the Daily Mail.
The source added: “The danger inside a prison is that you do not necessarily need one of the senior figures from a rival gang to get close to him. You could have another prisoner with a grievance, an allegiance or an association who is prepared to carry out an attack.”
“That means the prison service has to be extremely careful about who is housed near him, who he exercises with, who he associates with and who he can encounter when he is being moved around the jail. He may not necessarily be held in complete isolation every minute of the day, but anybody he is allowed to associate with is likely to have been considered from a security perspective.”