By John Spain

In the last week there have been six gun murders here, five of them linked to feuds between the drug gangs. A week that should have been all about jingle bells has been more about funeral bells.

The cold blooded execution style killings last week show again that Dublin these days is reminiscent of Chicago when Capone was around.

Back then in Chicago it was booze. In Dublin these days it is drugs. The common factors are the vast amounts of money to be made and the murderous savagery of the rival gangs fighting for turf and control.

The jumped up hoodlums involved don’t have enough education to handle the suitcases of money they make. They are coked up to the eyeballs and paranoid as a result.

They see treachery everywhere and take their rivals out (including their own associates) on a hunch. Their answer to everything is a bullet in the back of the head.

So Christmas is coming in Ireland and the morgues are getting full. We are used to this, of course, because there were 21 gun murders here last year and so far this year the count is 25. And nearly all of them are drugs related.

In general the attitude of the public here is that as long as the drug gangs are killing each other, it’s okay.

But the intensity of the killings last week — and the way an innocent bystander was murdered during one execution so that he could not be a witness — shocked people here into looking for some response from the government. So a crisis summit between Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Ahern, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell and the Garda (police) commissioner was set up for Monday morning … and right on cue there was another gun murder on Sunday night, this time in Limerick.

The murder that really shocked everyone happened last Tuesday morning when a young trainee plumber was shot in cold blood in a house on the north west side of Dublin because he might have been a witness to the killing of the country’s number one drug lord.

The 20-year-old plumber, by chance, was working in the house when the gunman executed the gang boss Martin ”Marlo” Hyland while he slept. To make sure the terrified youngster downstairs could not talk, the gunman then shot him in cold blood.

Hyland had been the subject of a major Garda operation in recent months which had seen 40 of his associates arrested, 24 of them brought to court and about $20 million worth of Hyland’s drugs seized in raids. Close associates of Hyland figured their leader was weakened, and they are thought to have been behind his murder as they feared he was about to become an informer.

Hyland knew his life was in danger and rarely slept in the same house for more than a few days at a time. He was staying with a relative in north west Dublin when he was hit in a killing that was clearly a contract execution.

But it was the murder of the young plumber Anthony Campbell from the city center that provoked public outrage. The apprentice plumber had arrived at the house just minutes earlier to do repairs and was working downstairs when he was shot. The hitman then dashed upstairs and shot Hyland at least four times with an automatic pistol in the head and back as the drug baron lay asleep in bed.

Campbell, known to his friends as Anto, was described by locals in the inner city as a lovely, friendly young man. He had no connection with drugs or crime of any kind, and was one of the founders this summer of a new junior soccer team for local youths in the area where he lived. He just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

People here were just coming to terms with this double murder when the very next day another drug gang member was executed in a hail of bullets on a street in the IFSC, the financial services district near the docks in the city center. This was another bloody gangland hit.

The 26-year-old victim was one of the biggest criminals in the north inner city, who is believed to have organized a large number of dockland robberies in association with the IRA as well as being involved with drugs. His death was not linked to the Hyland murder the day before, but seemed to be part of a long-running feud between two criminal inner city families about a rape several years ago.

The clinical nature of his execution on the street suggested another contract killing. And this added to the growing concern about such killings here.

There were also indications of contract killings in the murders of Hyland and the Latvian woman Baiba Saulite whose death was featured in this column recently. Both of those murders looked like professional hits carried out with no mercy after careful advance planning.

According to the Gardai, there were similarities in the way the shootings were done and in the way stolen cars were used and number plates manufactured. All this indicates contract killings.

With the big drug barons now under almost constant surveillance, it suits them to get professional killers in to do their murders. And this is not difficult.

The fact is that there are a number of experienced Republican gunmen around with nothing to do and a taste for the easy life. And they will kill anyone if the price is right. It suits the drugs gangsters to hire them as bodyguards and muscle, but some of them are psychos so they are not easy to control.

Talking about psychos, this may explain why in the days after the Hyland execution there was widespread speculation here (run over three pages in Dublin’s evening newspaper) that the executioner was the renegade Republican Dessie O’Hare, otherwise known as the Border Fox.

It was known that O’Hare had been associating with Hyland since he was let out of prison recently, in contravention of the terms under which he was released. But the Gardai now say that the prime suspects are some of Hyland’s own gang members.

In spite of this, there is growing concern about some of our erstwhile freedom fighters in the Republican movement who now have time on their hands and a sense of grievance about their loss of status and enough cash to avoid working for a living. It’s only a minority, but that’s all it takes to create a bloodbath between the drugs gangs.

Another concern is our increasingly out of touch judiciary. I mentioned above that 24 of Hyland’s associates have been before the courts here over the past year — but 23 of them were given bail by the judges, who take the view that bail can only be refused in the most exceptional circumstances. This all goes back to the presumption of innocence before a trial, the right to liberty and so on.

But the reality is that some of these guys who were let out on bail already have criminal records as long as their arms — and promptly committed more crimes while they were awaiting trial. Faced with the organized crime of the drug gangs, our justice system is laughably naive and inadequate, with lawyers pontificating about the human rights of their client thugs as though they were primary school teachers up on motoring offenses.

Added to this, of course, is the real possibility of these guys leaning on potential witnesses while they are out on bail, if not rubbing witnesses out altogether.

All of which has led to suggestions here that it’s time to make use of our non-jury Special Criminal Court which was used against the IRA threat. That coupled with the use of the special legislation which allowed IRA men to be locked up on the opinion of a senior Garda officer could work in combating the drug gangs also.

Special courts, restrictions on bail, a lower standard of proof, acceptance of the opinion of senior Gardai as evidence . . . these are just some of the measures that may be necessary if Dublin is not to sink under the tyranny and fear of the drug gangs.

No doubt the civil rights brigade will oppose that, but these really are turning into desperate times here. And desperate times require desperate measures.

Meanwhile, the fall-out from the execution of Hyland, the country’s biggest drug dealer, has yet to happen. A struggle for power seems inevitable. So this Christ-mas, the funeral bells may continue to drown out the jingle bells in Dublin.