Police chief tells of hunt for drugs gang

THE Irish drug gang did not realise the Portuguese police were on to them for the last six months.

“This group was under surveillance,” said Carlos do Carmo, police chief in Portimao, on the Algarve.

“They were not being watched every day, every hour. That’s not possible. But we had a lot of information about this group.”

He said the gang was involved in “international trafficking of cocaine”.

Mr do Carmo, who is the head of the Policia Judiciaria, or the criminal investigation unit, in the area, said officers were not tracking the movements of the gang when a violent row broke out between gang members and Michael ‘Danser’ Ahern.

The fight occurred late last Wednesday after 11pm behind a private hospital in Lagos, a town along the Algarve coast.

“There was a lot of violence, and a lot of blood. We found a tooth there, belonging to Michael,” said Mr do Carmo.

Fortunately for the police an eyewitness saw the fight.

“She saw three men, who put the body of a man in a trunk of a car,” said Mr do Carmo.

“That witness saw some numbers on the registration plate.” It was an English-registered BMW.

“At this stage we get involved. We did not know who the people involved were,” said Mr do Carmo.

“We had uniformed police out looking for English-registration BMW. We looked in Albufeira, Portimao, Faro, Lagos, and other places.”

He said they also contacted police in Lisbon who were able to provide some information.

“We work all through the night. We can’t stop, we don’t know if the victim was alive or not.”

The next day the police traced an English-registered BMW to the Orada apartment complex in the marina area of Albufeira, a popular tourist town on the Algarve.

“We see the car. There was blood under the car,” said Mr do Carmo.

The police viewed footage from the cameras in the complex and saw images of two men carrying a large freezer into a ground-floor apartment.

Later they saw one of the men come out of the apartment and be heavily sick.

The police noticed two men in two cars, the BMW and a Peugeot.

When plain clothes armed officers stormed the apartment at 7.30pm they came across two men.

“When we entered we saw a big refrigerator inside the door, which is not usual,” said Mr do Carmo.

“When we opened it there was a body of a person, in the foetal position, face up.”

The two arrested in the apartment were named as Brian Murphy, from Dublin, and David Feguaer, a Portuguese man with a British passport.

Two other men, Kevin McMullen and Brad Curtis, both from Cork, were arrested at their cars. A fifth man, Alan O’Sullivan, also from Cork, was arrested in another apartment in Albufeira.

The inside of the large freezer, which was about six foot long and three foot high, contained Ahern’s bloody body.

“He was covered in blood. There was a lot of violence on his head. All his bones were broken. There were four shots into the right side of his head,” said Mr do Carmo.

The apartment itself was spotless. “They clean everything. They put clothes of the victim and suspects into bags to destroy,” said Mr do Carmo.

He said they had already destroyed all of the victim’s identification documents.

Officers had to identify him through his fingerprints, which they sent to Interpol, who checked them with gardaí.

Police found a pistol and a number of shells in the apartment. They believe that the victim was “probably” shot in the apartment.

Mr do Carmo said police “did not know” if the gang had planned to chop up the body to make it easier to dispose.

“We know they were prepared to destroy the BMW and the body, how we don’t know, but we can think of how they might.”

All five are now in ‘preventative custody’, pending a full investigation, which could take a year

Asked why Michael Ahern was killed, Mr do Carmo said: “We think he was murdered because he did not do what the group wanted. He kept drugs from a shipment of cocaine for himself, to use or sell.

He refused to return the drugs or money, so he was killed.”