Three continue to be quizzed over weapons supply to Limerick

THE anti-terrorist branch of the London Metropolitan Police is still questioning three men arrested in Lancashire on Sunday in connection with the supply of weapons to gangs in Limerick.

They were arrested as two handguns and a rifle were seized from a warehouse in the Morecambe area. In recent months arms and ammunition have been imported from Britain, with the aid of the Continuity IRA, for gangs in Limerick.

A garda spokesman at Henry Street Station yesterday said: “We have been in contact with the English authorities to establish if there is any link with the ongoing feud as there have been suggestions that one of the arrested men has Limerick connections.”

A garda spokesman in Dublin said: “the arrests of the three men, aged 35, 44, and 48 years, is part of the on-going investigation into the activities of dissident republicans/Continuity IRA and criminal activity in Limerick.”

A spokesperson for the London Metropolitan Police said she could not confirm one of the men had Limerick connections. However, gardaí in Limerick said were English connections with the feud in the past year. “It is a well-known fact that members of a particular gang had fled from Limerick to England following the murder of Kieran Keane at Drombanna on January 29 last,” said the spokesman.

Gardaí have suspected for sometime the involvement of members of the CIRA and the RIRA in the supply of weapons to one of the feuding gangs in Limerick in return for large sums of cash. The CIRA is suspected of being behind the supply of a booby trap bomb, a sub-machine gun, assorted ammunition, a quantity of drugs, and explosive devices for one of the rival gangs. The haul was intercepted and seized by members of the gardaí’s elite squad, the Emergency Response Unit and local armed detectives at an outhouse near Mungret, Co Limerick, in early June. Four men were arrested and charged after the find. Gardaí say members of a third gang from the southside of Limerick, which aligned itself with one of the two gangs involved in the bitter bloody feud in the northside of the city, left Limerick after the Kieran Keane murder last January for Liverpool and Manchester. Five men will go on trial in the Central Criminal Court on October 21 charged with Keane’s murder.