Detectives reveal drug dealer’s brutal end

THE Cork drug dealer murdered in Portugal could only be identified by his fingerprints, such was the violence inflicted on him, the local police said yesterday.

Michael ‘Danser’ Ahern was shot four times to the right side of his head at point blank range. His body was found inside a large freezer in an apartment in Albufeira, on the Algarve coast.

The 38-year-old father-of-two was subjected to severe beatings by a gang before he was shot.

“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 police chief Carlos do Carmo.

He said the gang - made up of four Irishmen and one Englishman - had destroyed his identification documents.

“The only way we could identify him was fingerprints. We had the co-operation of the Irish police through Interpol and compared his fingerprints,” said Mr do Carmo.

The gang is thought to have been ordered by the boss, who had just returned from Portugal to Dublin, to murder Ahern over a dispute involving drugs.

Five men were arrested after police stormed an apartment in the Orada complex in the marina area of Albufeira last Thursday.

They found a man’s body inside a large freezer just inside the door.

“Inside was a man looking face up in a kind of foetal position with his hands facing out in front,” said Mr de Carmo.

The freezer, which was shown to the Irish Examiner yesterday, is brand new and is about six foot wide and three foot high.

Ahern, a well-known drug dealer from Knocknaheeny, Cork city, had been violently abducted by the gang from Lagos, a town 50km west of Albufeira, overnight last Wednesday.

Police based in Portimao suspect Ahern had siphoned off part of a cocaine shipment for his own purposes and had refused to hand it back to the gang.

The five arrested were brought before court last Saturday and placed in preventative custody pending a full investigation, which could take between eight and 12 months.

The four Irish arrested were named as Dublin man Brian Murphy, 40, from Coolock, and Corkmen Alan O’Sullivan, 27, from Douglas Road; Kevin McMullen, 27, from Blackrock Road and Brad Curtis, 30, from Passage West.