Gardaí vow to track INLA leader

GARDAÍ are to monitor the activities of a notorious terrorist and criminal when he is released from prison next Monday.

Declan Duffy, aged 31, is finishing a nine-year sentence in connection with a violent fight between an INLA outfit and a criminal gang during which an INLA man died.

The incident, known as the Ballymount Bloodbath, took place in 1999 in the Ballymount industrial estate south Dublin.

Duffy is scheduled to be released from Castlerea Prison on February 19.

A senior garda source said: “He would be of interest to us, because of his INLA connection and connections with people in the car business. We will be monitoring him.”

Duffy was sentenced to nine years in January 2001 for false imprisonment and possession of a shotgun at Ballymount. With the standard one-quarter remission, he is due out this month.

Duffy was the leader of an INLA group which fought members of a criminal gang based in the Crumlin-Walkinstown area.

INLA man Patrick Campbell, 22, died from machete wounds.

And a member of the criminal group, Patrick Neville, from Inchicore, was shot dead in a revenge attack.