Crime boss top suspect in assassination of Alan Ryan

A north Dublin crime boss who knew slain terror leader Alan Ryan since they were both “knee high” has emerged as a top suspect behind the assassination.

He runs a major drug trafficking gang and has links with a criminal from Ballyfermot, south Dublin, who is in custody.

Garda sources said there was “a lot of bad blood” between the gang boss and Ryan, which had spiralled in recent years after the Real IRA figure attempted to extort money from him.

The gang boss, aged 32, is a large-scale drug importer. While he has been arrested in relation to serious crimes, he has very few serious convictions. “He is definitely on the suspect list,” said a Garda source. “They’re originally from the same area and they know each other from knee high.”

But they carved out lives for themselves on separate sides of the criminal/paramilitary divide.

Gardaí said the relationship worsened when Ryan decided he wanted some of the earnings enjoyed by the gang boss and started demanding money from him.

“Ryan was shaking down people and as [the gang boss] got bigger, the more Ryan wanted a slice of it,” said a garda.

But gardaí stress there is a “long list” of suspects for Ryan’s murder, which detectives said was carried out in a “clinical” and “professional” fashion.

Ryan was walking in Clongriffin, north Dublin, not far from his home, with two other men, both members of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, when a masked gunman walked up to him from behind and opened fire. Ryan was shot several times to the legs and body. The killer then walked up to him and fired a shot into his head.

Detectives at Coolock Garda Station, backed up by officers from the Special Detective Unit and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, have nominated a large number of possible suspects. But they have not ruled out the possibility Ryan had fallen out with senior Real IRA players.