Three held over gangland feud murders

Gardaí investigating the murder of two men in Dublin’s gangland feud have arrested three men, it emerged tonight.

Darren Geoghegan, 26, from Drimnagh in Dublin, was shot dead with another man, Gavin Byrne, 30, from Crumlin last November while they waited in a car in a housing estate in Firhouse.

In a cross-border operation, gardaí arrested three men in Dublin while the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) also made a number of arrests.

A Garda spokesman said two of the men were being detained in Tallaght garda station under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act while another was being held in Rathfarnham Garda Station. They are aged 28, 35 and 38.

The spokesman said the gardaí and the PSNI had carried out a large number of searches under the Mutual Assistance Programme.

“Arrests have been made north of the border and investigating gardaí acknowledge the assistance of the PSNI who have been working with the investigation team in Tallaght for some time,” he said.

The gardaí did not release details of how many arrests were made in the North. A PSNI spokesman said he would not be making on any comment on the Garda-led operation.

The murder of Darren Geoghegan and Gavin Byrne was believed to have promoted a revenge attack which saw Noel Roche, 27, shot dead in a car outside the Yacht Pub in Clontarf.

His brother John had been killed last March in Kilmainham as part of the long-running feud between the two Dublin-based criminal gangs.