John Gilligan walks free after plea bargain over drugs and weapons charges in Spain

Eight others were also freed after accepting the plea bargain deal

John Gilligan was handed a fine and suspended prison sentence by a Costa Blanca judge after admitting to smuggling cannabis and powerful sleeping pills into Ireland and being the owner of a weapon found hidden in the back garden of his Costa Blanca home. Picture: Solarpix.com

Irish gangster John Gilligan left a Spanish court a free man on Monday despite confessing to drugs and weapons charges.

He was handed a fine and suspended prison sentence by a Costa Blanca judge after admitting to smuggling cannabis and powerful sleeping pills into Ireland and being the owner of a weapon found hidden in the back garden of his Costa Blanca home.

Gilligan, warned he faced more than eight years in jail before the trial, learnt the good news after lawyers acting for the 71-year-old and eight accomplices, including his son Darren, confirmed a plea bargain deal had been done with prosecutors.

The court heard the convicted drug-dealer, due to appear on Irish TV screens tonight in the first of a three-part series about his life of crime, was treated leniently over the gun find because of a "full confession" following his 2020 arrest.

Gilligan’s British girlfriend Sharon Oliver, currently in hospital in the UK, was not in court and will be tried on Tuesday after it emerged she is the only one of the nine insisting she has done nothing wrong. She is expected to give evidence via videolink.

The eight defendants who turned up at Torrevieja’s Criminal Court Number Two for a trial scheduled to last three days were freed after being ushered into the courtroom to tell judge Francisco Ruiz-Jarabo they understood and were accepting the plea bargain deal.

Prosecutors initially demanded a jail sentence totalling six years for John Gilligan for smuggling cannabis and powerful sleeping pills from Spain to Ireland inside consignments of toys and flip-flops.

Spanish police claimed a rare Colt Python -357 Magnum found in Gilligan's house in Spain could have been used to kill Irish crime reporter Veronica Guerin (pictured). File photo: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

And in a pre-trial indictment they said they wanted Gilligan jailed for 18 months over the gun, which Spanish police described as a rare Colt Python -357 Magnum, and claimed after his arrest it could have been used to kill Irish crime reporter Veronica Guerin.

He had also been warned he faced 10 months in prison if found guilty of belonging to a criminal gang.

Gilligan ended up receiving a suspended prison sentence of just 22 months as part of the plea bargain deal — nine months for the cannabis charge, nine months for illegal possession of a firearm and four months for exporting prescription-only drugs without licence. The criminal gang charge was dropped as part of the agreement.

Prosecutor Carmen Millan said Gilligan’s confession that the gun was his after his arrest was a “mitigating factor” in the sentence he had received after the brief court hearing started.

Gilligan was the first of the eight defendants present in court to take the stand and confirm he was pleading guilty to the three charges still standing in return for a suspended prison sentence and fines totalling just over €14,000.

Asked by the judge if he accepted the deal, he replied in English through a translator: “Yes, I agree. Yes I am guilty.” The Irishman, dressed in black trousers and a blue short-sleeved shirt, went on to claim his absent British girlfriend was innocent, telling the court: “My partner Sharon knows nothing about anything. It was all my fault.” 

The other defendants proceeded to take the stand one by one and confirm they understood and accepted the deal they had been offered. They had each been facing up to six years and 10 months in jail if convicted, but ended up receiving suspended one-and-a-half year prison sentences.

Darren Gilligan, the only person brought to court in custody following his arrest in Ireland earlier this year and subsequent extradition, appeared to insult his dad several times before the brief hearing and showed his middle finger to waiting photographers as he was led from a police van in handcuffs into the court building.

He will be released later on Monday from a prison in Alicante and is expected to return to Ireland. John Gilligan left court without making any comment. His friend ‘Fat’ Tony Armstrong, another of the eight men who accepted the plea bargain deal, said after learning his fate: “I don’t want to say anything, thank you.” 

Gilligan, released from prison in Ireland in October 2013 after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence for trafficking cannabis resin, was held after Spanish police investigating his new drug smuggling operation raided his then-home in Torrevieja in October 2020.

The gun investigators initially linked to Veronica Guerin's murder was found buried during a search of his back garden. Prosecutors say the drugs he was sending to Ireland included so-called zimmos which heroin addicts use to help them sleep and numb pain.

The specialist police operation involved phone taps and car follows by an organised crime unit. Gilligan was the only one of the nine people indicted to be charged over the weapons find.