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This is the picture that marks the end of the road for Daniel Kinahan’s ‘secret weapon’ in his gang war in Dublin.
Alleged New INLA member Johnny Keogh looks tired and haggard after a year in hiding, losing a brother to the feud, a dramatic arrest and extradition proceedings to return him to Ireland.
Keogh is just the latest Kinahan-linked suspect to end up behind bars as the once-untouchable Cartel comes under increasing pressure as a result of a major garda crackdown.
Since the Regency Hotel attack, the Mob’s Irish operation has been thrown into crisis by a series of drugs, cash and weapons seizures.
The Sunday World looks at how the Kinahan gang have also been thrown into choas with a number of their most trusted associates are behind bars or have fled the country.
Dubbed the ‘Dirty Dozen’, these men are suspected of playing key roles in the Cartel’s business in Ireland.
First on the list of twelve is Johnny Keogh.
Keogh (31), whose brother Michael Keogh (above) was murdered just a week before he was busted by U.K. cops, now faces murder charges in the Special Criminal Court for the gun killing of Gareth Hutch last year. His co-accused are his sister Regina Keogh (39) and 30-year-old Thomas Fox.
Keogh is now locked up in Mountjoy jail on the same landing as another key Kinahan gang member accused of a feud murder and on the B wing where his associates include the cartel’s number one lag, the arsonist Davin Flynn.
Sources say Keogh has been quiet and brooding since his return to Ireland, but that his loyalty to Kinahan is unflinching, despite the fact that his family has been destroyed by the feud.
He spends his days in the gym at Mountjoy where he has a new personal trainer, drug dealer Anto ‘the Giant’ Callaghan, who is serving 10 years after he was caught with loaded handguns
Callaghan (45), was jailed last year along with Paul Zambra (38), from Ballyfermot, after a surveillance operation caught the pair with the guns primed. Officers suspect they were on their way to carry out a hit on CAB target Dean Russell.
Callaghan runs the gym on the wing which houses Kinahan associates and has taken Keogh under his wing as the grief-stricken paramilitary comes to terms with his brother’s murder.
“Johnny is very, very quiet at the moment and he can’t get his brother out of his head. It seems this feud has been all about an eye for an eye – a brother for a brother.
Despite losing Michael he is not blaming Daniel Kinahan or the feud,” said a source.
“He is very set on who he feels is responsible for the murder. At the moment he is focusing his emotions on the gym.”
Associates of Keogh have vowed to avenge the murder and have blamed young Hutch associates on the hit, which followed a botched assassination attempt on James ‘Mago’ Gately at a petrol station in north Dublin.
Keogh’s disabled father, Michael Snr, was forced to attend the funeral of his son Michael Jnr in a wheelchair due to ill health. The father of two had been gunned down in an underground car park of Sheridan Court on his way to work on June 1, in what is believed to be the first retaliation since the Regency Hotel attack by associates of the Hutch faction.
Neither Johnny nor Regina could attend as both were locked up accused of Gareth Hutch’s murder. Hutch was shot dead at the car park in Avondale House in May 2016 on his way to a meeting with Dublin City Council to seek a transfer from his council flat due to concerns about his safety.
Johnny left Ireland after the murder and spent more than a year hiding out in the U.K., while Gardaí issued a European Arrest Warrant for him.
There he boasted that he was going to join mob boss Daniel Kinahan in Dubai, where he has been based since the Dublin feud kicked off.
It is understood that Daniel referred to Johnny as his ‘secret weapon’ as he was living in the Hutch heartland amidst unsuspecting feud rivals while working for the mob.
Keogh grew up in the north inner city and is a close friend of Eamonn Cumberton, who is facing trial before the Special Criminal Court in relation to the murder of Michael Barr at the Sunset House.
Gardai believe that following the attack at the Regency Hotel in February 2016, cartel bosses needed trusted hitmen for hire and wanted intelligence from within the north inner city area on Hutch targets.