EXCLUSIVE | 

Cartel gunman Alan Wilson transferred to Portlaoise Prison after jail staff attack

Notorious thug lashes out at jail staff because he didn’t recognise wardens guarding him

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Paranoid gangster Alan Wilson has been transferred to the high-security Portlaoise Prison after lashing out at jail staff because he didn’t recognise the officers guarding him.

The violent thug had been serving his time in the Midlands Prison ever since he was attacked and injured by other inmates at Mountjoy in 2019.

This week, a new group of staff were detailed to deal with Wilson, which caused the unstable criminal to launch an assault on officers, according to sources.

No-one was seriously hurt in the attack, but a decision was taken to move him out of the jail, where he previously had demanded to be transferred, the source added.

Wilson is suing the Prison Service over the 2019 attack, in which he says his pleas to be moved were denied by authorities after claiming there was a €100,000 bounty on his head.

At one point, Wilson was believed to be the most under-threat inmate in the prison system.

The feared thug hasn’t served his time behind bars quietly following his arrest in 2017 as part of a hit team hired by the Kinahan Cartel to kill Gary Hanley.

The mobster has been the subject of disciplinary sanctions on more than 10 occasions, most of these for threatening jail staff.

During his first four years behind bars – while serving time in three different prisons – Wilson was hit with more than 10 P19 reports, which are handed to inmates who have broken prison regulations.

Wilson has also brought a case for damages against the Prison Service after the Mountjoy attack in which his head was cut.

He claims he informed authorities that there was a €20,000 ‘reward’ for cutting or assaulting him, and €100,000 bounty for killing him.

Wilson also claims there was graffiti around the prison targeting him and added that the ‘B’ Landing was known for having blades and razors stashed there by inmates.

In December 2021, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the 2010 gun attack at the Players’ Lounge in Dublin which left three men injured.

At that stage he was still serving eight years for his role in the plot to kill Hanley and tried to avoid getting any extra time in prison.

During that hearing, Wilson wanted to reduce his time spent behind bars by getting his new sentence backdated to when he went into prison in 2017.

He pleaded for leniency on the grounds he had turned his life around and was now writing poetry and dealing with a serious medical condition.

If he had succeeded, he would now be out of prison – but instead won’t see freedom until 2029.

Ironically, it was the Garda investigation into the Hanley murder plot which led to his conviction over the previous Players’ Lounge gun attack.

It emerged during garda surveillance as the would-be assassins targeted Hanley, that Wilson boasted about being involved in the shooting

He claimed he was just bragging to make himself look good, but he was found guilty at the Special Criminal Court.

Wilson’s lawyer said that the secret garda recording of his client in 2017 allegedly claiming that he had carried out the shooting at the Player’s Lounge was “bravado”.

He said: “He was bigging himself up in the company of those with him on the day.”

In those recordings he was allegedly heard admitting to the attempted murders in which he said: “Remember the shooting at the Player’s Lounge; I done that.”

In another, Wilson expressed amazement at how one of the men survived, saying: “One of them, right in the forehead and five times in the body, it’s amazing how the c***s pull through it, like.”

He had admitted to sourcing the guns and cars used in the attack, which was ordered by Sean ‘The Smuggler’ Hunt and which was aimed at Real IRA boss Alan Ryan.

However, he denied being the shooter seen on CCTV footage carrying a gun in each hand in the reckless attack.

A nephew of Martin ‘The General’ Cahill, Wilson had also claimed that being previously tried and acquitted in court over the 2008 murder of Marioara Rostas had ruined his life.

Despite Wilson being cleared of the murder charge, gardaí are not looking for anyone else in relation to the horrific crime.

The 18-year-old was abducted from a street in the capital’s south inner city on January 6 2008, but it would be more than four years later before her body was eventually discovered.

It is suspected that she was brutally sexually assaulted before being fatally shot four times in the head and her body was then buried in the Dublin Mountains.