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Armed gardaí escort ‘Fat’ Freddie Thompson to hospital in major security operation

The 43-year-old has been on a fitness regime in the jail and regularly works out in the gym.

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A major security operation has been put in place to allow gangland criminal Freddie Thompson attend hospital, the Sunday World has learned.

Armed gardai were involved in the escort of the convicted killer from Portlaoise Prison to a nearby medical facility last week.

Thompson was returned to the high security facility within 24 hours.

However, it’s understood the need for Thompson to attend hospital may require ongoing armed escorts.

“Because of the individual’s gangland connections, armed gardai had to be involved in the escort and a security operation was put in place,” a source said.

The prison service said: “The Irish Prison Service does not comment on individual prisoner cases.”

The 43-year-old has been on a fitness regime in the jail and regularly works out in the gym.

It is understood that his hospital visit last Thursday was the first time that Thompson had a day release from prison since he was granted compassionate leave to pay his respects to his mother Lisa at Massey Brothers’ funeral home in The Coombe, Dublin, in April.

Lisa Thompson was aged in her in her late 60s and had been in ill health for some time and suffered from a severe lung condition.

He went on a vandalism rampage on hearing of the death of his mother, smashing a TV, a toaster and microwave oven.

A letter to his mother was read out at the funeral as he watched via webcam from prison.

He had been refused temporary release to attend in person because of security concerns.

A month later he was caught with an illegal mobile phone which he smashed off the ground and then swallowed the SIM card as he left an exercise yard.

Thompson received a life sentence in 2018 after he was found guilty at the Special Criminal Court of the gun murder of David ‘Daithi’ Douglas in 2016 and he has spent time in a number of different prisons across the country since first being jailed.

It was not the State’s case that he pulled the trigger but that he was involved directly in the operation.

Thompson’s finger prints were found in two cars used by the gang – a stolen Ford Fiesta and stolen Blue Mitsubishi car.

The court heard evidence that Thompson’s DNA was also found in the Mitsubishi. While his DNA was also recovered from an air freshener and hand sanitiser in the silver Ford Fiesta.

Separately two gardai, Detective Sergeant Adrian Whitelaw and Garda Seamus O’Donovan identified Thompson from CCTV footage.

The trial heard that Douglas was in the door of his shop in the Liberties area at 4pm on the day of his murder.

He was eating a microwaved curry when he was shot to death at point blank range by a man wearing black clothes.

In sentencing Thompson, Mr Justice Tony Hunt said this was an execution involving “intricate advanced planning and coordination”.

The judge pointed out that the prosecution did not suggest that Thompson was the person who fired the shots, but that he was one of the people involved.

In April at the Court of Appeal, Thompson’s lawyers said that his conviction should be overturned due to the lack of records on how he was identified by gardaí from CCTV footage.

John D Fitzgerald SC, for Thompson, said the State’s case was a circumstantial one, with one strand being the CCTV identification made by two gardaí relating to Thompson driving the Fiesta in convoy with a Mercedes-Benz, known in the trial as “the murder car”, a Suzuki Swift, which was the ultimate getaway car, and a burned out Mitsubishi Mirage.

Mr Fitzgerald said four CCTV montages were used in the trial tracking the movements of the convoy throughout the day around Dublin.

They traced Thompson and his associates to and from the scene, culminating in the group going to Little Caesar’s restaurant off Grafton Street in Dublin city centre at around 8pm on the evening of the murder.

The barrister said that the trial had allowed into evidence the four CCTV excerpts that had been objected to by the defence on grounds of procedure and the quality of the images.

The barrister said no record or notes of the procedure around the Garda identification had been taken, and therefore it was not possible to test the validity of the identification, which he said was a “very important part of the State’s case”.

The court has reserved judgement in the appeal.

As a cousin of the Liam and David Byrne he was at the heart of a Kinahan cartel network that also included Thomas ‘Bomber’ Kavanagh, another major gangland figure now serving a long prison sentence in the UK.

He was a leading figure in the infamous Crumlin-Drimnagh feud which has claimed the lives of 16 people after a split in the gang.