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Hutch gangsters no longer under jail protection as threat from Kinahan cartel rivals recedes

Almost a year after Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch was acquitted of Regency murder, easing tensions mean security measures have been relaxed

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Members and close associates of the Hutch organised crime gang are no longer on a protection reg­ime in prison, the Sunday World can reveal.

Sources said this is one of many examples of how the gang’s deadly feud with the Kinahan cartel, which has claimed 18 lives, is now in its “most stable and calm” situation since it began in 2015.

On Wednesday week, it will be a year since Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch was found not guilty at the Special Criminal Court of murdering cartel gangster David Byrne in the Regency Hotel bloodbath on February 5, 2016.

Since being acquitted by the non-jury court, Hutch has been spending time between Lanzarote and Dublin and was photographed earlier this week enjoying a pint of beer at an open-air bar in the resort of Puerto del Carmen.

A source said last night that Hutch is “unlikely at this stage” to face fresh charges for directing an organised crime gang as part of an investigation by ­detectives from the Garda ­National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (GNBCI).

For around eight years after the Regency attack, jailed Hutch gang members and associates were held under a protection regime in the high-­security 3G wing of Wheatfield Prison.

The 16-cell landing was isolated from the rest of the west Dublin jail and had its own exercise yard, which other prisoners could not access. This was because of the significant threat posed by the cartel to anyone associated with the Hutch mob.

However, the 3G wing has now been “effectively disbanded”.

“The 3G wing, of course, does still exist and there are still members of the Hutch faction on it, but it’s no longer a jail within a jail that’s closed off from all the other inmates with massive security measures in place,” a source said.

“The Hutch associates are no longer in isolation, and a number of the dozen or so of these ­individuals are actually serving their time in the general prison population.

“The reason these changes have happened is because intelligence assessments deemed that the threat level against these prisoners is nowhere near the same level that it was when this feud was at its height.”

When photographed this week in Lanzarote, The Monk looked relaxed as he sat at a bar enjoying a pint.

He was an inmate when there was a high-security regime on the 3G landing at Wheatfield, where he was on remand from September 2021 until his acquittal in court on April 17 last year.

A number of Hutch’s relatives who are serving time for serious offences – as well as taxi driver Paul Murphy (62) and builder Jason Bonney (53), who went on trial with him, but were convicted and jailed for facilitating the killing of David Byrne – are all serving under a “far more normal prisoner regime” as the security situation has de-escalated in recent months.

It is understood that Bonney, who has a history of heart complaints, had a health scare in prison last year, but sources said he is now in “good health and good form”.

Special security measures have not been eased for one former Hutch gang criminal, who remains under the “severest threat level ­possible” after he gave evidence against The Monk in one of the most high-profile trials in the history of the Irish criminal justice system.

Former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall (45) is serving a four-year sentence for facilitating Byrne’s murder at the Regency.

Dowdall’s release date is in November next year, but the discredited state witness is expected to be out of Limerick Prison before then as he has been accepted into the witness security programme and is likely to be moved out of the jail and the country at very short notice as part of this deal.

Dowdall remains in a special protection wing of Limerick Prison, which has 10 cells but just five occupants, who have “a completely restricted regime”.

The most high-profile of the four other prisoners on Dowdall’s secure landing is transgender inmate Barbie Kardashian (22), who is serving time for making threats to torture, rape and murder her mother.

Another prisoner on the secure landing is a man aged in his mid-40s who is on remand and cannot be named as he is facing a murder charge.

Sources said all five prisoners on Dowdall’s landing are allowed to interact with each other, but are not allowed to mix with other prisoners.

All their meals are delivered to their individual cells and the prisoners can only take their hour of exercise time when other inmates are on their meal breaks.

Sources said gardaí monitor Dowdall’s regular prison visits from his wife. When he receives personal visits, special security arrangements involving armed gardaí are imposed.

Convicted torturer Dowdall’s father, Patrick (67) served his two-year jail sentence for his role in Byrne’s murder on the same secure wing in Limerick Prison before being released last April.

He also has been accepted into the witness security programme after his son gave evidence in The Monk’s trial.

While the future remains uncertain for the Dowdalls, things are looking a lot better for The Monk’s older brother Patsy (61) and Patsy’s son Patrick (31), who were prime targets of the Kinahan cartel after it blamed them for the Regency attack.

An unarmed garda unit had provided protection at Patsy Hutch’s home in Dublin’s Champions Avenue for years during the worst of the feud violence, but a security assessment led to this being withdrawn last year.

Last week, Patsy and Patrick Hutch looked relaxed and carefree when they were photographed as they bought a second-hand car at a Dublin dealership.

This was the first time the pair had been pictured in public since February 2019, when Patsy drove Patrick away on his motorbike after his Regency murder trial collapsed.

The gangland landscape has changed significantly since then, and tensions in the feud have eased.

However, garda and prison sources said there is “no room for complacency”, despite no incidents for several years. The last murder linked to the feud was in 2018.

At this stage, the pressure from law enforcement appears to be primarily on the leadership of the Kinahan cartel, who are based in Dubai and subject to sanctions and a multi-million dollar bounty imposed by the United States nearly two years ago

In his latest public comments on the international investigation into the cartel, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris said last week that the authorities in Dubai are committed to working with gardaí in the probe against the gang.

He said he had been in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) last month and had met senior police officers.

“Contacts are continuing,” Mr Harris said, adding that An Garda Síochána’s relationship with authorities in ­Dubai has developed a “lot further” from where it was a year ago.

Asked about the delay in the extradition of senior cartel figures, including Sean McGovern, who is wanted for murder in Ireland, Mr Harris said the UAE has a different legal process to this jurisdiction.