A 37-year-old who conspired with members of the Kinahan cartel to assassinate Dublin man Gary Hanley has been jailed for eight years at the Special Criminal Court.
Sentencing Liam Brannigan at the non-jury court on Friday, Mr Justice Paul Coffey said the planning and organisation of the execution meant that the defendant was culpable to a very high degree and had a “central role” in the management and oversight of the plan to kill Mr Hanley.
The judge said the conspiracy was at all times conducted with “a staunch and unyielding determination” to carry out a “gangland style execution type of murder”. The plan was elaborate and lengthy and Brannigan had been “intimately involved” in all aspects of it, he said.
Referring to Brannigan, a father of two, the judge said he had 10 phone calls with the hit team on the evening of the planned murder. He was sentenced to eight years imprisonment with the final six months suspended, backdated to November 6th, 2017, which was when he went into custody.
Brannigan, of Bride Street, Dublin 8, was convicted by the non-jury court in February of conspiring to murder Mr Hanley at a location within the State between September 15th and November 6th, 2017. He had denied the charge.
Fifth to be jailed
He is the fifth man to be jailed for his role in a conspiracy to murder Mr Hanley.
Luke Wilson (24), from Cremona Road in Ballyfermot, Dublin; Alan Wilson (39), of New Street Gardens, Dublin 8; Joseph Kelly (35) of Kilworth Road, Drimnagh, Dublin 12; and Dean Howe (34), of Oakfield, Dublin 8, all previously pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder Mr Hanley.
Luke Wilson, who also pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a Beretta, was jailed for 11 years; Alan Wilson was given six years; Joseph Kelly, who also admitted a weapons charge, was jailed for 12 years; and Dean Howe, who supervised those lower down the chain of command, was jailed for six years.
A judgment on February 3rd at the Special Criminal Court, which followed a nine-week trial that ended in December, found Brannigan was at the “centre of the wheel” of the Kinahan Cartel’s plot to kill Mr Hanley.
Mr Justice Coffey said the evidence against Brannigan came from four sources including covert audio recordings from several cars bugged by gardaí.
Armed gardaí intercepted a Volkswagen caddy van just 500 yards from Mr Hanley’s home on the night of November 6th, 2017, when two men, Joseph Kelly and Luke Wilson, were found with a loaded semi-automatic pistol.
The evidence also included phone data extracted from the co-conspirators’ phones and the “interconnectivity” of these phones; sightings of the men by gardaí; and a montage of CCTV footage showing their movements, he said.