Background:The men convicted of the murder of Brian Fitzgerald are members of what is arguably Ireland's most dangerous criminal gang, writes Conor Lally, Crime Correspondent
Gary Campion, who was convicted yesterday of the murder of Brian Fitzgerald, was a member of one of the most dangerous drug gangs in Ireland.
Gang members have shot dead four men, torturing some of them first by stabbing them. They have tried to kill a number of others.
Brian Fitzgerald was murdered because he refused to let the gang sell drugs in Limerick's Doc's nightclub where he worked as a security man.
Kieran Keane was shot dead because he was the main drug dealer in Limerick as the gang was becoming established in 2003.
Noel Campion (34) was shot dead in Limerick city in April as he travelled on a motorbike to a court appearance.
He was originally a member of the gang but was killed by them because he was attempting to set up his own drugs business
In October 2003 Michael Campbell-McNamara (23) was killed. He was abducted, beaten and questioned about the Keane-Collopy gang, with whom he was loosely associated.
He was told to ring a drug dealing associate of the Keanes, Brian Collopy, and arrange to meet him so they could ambush and kill him.
Collopy declined to come to the meeting so the gang killed Campbell-McNamara, stabbing him 10 times before shooting him in the head.
Of the murders carried out by the gang, it was the one executed by James Martin Cahill and Gary Campion that horrified the public most.
Brian Fitzgerald was shot on November 29th, 2002, a killing that underlined the gang's willingness to do whatever it took to take a slice of Limerick's drug scene.
The public's horror at the murder was compounded by a poignant home video released by the Fitzgerald family which showed the victim smiling as he played with his baby son not long before he was gunned down.
Cahill (32), originally from Birmingham, confessed to being the gunman who shot Fitzgerald. He was convicted two years ago and is serving life.
Cahill said during his evidence in Campion's trial that he had been hired by a man, referred to as Mr A for legal reasons, to shoot someone who had "made a statement against him".
When the original driver of the motorbike to be used to make a getaway from the shooting pulled out, Campion stepped in and agreed to do the driving.
Campion obtained a bike which was later used to escape the murder scene and which was found on fire in a lane behind a garage outside Limerick.
Even after Campion's conviction yesterday, the investigation into Fitzgerald's murder remains open. Two other men, in prison in the UK and Belgium, may be extradited to Ireland to face charges relating to the planning of the murder.
In late January 2003, the gang with which Campion and Cahill were associated staged the mock kidnapping of the Ryan brothers - Eddie and Kieran.
They contacted the city's leading gangland figure, Kieran Keane (36), and told him they would kill the Ryans if he paid them €50,000.
They knew Keane would want the Ryans dead because he had killed their father, Eddie Ryan snr, two years earlier and always feared Kieran and Eddie jnr would one day come after him.
But when Keane arrived at a house in Limerick city where the young Ryans were being held he was double-crossed by the gang. Keane was the gang's main obstacle to supremacy in the Limerick drug trade.
The Ryan boys were a sideshow, the purpose of "kidnapping" them was to lure Keane to his death. They demanded that Keane ring his two associates Kieran and Philip Collopy and get them to meet him in order that they could also kill them. But Keane refused.
They took him and his nephew Owen Treacy to a remote spot at Drombana outside Limerick city. Keane was stabbed six times and shot in the head.
Treacy (34) was stabbed 17 times in the ear, neck and chest after the gun used to kill his uncle jammed. But Treacy survived and it was his testimony that would later put five members of the gang away for life - Desmond Dundon (23); David "Frog Eyes" Stanners (34); James McCarthy (27); Christopher "Smokie" Costelloe (23); and Anthony "Noddy" McCarthy (24).
Other things were going badly wrong for the gang in 2003. The man paid €10,000 by one of the gang to shoot Brian Fitzgerald began to crack. In March 2003 James Martin Cahill was arrested in possession of a gun and ammunition in a Dublin hotel. He was convicted and jailed. While in prison the guilt at having killed Fitzgerald got to him.
In May 2005 he rang gardaí and requested they come and interview him at Portlaoise Prison. He told them he killed Fitzgerald, saying he was paid €10,000 in two tranches of €5,000.
"I shot him and no one else," Cahill told gardaí. "I want to get this out of my system, I want to get this out in the open."
He alleged six others were involved in the killing. Four of those were the men who went on trial, three of whom have been acquitted. Two others are serving prison terms in the UK and Belgium and may now be extradited back to Ireland to face charges relating to the murder.
The conviction of the five-man group that killed Kieran Keane and the convictions yesterday of Gary Campion and in 2005 of James Martin Cahill for Brian Fitzgerald's killing has effectively helped take Ireland's most dangerous gang out of circulation.