Fears of a dramatic escalation in Dublin’s gangland wars were growing last night after one of Ireland’s most notorious criminals was shot and wounded in the city yesterday afternoon.
Martin ‘The Viper’ Foley, who has 33 convictions, was shot several times at the Carlisle gym in the Kimmage area of south Dublin around 3.15pm. It was unclear if his injuries were life-threatening.
Last night Garda sources in the city said the blame for the attempted murder lay with a rival gang controlled by a Northern Ireland man who also runs the Irish National Liberation Army terror group in Dublin.
This former INLA prisoner is under round-the-clock Garda surveillance by at least 25 detectives. Over the past 18 months the Co Armagh man has been embroiled in several feuds with Dublin criminals as he seeks to take control of the city’s drugs and racketeering trades.
A Garda spokesperson confirmed that one man had been shot at the Carlisle gym in Sundrive Road. The spokesperson would give no further detail of the victim’s identity or the extent of his injuries. However, senior Garda sources confirmed that Foley was the target of the attack.
‘It’s the gang led by "Whacker", the INLA, that we are looking at for this one,’ one senior detective said last night. ‘He has been crossing swords with Foley’s gang and obviously saw the chance to take him out. If Foley has survived, which now looks likely, then he and his team have only one option – hit back. It’s going to get even busier in Dublin unfortunately,’ he said.
The full ruthlessness of the INLA leader in Dublin was on display last year, after Garda Special Branch officers raided a house in Tallaght. They targeted the house after a tip-off and discovered a 21-year-old man tied up and gagged in a bath and covered in blood. Gardai later said he had been tortured with a wheel brace and a broom handle.
Nine men were arrested downstairs in the house. However, the victim, who was the son of a west Dublin businessman from whom the INLA were trying to extort money, was so traumatised by his ordeal that he refused to give evidence.
Last year was one of the bloodiest in the gangland wars of Ireland’s capital. At least 20 murders were connected to at least four separate feuds involving rival criminal gangs. So far, investigations into these murders have not led to any convictions.
Last weekend, during anti-gangland operations across the city, gardai found explosive devices and improvised bombs in a house in north Dublin.
Gardai believe ex-republican paramilitaries, in particular a former IRA bomber originally from Newry but now based in Dundalk, have been selling bomb-making technology to Dublin’s criminal gangs as they seek to either eliminate or intimidate rivals in the capital’s underworld.
Foley is a former member of the gang once centred around Martin ‘The General’ Cahill, the notorious Dublin criminal mastermind who was shot dead on 18 August 1994.
This is the fifth attempt on Foley’s life in more than 20 years. His first brush with death occurred when he escaped an IRA hit team who had abducted him on 20 March 1984. He was kidnapped because ‘The General’ was engaged in a feud with the IRA in Dublin over the proceeds of a £2m gold and precious stones robbery at a jewelery manufacturing plant in south Dublin. The IRA wanted a cut from the heist but Cahill refused.
‘The Viper’ only survived because a neighbor spotted him being dragged into a van. He rang the gardai, who intercepted the van, opened fire on it and then arrested all four IRA men, who were later put behind bars.
Prior to yesterday, three previous attempts had been made on Foley’s life. After one, which involved a shotgun blast, surgeons had to remove a piece of Foley’s spleen.