IT IS LIKELY to take upwards of three months before alleged organised crime boss Daniel Kinahan is extradited to Ireland to face charges on alleged serious organised crime offences. 

That’s according to Pat Leahy, a former Assistant Garda Commissioner for the Dublin Metropolitan Region. Leahy was speaking on RTÉ’s This Week today following Kinahan’s arrest in the UAE on Friday.

Authorities have not explicitly named Kinahan as the man arrested. 

A Garda spokesperson said the force was aware of “the arrest of an Irish national in the United Arab Emirates”. He was arrested on foot of a warrant issued by the Irish courts in relation to alleged serious organised crime offences.

Dubai Police said they had arrested an “Irish fugitive for his alleged role in an international organised crime network”.

Born in 1977 in Dublin, he is the eldest son of Christy Kinahan, alleged to be the founder of his family’s criminal operation.

In 2015, the Kinahan cartel became involved in a feud with the rival Hutch crime gang in Ireland, which was to claim the lives of 18 people. Kinahan left Ireland, first to go to the Costa Del Sol and later settling in Dubai.

He was identified in the High Court in Dublin as a senior figure who “controlled and managed” the operations of the Kinahan organised crime group.

The international crime syndicate was alleged to have been involved in the smuggling of drugs and guns into Ireland, the UK and Europe.

It is understood Kinahan will be brought to Ireland to face charges in the Special Criminal Court. However, there’s firstly a process whereby he has the right to contest his extradition. 

Leahy said today that it is widely expected Kinahan will fight his extradition.

“If he agrees to it, he’ll be back in weeks. That’s the reality of it. But I think that’s highly unlikely, and everybody expects that he’s going to challenge it,” he said.

“So generally speaking, you’re talking three months upwards if he challenges it. And there’s no final figure on that, but we are talking months if there’s a challenge put forward, and we expect that’s what’s going to happen.”

Leahy was appointed Assistant Commissioner following the Regency Hotel attack in 2016, where David Byrne was shot dead, which added fuel to the flames of the ongoing Hutch-Kinahan feud.

The retired senior garda said the attack “changed the game completely” at the time. It led to changes in policing in Dublin and was a “stressful” time for the local community.

“It really had a negative impact on the north inner city and across the city as a whole,” Leahy said.

People alleged to be senior figures in organised crime in Ireland relocated to places such as Dubai.

“Dubai was seen as a safe haven for a long time for very good reason – there’s a number of areas that made it attractive to people.

“First and foremost, it had limited extraditions historically. So it didn’t have treaties with some of the European countries. And indeed, where it had something, they weren’t always eager to enforce it,” he said.

This has now changed, Leahy said. 

Ireland and the UAE established a bilateral extradition treaty in 2024 that was negotiated by former justice minister Helen McEntee and came into effect in May of last year.

Sean McGovern, the first person to be extradited to Ireland from the UAE, pleaded guilty at the Special Criminal Court to directing a criminal organisation in March. 

When McGovern appeared at the Special Criminal Court last month, the court heard that the Kinahan group are involved at an international level in importing drugs and in their distribution at street level.

They enforce their control “by violence, using firearms and murder”, the court heard. 

Additional reporting by PA