Leader in Kinahan drug gang extradited to Ireland from UAE

A leader of the notorious Kinahan organised crime group has been flown from the United Arab Emirates to Ireland in the first extradition of its kind.

An Irish military aircraft carrying Sean McGovern – who is wanted on charges of murder and directing organised crime – was due to land in Dublin amid heavy security on Thursday afternoon.

The 39-year-old has been in custody in Dubai since October, when he was detained on an Interpol red notice, which is a request to law enforcement agencies to locate and provisionally arrest a suspect pending extradition or similar legal action.

McGovern, who has been named in Ireland’s special criminal court as a senior member of the Kinahan cartel, is wanted in connection with the murder of Noel Kirwan, an innocent man who was shot in Dublin in 2016 amid a feud between the Kinahan and Hutch criminal gangs.

UAE authorities handed McGovern to gardai on Wednesday, after which he was put on an Irish Air Corps Airbus C295. After landing at the Casement aerodrome, McGovern is expected to be taken under armed guard to the special criminal court to be formally charged.

Shawna Coxon, the deputy commissioner of Ireland’s police force, An Garda Síochána, said it was a significant development in international law enforcement. “Transnational organised crime gangs cause misery to communities not only in Ireland but throughout the world. They engage in murder, human trafficking and drug dealing.”

Ireland’s justice minister, Jim O’Callaghan, thanked his Emirati counterpart, Abdullah bin Sultan bin Awad Al Nuaimi, and the Dubai police for their cooperation.

The UAE has become a base for Irish criminals and their associates partly because the state has no extradition treaty with the EU. However, a decade of lobbying by Irish officials paved the way for an extradition treaty that became operational on 18 May.

It was not retrospective and did not apply to McGovern but authorities in both jurisdictions made a separate, one-off arrangement to transfer the suspect. McGovern was shot in the stomach in 2016 when a rival gang’s hit team stormed a Kinahan-organised boxing weigh-in at a Dublin hotel.

Irish authorities hope to also extradite the gang’s founder, Christy Kinahan, and his sons Daniel and Christopher, who are believed to be in Dubai.

British police say the Kinahan cartel, which started as a low-level street-dealing operation in the 1980s, has flooded Britain with guns and drugs. In 2022 the US announced sanctions against alleged Kinahan gang leaders and offered a $5m reward for information leading to an arrest or conviction.