Chilling call to Sunday World claimed: ‘We won’t miss Daniel Kinahan the next time’

“Speaking,” I said, slightly irritated that my head had been taken from a story I was trying to write about the extraordinary attack against the powerful Kinahan mafia the previous day.

“The car at the Red Cow is purple,” the caller said. “This is the Continuity IRA.”

The “Red Cow” was clearly a reference to an incident that had happened weeks before at the popular hotel where some sort of a boxing event was being held.

Senior members of the Kinahan organisation, including Daniel Kinahan and Liam Byrne, had been present but had fled after a suspicious vehicle was spotted in the car park and panic ensued.

Underworld sources had said that an associate had spotted what he believed to be a gun in the hand of the passenger of the car and sounded the alarm. Many believed this attention to detail had saved Daniel Kinahan’s life.

As far as the car was concerned, I had no idea if it was purple, red or black – all I knew is that a car had later been found burned out by officers who had investigated the strange events, despite receiving no official complaint.

“This is the Continuity IRA and we missed Daniel. We missed Daniel at the Red Cow. We missed Daniel in Spain. We missed Daniel in the UK and we won’t miss him the next time. We act on behalf of the entire Republican movement.”

With that, the call went dead. I had never taken a call from a terrorist organisation before. I knew my colleagues in Belfast had taken many during the Troubles and that whenever terrorists rang into newsrooms and claimed responsibility for bombings or murders that they used a code word.

While the call was strange and the accent wasNorthern, with no code word, I had no way of checking the validity of the call and so it slipped into the pretty big ‘crazy’ file of things that were happening that day.

Days later, our colleagues in the North identified the man in the flat cap that our photographer snapped at the Regency Hotel as he fled with his associate who dressed as the woman. His name was Kevin Murray and he was a well-known subversive, a key member of a group called Republican Action Against Drugs.

The group were a vigilante mob whose mission was to target drug dealers but who merged in 2012 with the renegade Real IRA to form the New IRA. For those who followed these breakaway movements and their constant restructuring, challenge for leadership and name changes, there was one thing for sure – the group didn’t include the Continuity IRA.

RAAD were a violent group, often kneecapping victims, leaving pipe bombs at homes and acting heavy handed in communities – but they were also largely accused of being just another criminal gang which only targeted the dealers who didn’t pay them extortion money to operate.

The next significant link between the Regency Hotel attack and northern paramilitaries came when a Donegal man was stopped in a car, the boot of which contained three AK-47s and ammunition which Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch’s trial heard this week were those used on February 5.

Shane Rowan, from Killygordon in Donegal, pleaded guilty to possession of the weapons and membership of an illegal organisation styling itself on the IRA when he appeared in the Special Criminal Court and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

This week, the Hutch trial heard details of the seizure of those weapons and the arrest of Rowan. The AKs, the Special Criminal Court heard, came from the former Yugoslavia.​

​Rowan, the Hutch trial heard, had met with Jonathan Dowdall the day before the Regency in Strabane when the former Sinn Féin Councillor travelled there.

While Dowdall’s statement hasn’t been heard in full, the prosecution has indicated that it claims he had no idea what Hutch was planning when he travelled to the north on February 4 to meet with Rowan or when he booked a hotel room at the Regency that night with his father Patrick, which was used by Murray.

For someone so cruelly tricked into involvement in the most high-profile murder, it is hard to know why Dowdall later drove Hutch North when the State will say he made arrangements to hand back the weapons to the paramilitaries, but no doubt that explanation will come when he finally takes the witness stand.

Dowdall will claim, the court had heard, that he was simply the ‘go between’ with Hutch and the IRA and he only believed he was trying to help broker a peace deal with the Kinahan organisation when he became a central character in the Regency attack.

The dark spectre of the IRA has surrounded the Regency from the beginning but it is only this week that it moved from speculation to court record – from reportage to fact.

The State is to claim that Hutch masterminded a “false flag” to make it look like the IRA had carried out the shooting. The Prosecution will say he specifically choose “Flatcap” to stay at the hotel, as he was a known dissident, and wanted him to walk about under the numerous cameras. They will also claim that Hutch used the Dowdall father and son as they, too, were known associates of the IRA so the Regency would be linked to the paramilitaries.

The complexities of the narratives from Dowdall and the State will emerge over the coming weeks while Hutch and his co-accused are likely to point the finger of blame right back at the now protected witness.

While Hutch has no conviction for membership of the IRA, Dowdall pleaded guilty to his role in a horrific kidnap and torture ordeal during which he wore a balaclava and waterboarded his victim. During the attack he repeatedly claimed he was a member of the IRA.

As the first week of the Hutch trial concluded, the mammoth job of untangling the complexities of the Regency Hotel attack has only just begun and a picture is beginning to emerge of the positions of the key characters.

In the dock, Hutch along with his co-accused Jason Bonney and Paul Murphy look relaxed, like marathon runners keeping pace in the first few kilometres but not really showing their hand.

All three have pleaded not guilty and will undoubtedly point the finger of blame at Dowdall, who got just four years in prison for facilitating the murder after the State dropped a murder charge against him.