Gangster John Gilligan has been ordered to stand trial later today in Spain on drugs and weapons charges.
The convicted drug dealer, prosecuted but acquitted over journalist Veronica Guerin’s murder, was warned he faces more than eight years in jail if convicted. State prosecutors demanded an 18-month prison sentence for unlawful weapons possession.
It came after a gun Spanish police linked to the Irish crime reporter’s 1996 assassination was found hidden in the garden of Gilligan’s Costa Blanca home. Detectives said when he was arrested in October 2020 the gun was the “same make and model” as the one used to kill Guerin in an ambush in June 1996.
Read more: Parole Board don't give release date to Veronica Guerin's killer
But Spanish prosecutors went on to describe it as a Colt Defender and not the rare Colt Python .357 Magnum police identified it as immediately after the Gilligan detention. The 70-year-old is also expected to be told prosecutors also want him jailed for another two years if convicted of smuggling cannabis into Ireland.
He also faces four years for allegedly illegally exporting powerful sleeping pills and 10 months for membership of a criminal gang. If convicted on all four charges, that could result in a prison sentence of eight years and four months.
His British girlfriend Sharon Oliver and son Darren have also been summoned to stand trial along with his playboy pal “Fat” Tony Armstrong. A pre-trial indictment submitted to court officials accused Gilligan of masterminding a plot to smuggle drug deliveries from Spain to Ireland inside consignments of toys and flip-flops.
Prosecutors said the drugs included cannabis and thousands of prescription-only sleeping pills. The six-page indictment, formulated against Gilligan and eight alleged accomplices detailed the operation.
It involved phone taps and car pursuits by a specialist police organised crime unit which ended with the October 2020 arrests and raids including one search on his villa in Torrevieja. Gilligan was released from prison in Ireland in October 2013 after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence for trafficking cannabis resin.
He was the only one of the nine people indicted charged over the weapons find. Prosecutors said in their pre-trial indictment: “The pistol, with its case and ammunition was buried in the garden and at John Gilligan’s disposal. It has been catalogued as a short firearm equipped for use.”
It is not yet clear whether Gilligan, who spent nearly two months on remand in prison, has instructed his lawyer to try to seek a plea bargain.
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