Slipknot bassist's death ruled accidental overdose: "Authorities have determined that the death of Slipknot [ tickets ] bassist Paul Gray, whose body was discovered in a hotel room late last month, was caused by an accidental overdose of two heroin-like medications, according to published reports.
The 38-year-old Gray, who was found dead on the morning of May 24, died from a lethal combination of morphine (an opium-based narcotic) and fentanyl, a synthetic form of morphine that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has said 'may be hundreds of times more potent than morphine,' according to The Des Moines Register newspaper. Gray did not have a prescription for either drug."

allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Nineteen-Year-Old Drug Baron Excretes Cocaine in Detention: "Two weeks after he was arrested by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) at the Port Harcourt International Airport, nineteen year-old Egede Lucky has reportedly excreted 39 wraps of substance believed to be cocaine while in detention.
The suspected drug trafficker, who was arrested during the outward clearance of Air France AF3031 flight to Paris had, upon his arrest, excreted 962 grammes of the substance concealed in 71 wraps."

Israeli drug dealer gets conditional bail: "major setback to the probe against the politician-police-drug mafia nexus in Goa, a trial court Tuesday released Israeli drug dealer Yaniv Benaim alias Atala on conditional bail citing lack of evidence against him.
Special Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act judge Bimba Thali released Atala, saying there was no evidence put forth by the police to justify his presence in judicial custody.
The judge also directed Atala not to venture near the coastal area, which is the scene of narcotics action in the state. He has also been ordered to deposit his passport with the authorities.
Atala, operating in north Goa, was arrested in March this year, after his Swedish ex-girlfriend Lucky Farmhouse uploaded footage where Atala was boasting of his links with senior police officials and politicians. The Swedish model also alleged that a senior politician's son was involved in the drug trade with Atala.
Responding to the development, police said that there is no threat to the Swedish whistle-blower's life.
The crime branch said that the conditional bail was not a setback to them."

B92 - News - Crime & War crimes - Serbia expects Zemun gangster extradition: "Justice Ministry State Secretary Slobodan Homen said that Zemun Clan member Sretko Kalinić is expected to be extradited to Serbia in early July.

He said that the agreement for extraditions between Belgrade and Zagreb is expected to include a special clause for taking power as soon as it is signed.

Homen said that Serbia has already sent Croatia a demand for Kalinić’s extradition, and expects a quick and positive decision by the Croatian government as soon as the agreement is signed.

“What is important is that clear political wills expects for both countries to see Kalinić in Serbia,” he said, reminding that Kalinić, a Croatian citizen, was sentenced to 40 years in prison in absentia in Serbia for his participation in the assassination of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić and 19 other murders."

Fort Myers man arrested on drug charges in Cape Coral | news-press.com | The News-Press: "James Desoto Ladson, 25, is charged with two counts of selling cocaine, two counts of possessing cocaine, one count of selling marijuana, one count of possessing drugs without a prescription, one count of marijuana possession and one count of possessing narcotic equipment.


Ladson was arrested Saturday and booked into the Lee County Jail. He was released a few hours later after paying $18,000 bail."

Ex guerrilla: FARC has extensive drug network in Brazil: "ex-FARC commander, who left the organization six months ago after fifteen years of service, told Brazilian publication O Estado de Sao Paulo that during his time in the guerrilla group he took part in several drug-smuggling operations, some worth over $2.6 million.
The former guerrilla, known as 'Carlos' to protect his identity, said that the FARC has established a number of routes for transporting drugs into Brazil, and has 'dozens of subordinates' working throughout the country.
After being smuggled over the border, the drugs are taken to Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, where they are exchanged for chemicals needed for the production of cocaine or firearms, explained 'Carlos,' who belongs to a government program for demobilized guerrillas."

43 Arrested In Downtown Drug Sting - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego: "Forty-three people arrested in a two-month sting are facing a variety of felony drug charges Monday, police said.
Dubbed 'Operation V8,' the sting targeted street level dealers of rock cocaine, methamphetamine and marijuana along C Street and in the East Village, Horton Plaza and Core Columbia neighborhoods, San Diego police Capt. Mark Jones said.

Some of those arrested are affiliated with street gangs, he said, adding that 14 were on parole and 10 on probation. All but five remain in custody"

Baggage handler at Memphis airport bagged by feds on drug-smuggling charges » The Commercial Appeal: "After a steak dinner and the promise of thousands of dollars in cash, a baggage handler at Memphis International Airport told his hosts he was onboard with their proposed drug-smuggling operation.
Gora Sow's hosts, however, were an undercover law enforcement officer and a confidential source acting as drug dealers wanting to send suitcases full of drugs to Memphis from Canada.
'(Undercover agent) informs Sow on the amount of Ecstasy, approximately 30,000 to 40,000 pills, coming in on the bag on June 1"

allAfrica.com: Kenya: Woman Held Over Sh85.6 Million Cocaine Haul: "Cocaine worth millions of shillings concealed as office materials destined for the United Nations staff in Uganda has been seized at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
Airport police are holding a Ugandan woman who landed in Kenya allegedly carrying the drugs at 7.30pm on Saturday.
The narcotic drugs weighing 21.4 kilograms were wrapped in 10 packets and packed in two plastic boxes bearing UN logos."

Black-tar heroin, a potent, inexpensive, semi-processed form of the drug that has spread across the United States, driven by the entrepreneurial energy and marketing savvy of immigrants from a tiny farming county in Mexico.Immigrants from Xalisco, in the Pacific coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, have brought the heroin north over the last decade, and with it a highly effective business model featuring deep discounts and convenient delivery by car. Their success is a major reason why Mexican black tar has seized a growing share of the U.S. heroin market, according to government estimates.
Xalisco networks are decentralized, with no all-powerful boss, and they largely avoid guns and violence. Staying clear of the nation's largest cities, where established organizations control the heroin trade, Xalisco dealers have cultivated markets in the mountain states and parts of the Midwest and Appalachia, often creating demand for heroin in cities and towns where there had been little or none. In many of those places, authorities report a sharp rise in heroin overdoses and deaths.Before the string of fatal overdoses in 2007, "we didn't even consider heroin an issue," said Huntington Police Chief Skip Holbrook.
Xalisco dealers have been particularly successful in areas where addiction to prescription painkillers like OxyContin was widespread. Many of those addicts, mainly young middle- and working-class whites, switched to black tar, which is cheaper and more powerful.In York County, S.C., pain-pill addicts became hooked on black tar purchased in Charlotte, N.C., half an hour away. "We used to get maybe one overdose death a year" caused by opiates, said Marvin Brown, commander of the county's drug unit. "We had six in the first six months" of 2009.In the suburbs south of Salt Lake City, heroin was unheard of until dealers from Xalisco arrived, said Lt. Phil Murphy of the Utah County Major Crimes Task Force. Now, he said, young people looking for an alternative to pain pills drive to Salt Lake to score black-tar heroin.
University towns have been especially fertile markets for Xalisco heroin. Authorities in Boulder and Fort Collins, Colo. -- home to the University of Colorado and Colorado State University, respectively -- report increased overdoses caused by black-tar heroin purchased from dealers in Denver.Ohio has also become a center of Xalisco networks, and it was through a junkie in Columbus that black tar made its way to Huntington.

Mohammed Umar, 36, was arrested for smuggling the white crystal powder, usually used as an anesthetic, inside a water heater he brought from India. His attempt was foiled by the customs officers when he underwent a luggage check after disembarking from a Thai Airways flight at 3 p.m. local time from New Delhi.Customs service and monitoring head Bambang Wahyudi said Saturday that the suspect wrapped the drugs in plastic and hid it inside the water heater.
The water heater was packed in a large cardboard box that the suspect brought through a scanner. 
“Why would he bring a used water heater to Bali? That’s what raised our officers’ suspicions. He also seemed very nervous,” Bambang said.The suspect said the water heater was to be donated to an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia. He even showed officers an invoice for the water heater priced at 6,000 rupees. “The suspect was confused when officers asked him which school he wanted to donate to,” Bambang said.As the officers examined the water heater using an ion scan and opened the machine, they found the drugs. The suspect admitted he was under orders by someone identified as Jakfar, who resided in India. He said he was paid 5,000 rupees for transporting the drugs. He said Jakfar told him to find accomodation close to Ngurah Rai Airport while awaiting instructions.      “We tried since Thursday night to locate the recipients of the drug, but couldn’t find them. They may be aware of the arrest,” Bambang said.
Ketamine, which has similar effects to crystal methamphetamine, is usually sold for Rp 1.5 million per gram.
Bambang said that the suspect would be charged with violating the Health Law and could face a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and fines of Rp 1 billion. “We can’t charge the suspect with violating the Narcotics Law, because ketamine is not classified as a narcotic,” he said. In several countries including Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Canada, ketamine is a class 1 narcotic, while in the US it is classified as a category 3 prescribed drug.

Bali is a magnet for foreign drug traffickers as the island has seen many cases of drug smuggling in the last couple of months.  

Anthony D. Singh, 21, fired a bullet through a man’s right shoe after a confrontation in a downtown parking lot that police said stemmed from a dangerous culture of retaliation and intimidation common in gang life.
A jury convicted Singh of several felonies after a trial in December that included unusual testimony about Singh’s ties to the Rollin’ 60 Crips street gang.
Gang affiliations generally are considered inadmissible in trials, but prosecutors argued that Singh’s membership in the violent gang provided motive for the seemingly random shooting, which occurred near a downtown night club in July 2008.
“He has chosen this way of life, and it finally caught up with him,” said Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Connor on Wednesday.Singh’s father, Elvis Anthony Singh, urged O’Connor to show his son leniency in a letter mailed from a federal prison, where he’s been since 2002. He was sentenced to 10 years after federal drug agents busted a crack cocaine ring the quadriplegic was operating out of his Spokane home with his caregiver.“We missed those important teenage years,” Elvis Singh’s letter reads. “I regret that I was not there to be a positive influence on him.”O’Connor approved an exceptionally high sentence for Singh, ordering him to serve sentences for second-degree assault, drive-by shooting and unlawful possession of a firearm before serving sentences for witness tampering and conspiracy to commit assault, instead of serving the sentences at the same time.Singh’s court-appointed lawyer, Thomas Cooney, has said he’ll appeal the verdict, partly based on a Spokane police detective’s admission to jurors that Singh had previous convictions.Jurors were ordered to disregard Detective Michael Roberge’s statement, but Cooney said that made little difference.Singh, Cooney argued in court documents, “was convicted on his propensity to commit crime and for being a bad person who is a gang member, rather than on admissible character evidence.”Singh denies firing the bullet that hit Alex Tauala in his right shoe in a parking lot near Sprague Avenue and Stevens Street on July 26, 2008. Tauala didn’t identify Singh as the gunman during trial.
But police witnesses and Deputy Prosecutor Larry Haskell argued Singh shot at Tauala after Tauala confronted Singh and his brother, 25-year-old Jamal R. Singh, by saying “anyone else got any problems?”The brothers, prosecutors said, were driven to retaliate because of their ties to a gang where “respect is the center of the universe,” according to court documents.
Jamal Singh pleaded guilty to riot in August 2008 and was given a year probation and credit for 24 days served in jail.But police argued Anthony Singh was the shooter, and his extensive criminal history contributed to his lengthy prison sentence.That prison sentence was exactly what Singh’s imprisoned father hoped his son, a father of two, could avoid.“As he is now able to see, the greatest price for his mistakes will be paid by his children,” the letter says.

‘King of the Hill’ found shot dead in the Cheshire mansion of a controversial businessman Arran Coghlan.Stephen ‘Aki’ Akinyemi, 44, was said to be a prominent member of the notorious Cheetham Hill gang, which is believed to be behind major crime and the supply of drugs in Manchester.He was known for enjoying champagne and cruising Manchester’s clubland in his silver Porsche, with the private registration AKI.He had a string of previous convictions and most recently had been jailed for 13 months in 2006 for violent disorder.At the time of his death, he was on bail for allegedly attacking someone with a baseball bat outside the Lounge 31 nightclub in the city centre in November.He was found with serious stab injuries at Mr Coghlan’s Alderley Edge home on Tuesday afternoon. He was wearing a stab vest.But a post-mortem examination revealed he had died of a gunshot wound, not knife injuries.Mr Coghlan was also discovered with stab injuries at the scene and he was taken to hospital under police guard. He was later discharged although he remains in police custody after being arrested on suspicion of murder.Last night a tribute page to Mr Akinyemi on social networking website Facebook, titled ‘RIP AKI’, had more than 600 members.
Mr Coghlan was cleared in 1996 of murdering Stockport ‘Mr Big’ Chris Little, who was shot dead at the wheel of his Mercedes.In 2003, Mr Coghlan stood trial for the murder of drug dealer David Barnshaw, who was kidnapped and forced to drink petrol before being burned alive in the back of a car in Stockport in 2001.But the case collapsed when it was revealed police had failed to pass on important information about another possible suspect.

Julian Jose Garza, 28, of Notus was sentenced to 70 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, the United States Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday.Garza pleaded guilty to the charge in September, admitting that he had a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun during a confrontation with two men in Caldwell on May 14, 2008. Because Garza had been previously convicted of firing a gun into an occupied dwelling, he was prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law.Garza is reportedly a member of Caldwell’s East Side Locos gang and was prosecuted by the special assistant U.S. attorney hired by the Treasure Valley Partnership and Idaho State Police to address gang crimes. His sentencing on Tuesday concluded a string of successful prosecutions of Garza’s family and girlfriend, the U.S. Attorney’s Office reports.His father, Gabriel Garza, pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm and was sentenced to 12 months of prison last March. His mother, Maria Garza, . was convicted as an accessory to a felony in April, charged with assisting Gabriel, in possession with intent to distribute marijuana. And his brother, Alex Garza, was sentenced to five years in state prison last month for aiding and abetting witness intimidation in Canyon County District Court on January 7, 2010.

Julian Garza’s girlfriend, Chelsea Robbins-Gonzalez was convicted of perjury and sentenced in June to two years of probation for lying to the federal grand jury about Julian’s possession of a firearm.

gang sweep by local and federal agents in Tacoma.
Twenty-nine men, suspected members of the Tacoma Hilltop Crips gang, have been arrested in a series of raid since Tuesday morning.
One of the men arrested, Manuel Jose Hernandez, pleaded guilty to the Toews murder in 2000. Hernandez was 12 at the time. He was sentenced to state custody until he turned 21 in October of 2008.
Since then, prosecutors say, Hernandez has been an active gang member. He was arraigned Wednesday on charges including: conspiracy, robbery, auto theft and trafficking stolen property.
Cornell hopes Hernandez gets a longer sentence this time, but she said it won't do any good for her or Hernandez.
"I don't have any great hopes that prison's going to improve somebody's outlook on life," said Cornell.
Thirty-two men have been charged in connection with the investigation.
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Sweep against the Hilltop Crips included serving a series of early-morning search warrants Tuesday. Officers arrested 11 suspected gang members without incident and confiscated guns, drugs and stolen property.
Investigators were still searching for five others. The remaining 16 were already in the Pierce County Jail on other criminal charges or serving time in state prison.
Prosecutors have filed 51 felony counts in the case. Charges include attempted murder, first-degree robbery and drive-by shooting. The 32 suspected gang members, ages 17 to 38, face various counts, but all are charged with one count of criminal conspiracy, according to court documents.
Among those charged are two third-strike candidates and Manuel Jose Hernandez, one of eight youths convicted of fatally beating Erik Toews, 30, as he walked down the street in 2000.
“We’ve got a big chunk of the group, and we’re not stopping,” said Steven Dean, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Seattle office. “We are looking at this group of gang members directly correlating to an increase in violent crime in the area.”
Filing conspiracy charges is a new approach in tackling gang violence, which has plagued the city since the late 1980s and left many dead and or wounded in drive-by shootings.
County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said this case marks the first time in Washington that the conspiracy statute is being used to prosecute gang violence. It’s being modeled after successful gang prosecution elsewhere in the country.
The charge usually is used in drug and identify theft cases. It’s being used against the gang members because prosecutors allege they joined the gang for the sole purpose of committing crimes – including robberies, drug dealing, shootings and car thefts.
In general, prosecutors say, a conspiracy occurs when two or more people get together and agree to commit a crime, and then at least one of them takes a substantial step toward carrying out the crime.
The others “can be legally accountable for the one person’s follow-through,” Pierce County deputy prosecutor Greg Greer said.
Those arrested Tuesday and previously booked into jail will be arraigned on the conspiracy and other charges today. Those in prison will return to Pierce County to face the conspiracy charges.
INCREASED VIOLENCE
Investigators say that the Hilltop Crips have increasingly flexed their muscle throughout the city during the last 18 months, targeting people who showed outward signs of wealth – including gold jewelry and fancy wheel rims on their cars – and working together to threaten or harm the victims to get what they wanted.
“They were active on a daily basis,” Tacoma police homicide detective John Ringer said. “Nothing slowed them down.”
Investigators contacted the Pierce County Prosecutor’s Office. Prosecutors researched different state statutes and found that the conspiracy charge worked with the facts and cases Tacoma police detectives presented, Greer said.
“The law is appropriate for the facts that we have in this case,” he said. “We want to be a little more proactive in addressing the gang problem.”
Most members of this targeted group have previously been convicted of felonies.
Hernandez was 12 in 2000 when he and seven other youths attacked and killed Toews on North Fourth Street.
Hernandez, the second-youngest person charged, was convicted as a juvenile of first-degree murder and three robberies in the days before the Toews beating. He was sentenced to juvenile detention until his 21st birthday.
Now 22, Hernandez was charged in connection with the gang conspiracy case and was among those arrested Tuesday.
FORMED IN LATE 1980S
About 15 teenagers formed the Hilltop Crips in the late 1980s after gangsters from Los Angeles moved into Tacoma and started selling crack cocaine. The gang was the first local black street gang, claiming South 23rd Street as its turf and recruiting other local teens to join their ranks.
Membership swelled to nearly 300 in the mid-1990s. Some of the original gang members were convicted of killing rival gangsters, while others were killed in gang-motivated violence. Some of the surviving original gang members remain in prison.
“Over the course of the past 20 years, the HTCs have been a powerful criminal force on the streets of Tacoma,” Ringer wrote in a search warrant affidavit as part of the recent crackdown. “They have been the strongest black street gang in the area and have dominated the local cocaine sales.”
Throughout the years, local and federal task forces have targeted the city’s gangs, which now total nearly 50. They’ve charged members with federal drug and gun charges and with shootings, homicides and an array of other crimes.
Among the crimes allegedly committed by the Hilltop Crips recently were burglaries at two secure facilities, including a Lakewood police parking lot where a member’s impounded car was rifled through for evidence.
NEW OUTBREAK OF CRIME
In mid-2008, Tacoma police and members of the South Sound Gang Task Force began to notice a new wave of crimes involving the Hilltop Crips, Ringer said.
Police reports detailed incidents in which victims were targeted for their financial assets, especially gold necklaces. Gang members stalked and jumped their victims around popular Hilltop Crips hangouts, police said.
Among the spots were a South Tacoma gas station, a South Tacoma convenience store, a South End restaurant and nightclubs that featured hip-hop music, police said.
Victims had necklaces ripped off in the clubs, faced armed robbers or were beaten on the sidewalk while others stole their car keys and wallets, court documents state.
The documents detail three incidents in which victims were critically injured. All survived, but one was paralyzed and another suffered permanent injury.
The gang task force focused on gang members who were still committing crimes. Many of the crimes had not been investigated, or charges had not been filed.
“These guys were off the hook,” Ringer said.
During the investigation, homicides involving Hilltop Crips were investigated separately, Ringer said. Other gang members were arrested in other cases.
In addition to interviewed witnesses and victims, investigators used informants, watched surveillance video of attacks and set up a surveillance camera in a Hilltop alley that was a favorite gathering spot.
They also sent shell casings and guns to the Washington State Patrol crime lab for analysis.
The lab matched casings from shootings in December 2008 at Oakland Playfield and in February 2009 at South 56th and Tyler streets to one Jan. 26 at a nightclub in Bellevue. A matching shell casing had been discovered in the car of one of the accused gang members.
Of the 28 shell casings collected after a shootout Dec. 2, 2008, outside a South End restaurant, one was matched with a casing taken from another member’s car during a search warrant.
“We were able to establish the conspiracy,” Ringer said. “When they join the group, they join the conspiracy.”

Valentino Sanchez, 33, whose last known address was 8105 White Ave. in west suburban Lyons, was placed into custody at 12:15 p.m. by Chicago Police in a secure area in a lower level terminal area at O’Hare, according to police.
Sanchez, an allegedly high ranking member of the Latin King street gang who also goes by the streets names of “Shorty” and “Devious” was found in Guadalajara, Mexico by an FBI gang task force and was transported by DEA and FBI officials to Chicago, police said.
A Feb. 2, 2009 U.S. Department of Justice and FBI release offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest of Sanchez, who has been the subject of nationwide manhunt since July 2005 when he was charged in a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago with violation of drug laws.
The release said Sanchez is allegedly a high ranking member of the Latin Kings and he is accused of overseeing the distribution of wholesale quantities of cocaine in the city and suburbs.
Sanchez remains in Chicago police custody early Wednesday but is scheduled to be turned over to federal authorities who will likely hold him in the Metropolitan Correctional Center pending an appearance in Federal Court, according to police.

Dominique Finley, 34, was the highest-ranking member among the defendants with the lofty title “5-Star Universal Elite.” Eric Ollison, 26, who goes by the nickname “Murder,” was his second-in-command, officials say.

“They didn’t get the moniker ‘Body Snatchers’ for no reason,” said Chicago Police Deputy Chief Nick Roti of the Organized Crime Section, adding that the faction is suspected of dozens of killings over the years.The charges unveiled Wednesday don’t accuse any of the defendants of murder, but said they were involved in a vast drug business.Since September, though, Ollison has been locked up after he was caught on the West Side with a loaded gun in a car, police said. He pleaded guilty to being a habitual offender and was sentenced to six years in prison, court records show.
According to FBI affidavits, the Body Snatchers were peddling large quantities of cocaine north of the Eisenhower Expy., south of North Avenue, west of Laramie and east of Austin. Two informants were paid a total of $20,000 to help investigators, the FBI said. Electronic surveillance also was used.
Most of the defendants lived in Chicago, but Finley has a Bellwood address and Andre Beard, 29, lives in Glendale Heights. Betts had lived in St. Charles.
“A lot of these guys, when they get higher up, move out to the suburbs and come to the city to work,” Roti said.Ironically, “they feel a little safer there,” he said.

Suspected of being members or associates of the Four Corner Hustlers street gang. The men were arrested as part of Operation Snatched, a coordinated effort by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to target street gangs running drug distribution networks in the Chicago area, Grant said.The men were charged with attempted possession or possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, the FBI said. The charges are felonies and carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted, according to the FBI.Investigators electronically intercepted telephone conversations, used surveillance techniques and conducted undercover missions to investigate the network whose turf went from the Eisenhower Expressway to North Avenue, between Laramie Avenue and Austin Boulevard, officials said.The Chicago residents who were charged were Milton Bills, 32, of the 5800 block of West Ohio Street; Clarence Johnson, 45, of the 700 block of East 50th Street; Terrance C. Jones, 32, of the 1400 block of South Christiana Avenue; Damon Westbrook, 32, of the 100 block of East 49th Street; Frederick Taylor, 23, of the 1200 block of North Mason Avenue; and Eric Ollison, 26, whose address was not available but who is in state prison on an unrelated conviction.Also charged were Andre T. Beard, 29, of Glendale Heights, and Dominique Finley, 34, of Bellwood.The men appeared Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in Chicago and were ordered held without bail in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, according to the FBI.

first gangland slaying of the year had originated in their district. John Paul 'JP' Joyce, a vicious criminal and member of a heroin distribution gang, had been kidnapped in Coolock on Thursday, January 7, murdered and his body dumped near the airport where it was found two days later.

Joyce, aged 30, was involved in a feud with a gang which has been establishing complete control over the drugs trade in an area stretching from the north inner city to north county Dublin and westwards to Ballymun, Finglas and Blanchardstown. It was responsible for murdering Joyce's brother, Thomas, in June last year and John Paul had vowed revenge. John Paul himself had already survived at least two attempts on his life.