{"id":290342,"date":"2026-02-10T10:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/290342\/"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T10:32:09","slug":"louth-man-smuggled-military-grade-weapons-for-sale-to-irelands-top-criminals-court-hears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/290342\/","title":{"rendered":"Louth man smuggled military-grade weapons for sale to &#8216;Ireland&#8217;s top criminals&#8217;, court hears"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Conor O'Brien who has pleaded guilty to smuggling military-grade weapons for sale.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2d2da10a-cede-4c12-a632-04b839403880.jpg\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"100%\" data-testid=\"article-image\"  \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_caption1 indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_secondary indo-66f0fec7_regular indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_marginleft0 indo-1d70522a_marginright0 indo-1d70522a_margintop3 indo-b48c4984_left\" style=\"color:var(--color-grey-60)\">Conor O&#8217;Brien who has pleaded guilty to smuggling military-grade weapons for sale.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">A Louth man who was part of a criminal organisation that imported military-grade firearms from America was selling them to \u201cIreland\u2019s top criminals\u201d, with pipe bombs and assault rifles that \u201ccan drop a deer at 900 yards\u201d among the weapons being smuggled into the State.<\/p>\n<p class=\"indo-ebe0ecc6_root indo-ebe0ecc6_paragraph indo-300db776_none indo-91174671_primary indo-1d70522a_marginbottom0 indo-1d70522a_margintop0 indo-b48c4984_inherit\" style=\"color:var(--color-primary-80)\">\u201cWithout Conor O\u2019Brien, there would be no criminal organisation, such was his importance,\u201d said Detective Inspector Shane McCartan, telling the Special Criminal Court on Monday that O\u2019Brien and his co-accused, Mark McCourt, were distributing guns and ammunition to criminal gangs in Derry, Armagh, Dublin and Limerick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conor O&#8217;Brien who has pleaded guilty to smuggling military-grade weapons for sale. A Louth man who was part&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-290342","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}