During his sentencing hearing the judge said McGovern is a “senior lieutenant and long time member of the Kinahan organised crime group”.<\/p>\n
McGovern was also described as a “senior front line operative” and a “confidante” of those in the upper echelons of the organisation.<\/p>\n
Even though McGovern was “not at the most senior level”, he was a senior trusted lieutenant for the organisation in Ireland.<\/p>\n
The judge said McGovern had a “significant role” in the murder of Kirwan, who was not involved in crime and that he had “planned, oversaw and directed” the murder.<\/p>\n
Kirwan was targeted because he was photographed at a funeral of a member of the Hutch organised crime group. <\/p>\n
The bloody feud between the Hutch and Kinahan organised crime groups claimed several lives.<\/p>\n
Kirwan was targeted because he lived in an area which was “easily accessible” to the Kinahan group and was a friend of the Hutch family, the court heard on Monday.<\/p>\n
The judge said Kirwan was selected in a way which was “callous and cruel” and encrypted messages showed McGovern suggested he be targeted to give “confidence” in carrying out further attacks.<\/p>\n
The encrypted text from McGovern to another member of the Kinahan group, which was read out to the court during the sentencing hearing, read: “Putting the teeth on duck to get his confidence back”.<\/p>\n
In relation to a planned attack on Gately, the judge said McGovern monitored tracking devices and planned how to target Gately.<\/p>\n
The court took into account McGovern’s guilty plea when deciding how many years McGovern should serve in prison.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his sentencing hearing the judge said McGovern is a “senior lieutenant and long time member of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-627580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}