Earlier this month, police said they had noticed a lull in violence coming out of the criminal underworld. Could Scotland\u2019s most deadly criminal war be over?<\/p>\n
After a particularly unpleasant six-month spell of attacks and firebombings<\/a> across \u201cthe length and breadth\u201d of Scotland, there had been \u201ca clear and obvious downturn of activity\u201d, Police Scotland said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cause of that downturn was without question multi-factorial, including the resolution of differences within the serious and organised crime community,\u201d the force wrote in an update to the Scottish Police<\/a> Authority.<\/p>\n \u2018Torchings\u2019 at the Cut Steakhouse in Bothwell in Lanarkshire could be linked to organised crime. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Police Scotland will not comment on whether they intervened to mediate, though this is a known police tactic in other forces.<\/p>\n Karyn McCluskey, the pioneer behind Scotland\u2019s Violence Reduction Unit, said in this case it was more probable that the gangs had changed their approach in response to heat from the police. \u201cIf you\u2019re a good organised crime group, you don\u2019t commit violence, because that\u2019s just what brings the police down on you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n A total of 64 people were arrested in less than a year, the Police Scotland report said, after 84 incidents of violence. Search and arrest warrants recovered seven firearms and \u201cassorted weapons\u201d and more than 90 safeguarding plans were put in place to protect vulnerable members of the public caught up in the feud.<\/p>\n Police were also given a boost when \u2013 between March and June 2020 \u2013 officers in 13 European countries infiltrated an encrypted communications service called EncroChat used by crime bosses and their subordinates all over the world. The breach allowed police to investigate figures at the very top of the underworld, watching them ordering drugs, weapons or assassinations in real time.<\/p>\n As of 2023, the hack was responsible for 6,558 arrests worldwide, including more than 3,000 in the UK. Defendants are still appearing in front of judges month after month based on evidence gathered from EncroChat.<\/p>\n Origins of the feud<\/p>\n The beginning of this very specific feud can be traced back 25 years and has been compared to the plot of a gangster movie, somewhere between The Godfather and Guy Ritchie\u2019s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. In 2001, a \u00a320,000 stash of drugs belonging to the Daniel clan was stolen by associates of the Lyons family, and, it is suspected, the teenage Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jr.<\/p>\n Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jr were murdered in a double assassination in Spain. Photograph: Iain McLellan\/Spindrift Photo Agency\/Mike Gibbons<\/p>\n This did not go down well with the Daniels\u2019 patriarch, Jamie Daniel, a highly territorial scrap-metal dealer who turned a hand to dealing heroin, eventually building a criminal empire. He was a man people knew not to cross. He was linked to beatings and a sniper murder of a rival drug dealer, a crime that is still technically unsolved.<\/p>\n \u201cHe had the reputation of being one or two steps ahead of the police and pretty much untouchable,\u201d said a former detective inspector, David Moran, in a 2018 documentary.<\/p>\n Kevin \u2018Gerbil\u2019 Carroll was shot in an Asda car park in Robroyston. Photograph: Strathclyde police<\/p>\n It was Kevin \u201cGerbil\u201d Carroll who did a lot of the dirty work and his increasing hubris began to pour jet fuel on an already roaring fire. Around 2005, amid a spate of gangland killings, Glasgow<\/a> was labelled the murder capital of the UK. Police were handing out dozens of threat-to-life warnings, known as Osman warnings, to gang members and their families every year.<\/p>\n Gerbil, Jamie Daniel\u2019s son-in-law and chief enforcer, was volatile and notorious for his \u201calien abduction\u201d kidnap and torture routine, where his victims were often found at night injured and in their underwear claiming to have no memory of what happened to them.<\/p>\n In 2006, in revenge for being shot, he desecrated the grave of the eight-year-old son of Eddie Lyons Sr, which appeared to cross a line.<\/p>\n Only weeks later, two Daniel hitmen wearing \u201cold man\u201d rubber masks carried out a daylight ambush at a garage, killing an innocent member of the Lyons family, 21-year-old Michael Lyons.<\/p>\n A judge described the attack as a \u201ccold-blooded, premeditated execution\u201d, before handing out the longest jail terms in Scottish legal history to the men responsible \u2013 32 and 35 years in prison.<\/p>\n![\"Michael](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/466.jpg\")
Michael Lyons was killed in a daylight ambush, which the judge described as a \u2018cold-blooded, premeditated execution\u2019.<\/p>\n