Daniel Kinahan offered €1m bounty to murder Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch

The west Belfast thug was flown out to Dubai and given the advance payment as an incentive to kill the veteran criminal and the patriarch of the Hutch Organised Crime Group.

Ginger-haired Mackin has recently told a court that he has made poor choices in the past and intends to turn his life around with his family in Spain when he is released from prison after pleading guilty to money laundering.

Seeking leniency, the Special Criminal Court was also told that he had a new baby with his long-term partner and had found work in a building firm in Spain.

Barrister Ronan Kennedy SC said in Mackin’s defence that he came from a family where alcohol was ‘rife’ and had an implant inserted in 2020.

The notorious hardman is currently locked-up with members of the Kinahan Cartel in Portlaoise Prison awaiting sentence and is understood to be one of a number of terrorists, hitmen and enforcers who got an advance to murder ‘The Monk’.

This week, in sensational scenes, Hutch walked free from the Special Criminal Court where he was found not guilty of murdering David Byrne at the Regency Hotel.

Clean-shaved Gerry 'The Monk' Hutch photographed after his release

Justice Tara Burns, in her lengthy judgement, said the State had not proved that Hutch was one of two shooters dressed in tactical gear and brandishing AK47s on February 5, 2016.

“It was the right decision and I am happy with it,” Hutch told me, as he waited to walk out the doors of the court.

Refusing to engage about his future plans, ‘The Monk’ said a photograph of him looking dishevelled and which had been used in the media some days previous had been taken in Terenure Garda Station in Dublin during his recent arrest in connection with the investigation into corrupt Garda John ‘Spud’ Murphy.

“How did that get out, I wonder?” he said. Hutch said he wasn’t shocked by the ‘not guilty’ verdict but rather believed it reflected the evidence against him.

“Where am I going? I’m going out that door,” he said, pointing to a media scrum gathered outside the Central Courts of Justice.

While he was initially expected to leave the country, sources close to ‘The Monk’ say he feels safest in his home town of Dublin, where he has the eyes and ears of family, friends and his community against the critical threat that remains active from the embattled Kinahan crime group.

His close associate James ‘Mago’ Gately, who has survived two assassination attempts, has also settled back in the capital after years in hiding from Kinahan gunmen.

His brother Patsy, named as ‘possibly’ the organiser of the Regency attack and the man in charge of the weapons around the event, also remains in the capital where his home is under 24-hour Garda watch since February 2016. All are still key targets for the Kinahan group and its leadership who remain in Dubai.

While the cartel have been dismantled in Ireland, the veteran criminal is vigilant that the threat to his life could very well be the last sting of a dying wasp and that a bounty still exists on his head. He is also concerned about any threat from the Byrne Organised Crime Group, who operated as the Irish arm of the Kinahan operation.

James ‘Jaws’ Byrne and his wife Sadie lost their son David at the Regency, while the slain mobster’s brother, Liam, relocated to Birmingham and has now joined Daniel Kinahan in Dubai.

Mackin (40) was in custody during the early and most volatile years of the feud but as soon as he was released from prison he moved to Dublin and was linked to ‘Gucci’ gangster Caolan Smyth, now serving a lengthy sentence for an attempt on the life of Gately.

He once worked under the command of INLA boss James ‘Jaws’ Kelly but the pair fell out when Mackin was overlooked for a leadership role in Dublin and split off to form his own terror cell.​

In 2009, Mackin became the first person found guilty in a Dublin court for a murder in Belfast. He had been accused of shooting taxi driver Eddie Burns. However, in 2010 the conviction was quashed by Dublin’s Court of Criminal Appeal and a retrial was ordered – but it collapsed after three days meaning Mackin was freed.

In September 2015 he was part of a three-man torture team who used a nail gun to crucify a member of the Travelling community over a ‘debt.’

Mackin and his cohorts nailed the man’s feet to the floor and a court was told that the Belfast native had formed the group to extort money and had ‘"filled the void left by the demise of the Dundons.”

He was extradited from Alicante in Spain last December and pleaded guilty to laundering €4,780 as the proceeds of crime in a case before the Special Criminal Court.

In 2019, he was in Dubai with Daniel Kinahan where he was put in charge of a supply route into Ireland amid growing pressure on the cartel. He was also asked to find an opportunity to kill ‘The Monk’.