A FORMER member of the drugs gang led by John Gilligan is recovering in a Spanish hospital after undergoing surgery to have bullets removed from his shoulder.
Peter Mitchell (39), who is originally from Summerhill in Dublin's north inner city, was wounded twice in a gun attack in southern Spain on Thursday night.
It has emerged that two other men wounded in the shooting were bystanders and were not intended targets. The men, in their 40s and 70s, sustained wounds after the masked gunman targeting Mitchell tripped and fell as Mitchell tried to flee.
The shooting happened at a bar at the Aloha apartment complex in Puerto Banus near Marbella on the Costa del Sol.
Mitchell was taken to hospital after the attack and has since undergone surgery to have the bullets removed from his shoulder. Hospital sources last night said his condition was improving. His injuries are not life threatening. The other two men injured in the incident were also taken to hospital but have already been released.
The motive for the attempted murder of Mitchell remained unclear yesterday.
The injured man had been running a bar in southern Spain until it closed recently.
Mitchell left Ireland shortly after the murder in 1996 of the journalist Veronica Guerin and the inception of the Criminal Assets Bureau. He had bought a number of modest properties which were targeted by the bureau in its early days.
He has until recent months kept a relatively low profile in Spain and seldom returns to Ireland.
Mitchell was named in court as a member of John Gilligan's gang during Gilligan's original drugs trial and his subsequent appeal.
The Supreme Court in a judgment in 2005 held there was evidence before Gilligan's Special Criminal Court drugs trial to justify its conclusions that Gilligan, Charles Bowden, Paul Ward, Brian Meehan, Shay Ward and Peter Mitchell were "a gang" engaged in drug trafficking; that Gilligan was the "prime mover" in the importation of cannabis resin into the country; and that he was the "supreme authority" among the gang members and "the largest beneficiary" of the proceeds of the sale of cannabis resin he was responsible for importing.
Mitchell's shooting and the unrelated shooting of an Englishman on Saturday near Marbella led to calls in southern Spain for greater action against armed criminals.
Antonio Martin, general secretary of the local left-wing PSOE party, said: "Marbella isn't and cannot become a refuge for mafia organisations and organised crime. We must make every effort to ensure these sorts of incidents don't happen again. The violence and impunity with which these people are acting in public places is alarming."