BY KEN FOY CRIME CORRESPONDENT – 10 MARCH 2014 03:30 PM
GARDAI have still not identified the thugs who attempted to murder former crime boss John Gilligan.
The 61-year-old gangster is expected to be released from Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown this week.
He has had three minor surgical procedures since he underwent trauma surgery on arrival at Connolly on Saturday, March 1 and is under 24-hour armed garda protection in the hospital.
However, detectives are no closer to honing in on the gunman who attacked him at his brother's west Dublin home.
A senior source said: "Despite being very polite about it, he has failed to co-operate with gardai about the incident which does not make the job of the investigation team any easier.
"There is a feeling that he knows himself who did it but he has failed to give gardai any information and has stated that he won't."
Gardai have been on alert because a close pal of Gilligan's known as 'The Fixer' who is based in Lucan has the "firepower" to avenge the botched hit – the second on Gilligan in less than three months.
TRAUMATISED
'The Fixer' has many contacts in the gangland and dissident republican world and has the capability to organise the murder of the thugs who tried to take Gilligan out, sources believe.
Last week, the Herald revealed that Gilligan's young granddaughter has been left "extremely traumatised" after witnessing the gunmen storming into his brother's home in the latest murder attempt.
Sources have revealed that the eight-year-old girl watched in horror as she sat in a car with her mother Tracey Gilligan – the mobster's only daughter – as the masked gunmen stormed the house at Greenfort Crescent in Clondalkin and shot Gilligan four times.
It has emerged that Tracey had dropped Gilligan at his brother Thomas's house just 30 minutes earlier after attending a family christening in a nearby pub.
She was waiting for the criminal to come back out of the property – possibly to be driven to Jessbrook.
