By Ken Foy Crime Correspondent – 20 January 2015 03:00 AM A female garda who was arrested after a massive four-month investigation into her alleged involvement with a drugs trafficking gang could be under threat from her criminal associates, it has emerged.
The suspended north-Dublin based officer, who was released from garda custody in Ballymote Garda Station, Sligo, on Saturday night, is now considered "disposable" to the dangerous mob, according to senior sources.
"What use is she to them now? Her career in the gardai is completely ruined, she won't be looking up anything for them again on the garda Pulse system," the source told the Herald.
"She will have to go for a de-brief to tell them what she said and what was said to her in custody. She is useless to them now but her problem may be that she knows everything about how they operate.
"If they turn on her, her life would be in absolute danger."
The mob that the garda was helping have links to major gangland figure Mark Desmond and his drug-dealing sidekick Barry Young.
The drugs mob have been involved in a bitter feud with a dissident republican crew who have links with Aaron Nealis, the Sligo criminal who was shot in the leg and was lucky to escape with his life when his close pal, RIRA terror chief Alan Ryan, was shot dead in September 2012.
Sources revealed that a major part of the investigation into the garda is that she was providing information about the movements and addresses of the dissidents to the gang.
"What she was doing was not just helping her pals out about what gardai knew about them, she was also looking up information about what gardai knew about their rivals," a source pointed out.
COCAINE
The garda, who comes from a respectable west-of-Ireland family but has been a heavy cocaine user, may also face cocaine dealing charges.
It emerged that a sizeable quantity of the deadly drug was discovered in the car that she was travelling in with a gang member late on Friday night when the vehicle was pulled over by heavily-armed gardai.
The woman in her early 30s had been on the radar of detectives in Sligo for months, who drafted in their colleagues from the Organised Crime Unit in recent weeks.
