Hi °C | Lo °C MURDERED Continuity IRA man Liam Kenny was buried today as undercover gardai monitored his funeral.
The 53-year-old Clondalkin man was shot dead at his home six days ago in a murder linked to the extortion of drug dealers.
Mourners at the funeral -- which took place at 8.30am -- were Kenny's wife Margaret and his four daughters. He was buried in Palmerstown Cemetery after a Mass in the Church of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Rowlagh parish.
Gardai believe that Kenny was shot dead at his home in Shancastle Avenue by local drug dealers from whom he had been extorting cash in the months before his death.
Nerve
Senior sources also believe that members of a rival dissident Republican faction based on the capital's northside "allowed the murder to happen" because of an ongoing row over door security turf and extortion between them and Kenny's CIRA faction.
Kenny was linked to a breakaway CIRA group, which splintered from the mainstream CIRA last year.
"The strongest theory is that a local drugs gang from the Ronanstown area carried out the hit on Mr Kenny -- there had been a lot of trouble between this crew and the victim because he was demanding money and threatening them," a source explained. "But they would not have had the nerve to carry out such a murder without getting some level of permission from a Real IRA faction based on the northside."
Detectives are still investigating a number of reported sightings of the stolen car used by Kenny's killers.
The car, a 10-D registered silver Nissan Qashqai, was stolen in Dublin less than a week earlier. The killers used it to make their getaway from Mr Kenny's home shortly after 4am last Thursday.
It was later found burnt out at Steeples estate, off St Laurence's Road, in Chapelizod.
In the aftermath of Kenny's murder, surveillance operations by the elite Special Detective Unit (SDU) have been stepped up in the Clondalkin area.
One of Kenny's close associate is a well-known dissident Republican who is under grave threat from his former associates in the Real IRA.
Sources now believe that this man will "actively" try to avenge his pal's murder.
hnews@herald.ie
