Dublin murder victim Mickey Barr was ‘IRA’ member
The ‘IRA’ has confirmed that Dublin murder victim Mickey Barr was a member.
Originally from Strabane in Co Tyrone, Mr Barr was shot in the head in the Dublin pub he ran on Monday night.
The 35-year-old had served time in Portlaoise prison in the past and was acquitted of IRA membership along with six other men last year.
His death has been linked to a feud between the Kinahan and Hutch crime families which has claimed six lives to date.
Mr Barr is believed to have been shot three times when two masked men walked into the Sunset House bar, in the Summerhill area close to Croke Park, and singled him out.
Days earlier gardai had raided his Dublin home.
The latest round of gangland killings was sparked after two armed and masked men dressed in Garda uniforms stormed the Regency Hotel in Dublin in February.
David Byrne, who was a senior figure in the Kinahan gang, was killed when powerful automatic rifles were used to spray the hotel with gunfire.
In a statement, the republican group known as the ‘IRA’ said Mr Barr was an “IRA volunteer” but “was not involved in the feud whatsoever”.
It also said the guns used in the Regency Hotel attack “were not IRA weapons”.
The group claimed the Irish state may have had a hand in Mr Barr’s murder.
“We firmly believe there was some sort of state involvement in an effort to draw the IRA in to the feud with criminals in Ireland,” it said.
A spokesman for the Garda last night said members of a specialist armed unit were in the Gardiner Street area of the city centre at the time of the attack.
“Gardiner Street is approximately two/three minutes drive from the location of the fatal shooting,” he said.
In June last year charges of membership of the ‘IRA’ – which came to prominence in 2012 following a merger of the Real IRA and republicans in Derry and mid-Ulster – were dropped against Mr Barr and six other men after a court ruled their arrests were unlawful.
He was due to appear in court in Dublin this week for sentencing for admitting handling stolen goods.
Mr Barr is known to have been friendly with a fellow Strabane man who is a key suspect in the Regency Hotel attack.
The unnamed man, who is a former republican prisoner, has been dubbed ‘Flat Cap’ after he was pictured running unmasked from the Regency Hotel wearing an old style cap.
He has been linked to Republican Action Against Drugs and in 2014 was acquitted of taking part in a ‘knee-capping’ carried out several years earlier.
His Strabane home, and another property, were raided by the PSNI last week.
His home was also searched by the PSNI earlier this year.
Monday’s shooting was not the first time the Barr family has been targeted.
In 2002 his father Collie Barr survived after he was badly beaten and shot in the elbows and legs by the INLA in Strabane.
The Regency Hotel attack was later blamed on the Hutch faction in reprisal for the Kinahan murder of career criminal Gary Hutch in Spain last year.
He is the nephew of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch who heads up the Hutch crime gang.
