A hitman is contracted by a global crime cartel.
He is hired to kill a former cartel member whom the cartel has decided has gone "rogue" and is living in Northern Ireland.
The cartel is satisfied the "rogue" member has been sufficiently embittered by the murder of his friend to pose a threat to its leaders and its international drug dealing operations.
The "rogue's" friend was another cartel "foot soldier" who was shot dead by the cartel on the Costa del Sol in Spain.
The victim knew his life was under threat but believed the matter had been resolved. Money had been paid over to spare his life but he and his friend, the cartel's latest target, had been double-crossed.
He was still murdered. Now one friend is dead and the cartel has put a contract out on the other.
The contract has been accepted by an international hitman living in Spain.
He is supplied with an encrypted phone and given detailed logistical information on the location of the target and his movements. He has descriptions of the target's Belfast apartment and his car, which has been fitted with a tracking device.
He is instructed to Google the target's name and he will find his photograph on the eighth line, the second image.
The hitman asks for a gun with a silencer.
He tells the cartel he knows a trick to keep the apartment door open so he could follow the target into the building and shoot him in the corridor.
He also says he could carry out the attack from distance with "one shot to the head".
It is a scenario reminiscent of a Frederick Forsyth novel.
Truth, however, is stranger than fiction, and this is another incredible but true story to emerge from the garda investigation and prosecution of those involved in the ongoing Hutch-Kinahan feud.
The murder of Gary Hutch in September 2015 has led to 17 further killings in Ireland and Spain following the outbreak of hostilities between two factions of the one gang and has created an ongoing feud between two crime families.
The leaders of both factions - Gerard Hutch, the man known as "The Monk", and Christy Kinahan Snr - are now on the run.
Hutch is somewhere in Europe, while Kinahan is in Dubai having been forced out of a luxury mansion in Spain. Both are facing arrest should they return to Ireland.
The latest character in this real-life drama that has destroyed so many is the East European hitman Imre Arakas.
There were 17 further killings in the Hutch-Kinahan feud after Gary Hutch was murdered in 2015
The 60-year-old could have come straight out of central casting for a James Bond movie where the plot often necessitates East European bad guys.
He is tall, strong, fit, lean and tanned with long flowing blond-greying hair. Not for him a heavy coat and jumper for winter in Ireland.
When Arakas is escorted into the Special Criminal Court, he needs only a T-shirt and jeans. Perhaps the plot for this latest instalment is more akin to 'From Russia with Love'.
Originally from Estonia but living in Spain, Arakas is married with two children and owns property in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.
His history of criminality is a mix of politics and organised crime.
He was a member of the Estonian Defence League, a separatist movement that wanted to free the country from the domination of the former USSR. In a pre-independence court in Tallinn in April 1979, he was sentenced to three years for causing deliberate bodily harm.
Six months later, the Supreme Court of the USSR jailed him for 15 years for a variety of offences, including theft, escape from prison, destruction of documents, hooliganism, attempted vehicle theft and unlawful handling of firearms.
The former wrestler was "deeply scarred" by his experience in a Russian prison.
When Arakas got out of jail he was a hardened criminal and gunman, and subsequently became known by the nickname 'The Butcher'.
In 1997, and again in 2011, he was jailed for firearms offences, but like many former members of the IRA, who are now involved in organised crime and available as guns for hire, Arakas was by now a freedom fighter-turned-gangster.
He moved to Spain, got a professional driver's licence, but became an international hitman and was hired by members of the Kinahan cartel.
Arakas was contracted to kill James Gately, the former Kinahan gang member who had gone "rogue" following the murder of his friend Gary Hutch in Spain.
Originally from Dublin's north inner city, Gately, who is known as 'Mago', remains a top target for the Kinahan cartel.
The 30-year-old father of two survived a previous attempt on his life after he was ambushed and shot several times at a petrol station in Clonshaugh in north Dublin in March of last year. He has been living in Northern Ireland since.
Arakas was to be paid over €50,000 for the murder.
Arakas's departure from Alicante in Spain on 3 April last year en route to Dublin did not go unnoticed.
The gardaí targeting the feuding gangs here are also working with Europol, the PSNI, the UK National Crime Agency, the Spanish and the Lithuanian Police.
However, the Drugs and Organised Crime Bureau still only got 20 minutes notice of the hitman's arrival and had to scramble to assemble a surveillance team.
Arakas was spotted coming out of Dublin Airport that Monday afternoon and the surveillance team stayed with him as he moved around the capital.
They followed him as he took the Aircoach into Dublin city centre.
They watched as he walked up Abbey Street, bought a wig and a mirror in a discount shop in Moore Street, continued north on to Parnell Street and into Dublin's north inner city where so many of the feud murders have taken place.
They monitored Arakas as he made contact on his Blackberry with the Kinahan cartel's network here.
He was collected by his Dublin-based handler in a white van with the logo 'Blakestown Tyres' at 8.20pm. The driver was known to gardaí as a Kinahan associate.
He had been stopped two months earlier with a tracking device, which had previously been attached to a car that belonged to a member of James Gately's family.
Arakas was driven to "a safe house" at Blakestown Cottages in west Dublin where he spent the night in a room with a couch and a single bed.
The gardaí applied for a search warrant and at around 11am the following morning heavily-armed officers from the Emergency Response Unit broke down the back door and raided the safe house.
Arakas was standing by the bed. The mirror and wig were in a bag on the bed along with €835 and £416.
There was a piece of paper with Estonian writing - 'James Gately' and his address at 'College Court'.
Also written on the piece of paper was '8th Row, 2nd Picture, Visible'. This refers to a Google search for Gately's picture.
It goes without saying that a hitman needs to know the name of his target and what he looks like.
Garda Sean O'Neill picked up the encrypted Blackberry phone Arakas had been using the night before.
It was on a unique server to prevent access to the information on it. Entry required a 15-digit passcode.
The group administrator could remotely control and delete the information on the phone.
The garda immediately realised the phone was still on and the information on it was live and visible.
He quickly took out his own personal phone and began photographing the conversations in the group chat.
As he scrolled he snapped, page after page, until he got to the last one on the device when suddenly all the messages disappeared.
Garda raids on safe houses operated by organised crime gangs do not remain secret for very long.
The word was sent quickly to the gang bosses that their security had been compromised.
Even though they were abroad they acted immediately.
Just after the garda in Dublin photographed the last incriminating message on the Blackberry, all the information was remotely deleted. The garda watched as the screen went blank.
The CAB seized over €500,000 from Phantom Secure Technology Limited's accounts last week
The sale of encrypted devices to international organised crime groups is big business.
A company registered in Dublin, Phantom Secure Technology Limited, sold them to criminals and criminal gangs all over the world for between $2,000-$3,000 each and also earned service fees.
It maintained servers in Panama and Hong Kong and used virtual proxy servers to disguise the physical location of the servers.
The devices were linked to major international drug deals in Mexico, Canada, Australia and the US.
The Criminal Assets Bureau seized more than €500,000 from the company's bank accounts here last week, but the US authorities confiscated $80m, as well as tens of millions in identified assets ranging from bank accounts worldwide, houses, a Lamborghini, crypto currency accounts and gold coins.
The company's CEO, Victor Ramos, is currently in prison in California awaiting sentence, but the service enabled criminals to keep their communications private from law enforcement.
They could also remotely delete these if the devices were seized by the police.
However, a "quick-thinking garda" in Dublin was able to circumvent that process and secure the evidence from Arakas's Blackberry before the information was lost.
There were four pseudonyms in the chat group, the gang leader 'Knife', two other gang members 'Ow New' and 'Bon 4' and 'Bon New'.
Bon New was the name assigned to Imre Arakas. The gang leader gave the hitman a detailed description of the target, James Gately's, Belfast home:
"Front entrance to apartment is on 'king street'" he texted. "It's right beside 'sean graham bookmakers' it's a glass door with 'collage court central' above it. The car exits the rear of this building which is 'collage court' from a building which opens up and down from a buzzer, there's a ball camera above the entrance."
He then outlined the details of his car and movements;
"Champagne colour Toyota Avensius reg number 'WEZ3381'. His parking space is as soon as the shutter opens directly in front of you. There's a gym at the end of 'collage court lane' called 'hench gym'. He drives most days he seems to go to Newry and back."
The hitman then sought clarification:
"Ok king street is Belfast main street is that correct? And where can we see photos of him?"
The boss replied:
"Yes king street there is a europcar directly across from his app block that's the front entrance. For the picture go into goggle (sic) write 'James Gately Dublin criminal' go into images - the eight line of pictures it's the second picture in, he has a black suit on and when he clicks on picture it has 'james gately' wrote under picture it's a clear picture of him."
Arakas then tells the boss what he's planning to do:
"Well I go to internet soon and have a look. My plan was actually to go there tomorrow and for a day or two see the situation in real. Then perhaps I get a better plan. So far, in case I'm totally alone it seems its possible to take him down when he comes out of car. Its based on google maps pictures. Then there was an open car park behind the house bot [sic] if they closed it the situation is another. If not at the car then on his way to the front door."
He warns the boss of potential difficulties:
"There were huge advertisements on the way and looks like its possible to hide behind. The whole problem there is that there is nowhere to hide. Especially you wait for the moment he comes out of the door."
He outlines his requirements and what is possible:
Also silencer would be good. But especially it is good if the dog [the gun] is really accurate because if the picture in google is the same that in real life it could be one shot to the head from the distance and that's it
And the Estonian hitman shows he can be resourceful:
"Also there is a trick that won't allow him to close the front door behind him and I could follow him to the corridor. But it only works when the door frame is metallic but by the picture it looks plastic but I see there what I can do. Best regards."
Another gangster using the name 'Bon 4' outlines the preparations that have already been made in targeting James Gately.
"We have a tracker on his car so my idea is when he goes out in car we know he is coming back we tracks him live when he is heading back to his apt when he is 10 mins away he get in position and he parks in the same space always so then you have him."
James Gately, known as 'Mago' is a top target for the Kinahan cartel
The gardaí replicated the Google search on an iPhone for 'James Gately Dublin criminal' and up came the picture of him at the funeral of one of the Hutch victims of the ongoing feud.
The PSNI's Organised Crime Unit confirmed that Gately was living in College Court apartments in Belfast at the time and that the layout was as described to Arakas in the texts.
They examined Gately's champagne-coloured Avensis, which was parked as described in parking space number 4 and found the tracker device attached to it.
The PSNI examined CCTV footage that showed that two men in an English-registered Blue Peugeot Van had planted the tracker on Gately's car just four days before Arakas arrived in Ireland.
The van had been driven from Birmingham across on the ferry, in through Dublin Port and parked in Dublin Airport.
The driver, who is linked to Kinahan gang members currently living in the West Midlands, then flew back to the UK.
The other two men collected the van and drove it north to plant the tracking device on 30 March last year.
James Gately was aware his life was in danger, but he still followed a regular routine and set patterns that the gang had identified and planned around.
He did not know about the tracking device, the surveillance he was under, the plot to kill him or the Estonian hitman who was brought into the country.
Imre Arakas has no relations here and no one apart from his lawyers visit him as he serves his sentence in an Irish prison.
He had a stroke in Mountjoy jail last October.
He was given credit because he pleaded guilty and made certain admissions to gardaí about his role in the plot to kill James Gately.
These have served to reduce the time he will spend behind bars, but upon completion of his sentence here he still will not be a free man.
The hitman is also wanted in Lithuania to face three charges, including murder and possession of firearms in connection with the assassination of a man who had an affair with a Lithuanian pop star.
The authorities allege Arakas was part of a three-man gang, that he travelled to Lithuania to carry out surveillance on the target there over a period of two months, that he sourced optic sights for a handgun, as well as chemicals to eliminate traces of firearms and clothing used in the murder.
The Lithuanian police also suspect Arakas was driving a Renault Megane, sourced in France when Deimantas Bugavicius was shot dead just before midnight on 6 November 2015.
The 26-year-old who was known as 'The Diamond' was shot 12 times as he drove from his home in Kaunas in a Mercedes car.
The Lithuanian authorities claim this was a contract killing and that Arakas was "part of an organised group that for mercenary reasons acted in a manner in order to endanger the life of Deimantas Bugavicius".
Lithuania is seeking the extradition of Imre Arakas.
The High Court has endorsed the European Arrest Warrant, but the case has still to be heard.
It is due again before the court in January. Arakas is expected to deny the charges.
When he was arrested by Detective Sergeant Jim Kirwan of the gardaí's Extradition Unit and the warrant served on him in a cell in the Courts of Criminal Justice in Dublin, Arakas said: "I was in Spain at my friend's birthday."
