A suspect was taken into custody in Liverpool by Merseyside Police under an international arrest warrant issued by the Spanish authorities. Police have yet to make a formal statement
Police in Spain have confirmed a man has been arrested in the UK on suspicion of the Costa del Sol shootings of gangsters Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr.
The suspect was taken into custody in Liverpool by Merseyside Police under an international arrest warrant issued by the Spanish authorities. Merseyside Police said in a statement: “We can confirm yesterday evening, Friday 13 June, a man was arrested in connection with two fatal shootings in Spain on 31 May.
“The 44-year-old man from Merseyside appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court this morning, Saturday 14 June, for the commencement of extradition proceedings to Spain. He has been remanded into custody to appear in court at a later date.”
Well-placed Spanish sources said the arrested man was Scottish and aged 40, not “in his thirties” as had previously been stated.
A Spanish National Police spokesman said: “The National Police can confirm the arrest of the suspect perpetrator of the double murder that took place on May 31 on the seafront promenade in the town of Fuengirola. The arrest took place in Liverpool yesterday afternoon, June 13.
“It was carried out by the British authorities at the request of Spanish National Police and was made after the urgent issuing of an International Arrest Warrant by Fuengirola Court of Instruction number two.
“The investigation is ongoing.”
Asked about the suspect’s age and nationality, the Spanish police spokesman said: “We are not making any more information public at the moment but will expand on what we have said so far as soon as we are able to do so.”
The Fuengirola court coordinating the judicial investigation is known to have placed a secrecy order on the case, preventing public officials from making any detailed comment.Such orders, called a ‘secreto de sumario’ in Spanish, are often placed on criminal probes especially in their infancy to protect investigations by limiting the number of people who have access to sensitive information.
But a well-placed Spanish police source said today when asked about the arrest: “The specialist UDYCO Costa del Sol police group which is leading the investigation has identified this man.
“As they couldn’t find him in the places where they thought he could have been in Malaga, they asked a court in Fuengirola which has opened a judicial probe into the shootings to issue an international arrest warrant for this man.
“Police in the UK have arrested the man in Liverpool under this international warrant.”
No details have yet emerged about the suspect’s age or nationality.
He is now facing extradition to Spain so he can be questioned about the May 31 murders.
The suspect’s return to Spain would be delayed if he decides to oppose extradition.
Spanish officials said days after the murders they had “no doubt” they would catch the gunman who shot dead Monaghan and Lyons Jnr.
Javier Salas was the first Spanish government representative to confirm the victims were Scottish after the horror shooting at Monaghan’s Irish pub Monaghans Fuengirola.
And he spoke again three days later to say he was convinced police would find and arrest the culprit.
Graphic CCTV footage first published by Spanish TV showed one of the two men murdered being cornered inside the premises and shot in the chest and stomach from close range.
The killer, dressed in black, was filmed shooting Glaswegian Ross Monaghan, 43, dead after targeting his pal Lyons Jnr outside the pub seconds earlier as terrified tourists and locals ran for cover.
Spanish police sources confirmed they believed the killer was blond following claims detectives haven’t commented on that he could also be Scottish.
He fled on foot but was driven from the scene by an accomplice in a car waiting nearby which headed along the old N340 dual carriageway east towards the resort of Benalmadena.
Officers from the elite Spanish National Police Costa del Sol-based Anti-Drug and Organised Crime Unit UDYCO have headed the ongoing probe, although they are reporting to a Fuengirola-based investigating judge coordinating the operation.
Career criminal Monaghan, who fled Scotland for Spain after a failed attempt on his life outside a Glasgow primary school in 2017, was tried but acquitted over the murder of notorious Glasgow hood Kevin ‘Gerbil’ Carroll at an Asda car park in 2010.
In August 2017 he and Eddie Lyons Jr, both members of the Lyons Glasgow crime family, were cleared of being involved in a brutal street attack on three men outside the Campsie bar in Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire.
The shooting in Spain came amid a violent gang war that has ripped through Scotland since March said to have started over a fallout over drugs.
The gun murders followed the fatal shooting nearly seven weeks ago of a 32-year-old British man in nearby Calahonda a 15-minute drive from the Irish bar towards Marbella.
He was shot dead around 8pm on April 21 in a professional hit as he headed back to his car after finishing a football match with friends.
The killers fled in a getaway car that was later torched. Police are investigating the brutal assassination as a drug-related gang shooting but have yet to make any arrests.
The victim has not been named but was known to come from Liverpool.
Reports at the time described the incident as the fourth shooting so far that month on the Costa del Sol, where rival gangs have increasingly used extreme violence to settle scores and a number of international mafias are known to have a base.
Four days before the Calahonda shooting a 34-year-old man was rushed to the Costa del Sol Hospital in Marbella after being shot outside a nightclub in the famous Costa del Sol resort.