THUG IS NOT JOHN HIS WAY TO JAIL

IRISH gangster John Gilligan left a Spanish court a free man yesterday despite confessing to drugs and weapon charges.

- GERARD COUZENS

The pint-sized criminal was handed a fine and suspended prison sentence by a Costa Blanca judge after admitting to smuggling cannabis and powerful sleeping pills from Spain into Ireland via courier and being the owner of a weapon found hidden in the back garden of his Costa Blanca home.

Gilligan, warned he faced more than eight years in jail before the trial, learnt the news after lawyers acting for the 71-year-old and eight defendants, including his son Darren, confirmed a late plea bargain deal had been done with prosecutors.

The court heard the convicted drug dealer, due to appear on Irish TV screens last night in the first of a three-part series about his life of crime, was treated leniently over the gun find because of a "full confession" following his 2020 arrest.

Gilligan's British girlfriend Sharon Oliver, currently in hospital in the UK, was not in court and will be tried today after it emerged she is the only one of the nine insisting she has done nothing wrong. She is expected to give evidence via video-link.

FREED

The eight defendants who turned up at Torrevieja's Criminal Court Number Two for a trial scheduled to last three days were freed after being ushered into the courtroom just after 10am local time to tell judge Francisco Ruiz-Jarabo they understood and were accepting the plea bargain deal.

The trial was due to take place last October but was suspended after a no-show by one of the defendants.

Prosecutors initially demanded a jail sentence totalling six years for John Gilligan for smuggling cannabis and powerful sleeping pills into Ireland inside consignments of toys and flip-flops.