AN IRISHMAN who flooded Britain with heroin has been arrested in Spain following a major operation targeting criminality on the continent.
Thomas Mullen, 43, is one of Ireland’s most notorious drug dealers having previously served 15 years in a British jail.
It is claimed he was arrested after police discovered €2million (£1.6m) in cash and huge quantities of drugs.
Media reports in Ireland say Mullen, known as ‘The Boxer’, had resurfaced in Spain where he is understood to have given police a false name.
But Spanish officers checked the name with gardaí, who went to the Tallaght address of the individual Mullen claimed to be before confirming he had given them bogus information.
The former boxing champion was caught out when his fingerprints were analysed.
He is now being kept in custody in Spain.
A “senior source” was quoted in the Irish Independent as saying: “This is a very big result – Mullen is suspected of supplying vast amounts of cocaine to the Irish and British markets from his base in Spain.”
Mullen was sentenced to 18 years in jail at a London court in 1998 after being found guilty of masterminding a heroin smuggling operation in Britain. His sentence was later reduced to 15 years.
The Dubliner was arrested when detectives discovered him leaving a safe deposit box centre with more than £100,000 in cash.
During the trial the jury was told that he had taken out a mortgage on his north London home with nearly £6,000 in £5 notes.
Mullen claimed during the trial that the IRA blackmailed him into supplying terrorists with IR£1million.
