‘Border Fox,’ Ireland’s Most Wanted Fugitive, Is Captured

The country’s most wanted fugitive, a maverick Irish nationalist guerrilla known as “the Border Fox,” was arrested on Friday after a gun battle at a roadblock in which he was wounded and another man was killed, police said.

Dessie O’Hare was shot in the arms, legs and chest when he tried to burst through the roadblock in a car. Sought as a suspect in up to 30 killings, O’Hare had vowed he would never be taken alive.

The passenger in O’Hare’s car, Martin Bryan, was killed, and a soldier at the roadblock on the Dublin to Cork road in County Kilkenny was slightly injured in the knee, police said.

O’Hare, 29, was undergoing emergency surgery in Kilkenny hospital. In addition to involvement in up to 30 murders, police believe that he led the gang that kidnaped an Irish millionaire’s son-in-law.

The kidnapers used a hammer and chisel to chop off part of the fingers of Dublin dentist John O’Grady, released after a gun battle with police in a Dublin suburb on Nov. 5.

Bungled Attempts at Capture

Five people, including O’Hare’s wife, Clare, have been charged with unlawfully detaining O’Grady. The Irish government, embarrassed by three bungled attempts to net O’Hare, had put up a $158,000 reward for his capture.

O’Hare, target of one of the biggest manhunts in Ireland’s history, was once a member of both the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

The INLA was split by an internecine feud earlier this year in which 12 people were killed.

A former close associate of O’Hare in the INLA said, “He was cold enough to kill his own mother if the urge took him.”

He was released from an Irish jail in October last year after serving a nine-year jail term for firearm offenses. Police believe he then became a bank robber in the Northern Ireland border county of Armagh and was heavily involved in the INLA feud.

O’Hare, last spotted on Nov. 8 when he shot his wife in the thigh after an argument outside a fish and chip shop north of Dublin, was ranked by Irish police as one of the most dangerous men they had ever hunted.