It sounds like the penal equivalent of five stars: a private gym and library, daily outings to the exercise yard and a landing cleared of other prisoners.
Daniel Kinahan’s first full day inside the walls of Portlaoise prison on Monday, however, marked a drastic change from his luxury lifestyle in the United Arab Emirates.
The alleged leader of the Kinahan organised crime group is confined to a cell for about 20 hours a day, and instead of presiding over an empire said to be worth hundreds of millions of euros his only outlet for expenditure is the tuck shop.
The facilities, it turns out, are meagre consolation – a treadmill, some free weights and limited reading material. “The so-called gym and library are nothing much,” one source told the Irish Times. “The gym is probably slightly bigger than a box room in a house.”
That is the reality facing Kinahan, 49, for months until his trial – and possibly decades if convicted.
The Dubliner has not been convicted of any crime and remains innocent before the law, but his extradition on Sunday represents a victory for the Irish state and law enforcement agencies across the world.
Kinahan was named a leader of a cartel said to control about a third of Europe’s cocaine supply, along with running criminal sidelines in firearms and racketeering. From his base in Dubai he had appeared impervious to such allegations for almost a decade, while becoming an influential figure in sport through his boxing management company MTK Global, which arranged championship bouts.
That changed after the US offered a reward of up to $5m (£3.7m) for information that led to his arrest or conviction. The US treasury department said the Kinahan group had engaged in a gang war with another group in Ireland and Spain, “resulting in numerous murders”.
The US bounty helped Ireland to secure an extradition treaty with the UAE last year, paving the way for Kinahan’s arrest in Dubai in April on foot of an Irish warrant.
After failing to block extradition, Kinahan was flown in an Irish government jet to Casement aerodrome on Sunday and taken to the criminal courts of justice in central Dublin where he was charged with directing organised crime.
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Told by one of the three judges that a bail application would have to be made to the high court, the prisoner was phlegmatic. “I think we know I won’t be getting bail, but thank you,” he said.
Observers at the hearing noted that Kinahan, wearing a black hoodie, black tracksuit bottoms and white trainers, looked older than the photographs that show a smiling, more youthful figure. He was pale, reflecting his incarceration since April.
Crowds lined part of the route to watch as he was driven in a Garda car – not a blast-proof prison van, as originally expected – to Portlaoise, a high-security prison 50 miles (80km) outside Dublin that used to house republican paramilitaries and is now home to drug gang members and others convicted of serious crimes.
Kinahan is the sole prisoner on a landing in A block that usually hosts eight inmates. During visits to the yard, which has wire netting to prevent contraband being dropped in, he will be alone. He will be served breakfast at 8am, lunch at 12.30pm and supper at 4.30pm and have a tuck shop account to buy personal items from the prison shop.
Video calls will afford contact with his wife and children in Dubai. A glass pane will separate him from in-person visitors. Kinahan is scheduled to return to the non-jury court on 5 October.
