A second Irish man has said he will fight a bid to extradite him to the UK following his recent arrest in Spain.
Jack Kavanagh (22) was arrested in Málaga Airport on a stopover as he travelled from Dubai to Turkey. His arrest followed a request from the British authorities.
Dublin criminal Liam Byrne, who was named in the Dublin High Court as a “trusted lieutenant of Daniel Kinahan and the Kinahan organised crime group”, had told a Spanish court he is opposing his extradition to the UK after he was also arrested in Spain.
On Thursday, officials confirmed Kavanagh had adopted the same position at an earlier hearing following his May 30th arrest on the Costa del Sol.
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Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said the two men had been arrested in relation to suspected serious firearms offences.
Both men were sent to prison after making it clear they did not agree to Britain’s extradition requests in separate hearings before a judge at Spain’s Audiencia Nacional court.
The court, which deals with all extradition proceedings, is based in Madrid but can arrange for hearings to take place by videoconference where arrests on international warrants have taken place elsewhere in Spain. Such hearings always take place in private.
The men’s decision to fight extradition means separate hearings will now take place where their defence lawyer will put forward reasons why they should not be made to go to the UK.
This is expected to delay any extradition by several weeks if not months. No date for the hearings, which would take place separately, has yet been set.
Kay Mellor, regional head of investigations at the NCA, confirmed Kavanagh had been held on an international arrest warrant issued in relation to “serious firearms offences” following his detention.
She said he and Byrne had been “evading justice for a number of years”.
The NCA revealed Kavanagh had been held days earlier only when it confirmed Byrne was in custody.
Byrne was arrested in a restaurant in Alcúdia on Sunday evening at the request of the NCA.