Spanish police are investigating possible links between the discovery yesterday of cocaine valued at €9.2 million and the murder on Monday of Dubliner Paddy Doyle.
Paddy Doyle
Eight men, including one Irish national, are being questioned by Spanish police today.
Some 115kg of cocaine, valued at €9.2 million, was discovered in false compartments in a furniture lorry. Security sources in Spain said the cocaine was believed to be high in purity and was about to be taken out of the area when the police moved in.
The same sources said they believed Doyle's murder was linked to a drugs row with rival drugs traffickers in Spain rather than an Irish gangland feud.
The drugs were found in Estepona on the Costa del Sol close to where 27-year-old Doyle was gunned down on Monday
The Spanish interior ministry's senior official in Malaga, Juan López-Garzón, said: "All the signs pointed to a connection between the drugs and Doyle's death and the men in custody appear to be linked to [the murder]."
However, senior Garda sources were treating the development with caution, saying it had yet to be definitively established that the drugs and murder were linked.
Doyle was traveling as a passenger in a SUV with two other men near Marbella, in the Cancelada district of Estepona, around 10 miles south of Marbella when a number of shots were fired at the car causing it to crash. It is believed that Doyle was then shot at least twice as he tried to escape on foot.