FIVE MEN were still being questioned in Garda stations in Dublin last night, following a shooting in the Ballyfermot area on Monday night.
The 20-year-old victim, who was shot in the lower torso, was said to be in an stable condition at St James's Hospital in Dublin yesterday.
The attack has been linked with a criminal gang that has been involved in the long-running Crumlin-Drimnagh feud. Monday night's attack was believed to be a drugs-related incident but it is not clear if the man was abducted or if he had arranged to meet his attackers in the area where he was shot.
The alarm was raised shortly before 10pm when Ballyfermot Garda station received a call from a member of the public, saying that gunshots had been heard in the vicinity of Cherry Orchard Hospital in Ballyfermot.
Gardaí were at the scene within minutes and, after a search of the hospital grounds, they found the injured man in a green area at the rear of the complex, close to the Wheatfield Prison grounds.
He was taken to St James's Hospital where a hospital spokeswoman described his condition as "stable in recovery" last night. She could not say what treatment he had received, for patient confidentiality reasons.
Within minutes of the injured man being discovered, gardaí stopped two cars on the Ballyfermot Road. Some five men travelling in the cars were arrested and are now being held at Garda stations in Clondalkin, Lucan, Ballyfermot and Ronanstown.
Four of the men are in their 20s while the fifth man is in his 30s. They were arrested under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act and can be held for questioning for up to 72 hours. They must then be released or charged.
Gardaí seized the cars in which the men were travelling and they underwent a technical examination yesterday. Gardaí also took control of a Honda Civic that had been found burned out at Palmers Grove, not far from the Ballyfermot Road. The green area where the man was found was also sealed off for a technical examination.
Early yesterday it was reported that the victim was not co-operating with gardaí investigating the attack. A Garda spokesman said he could not comment on that as it was an operational matter.
The five men arrested are believed to have links with one side of the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud. It has been described as the bloodiest gangland dispute ever seen in this State and is estimated to have cost 10 lives in the past eight years.
No one has been killed as part of the feud this year but there appears to have been an escalation in violence in recent months, with members of extended families being targeted.
In June, a grandmother in her 50s was nursing her young grandchild when a handgun was fired into her house from a passing car.
She was wounded in the shoulder.
Later that day, there was a revenge attack when another gun was fired into a house occupied by an elderly couple in the south inner city. In both cases, the victims were related to key players in the feud.
The dispute began in the late 1990s when the group were in their late teens and were involved in the drugs trade.
They worked together initially but the split began after gardaí seized drugs in a hotel in the south inner city in 2000.
Gardaí arrested two men at the scene and they were later convicted. However, a third man had left the room before gardaí arrived and he escaped conviction and jail. The feud began when he was accused by some of his associates of being an informer.
