Two men were being questioned by gardaí last night after officers working on a specialist operation against organised crime in the midlands foiled an attempted armed raid on a post office.
The men were arrested by armed gardaí outside the post office at Baylough, Athlone, Co Westmeath, just before noon yesterday. They were posing as workmen and were dressed in high-visibility jackets and hard hats.
Gardaí believe they were about to raid the post office as they were surrounded by armed officers. One man was found in possession of a sawn-off shotgun.
The men, aged 33 and 29, are from the Athlone area. Gardaí believe that they have been responsible for up to 10 armed robberies at financial institutions and retail outlets across the midlands in the last six months in Westmeath, Longford, Laois, Offaly and Carlow.
Supt Aiden Glackin of Athlone Garda station said yesterday's operation involved local armed and uniformed gardaí. He said the men had been under surveillance for some time by the National Surveillance Unit (NSU) and Emergency Response Unit (ERU) and were being held at Athlone Garda station.
They were arrested under section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act and can be held for 72 hours without charge.
Yesterday's operation was the latest in a series of planned Garda operations against armed gangs in the regions as part of an expansion of Operation Anvil outside the greater Dublin area.
Operation Anvil was established in May 2005 to tackle increased activity by armed gangs in Dublin following a series of gun murders and robberies of security vans in which €6 million was taken in a six-month period.
Some €21.5 million in ring-fenced funding has been allocated to Operation Anvil allowing gardaí in flashpoint Dublin suburbs to work up to 15,000 hours of overtime a week, focusing exclusively on a target list of armed criminals.
However, Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy, as revealed in The Irish Times two weeks ago, has now asked assistant commissioners with responsibility for the policing in the regions to submit plans to him as to how Operation Anvil could be used to target armed gangs in their areas.
These plans have now been submitted and surveillance and intelligence gathering operations have begun.
Detectives from a number of specialist Garda units, including the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, NSU, ERU and the Criminal Assets Bureau, have been made available to the assistant commissioners under Operation Anvil.
The nationwide campaign against the gangs is being headed by Deputy Commissioner Fachtna Murphy who has overall responsibility for operational policing across the Garda.
