AN ex-INLA gunman, who worked secretly in a Dublin barbers for 15 years before he was arrested, has insisted: “If they send me back North I’m dead.”

Frankie ‘Studs’ Lanigan, 52, one of the PSNI’s most wanted men, is being sought for questioning in connection with the murder of drug baron John Knocker outside a Co Tyrone nightclub in 1998.

3 Lanigan after he was shot in 1993

He fled south afterwards, setting himself up as a self-employed barber in a Dublin gym and changing his name to Ciaran McCrory.

But in 2012, gardai found out his true identity when they took his fingerprints from a paper cup he had been drinking from and he was arrested on foot of a European Arrest Warrant in January, 2013.

Former kick-boxer Lanigan, who is the only surviving member of the losing faction in the high-profile INLA feud of 1996, spent nearly three years on remand in Cloverhill Prison and has been fighting his extradition ever since.

In an exclusive interview with the Irish Sun on Sunday, he said: “I was warned by the RUC there was a very credible threat to my life and I have the letters to prove it.

3 Lanigan at 1984 funeral of McCann

“That night I took a very severe beating at the hands of Knocker and others and the orders were that I be murdered but I escaped.

“If I’m sent back North I’ll be held in Maghaberry Prison where there are INLA members still with old scores to settle.

“Other Republicans want me dead because I know too much about the struggle and then there’s the loyalists in the prison.

“And when I was a youngster in the 1980s I committed a number of gun attacks on British soldiers. A lot of those soldiers married girls from Northern Ireland so many of them are still up North.

“I’m dead one way or the other if I get sent back so I’m fighting my extradition tooth and nail.

“I have a long-term partner since I settled in Dublin and we have two young daughters. That chapter of my life is dead and buried and I just want to live a normal life now.”

Knocker was an enforcer for drug dealer Brendan ‘Speedy’ Fegan and was shot outside the Exit 51 club at the Glengannon Hotel outside Dungannon on May 31, 1998 — a month after the Good Friday Agreement.

Lanigan has always been the chief suspect but he fled the jurisdiction and started a new life in Dublin.

His career as a high-profile republican gunman has left him with many enemies.

The terror group Oglaigh na hEireann were reported to have issued a threat to Lanigan’s life following his arrest in January, 2013.

3 Lanigan now

It read: “If Francis Lanigan is extradited, he will be executed — either inside jail or outside.”

Lanigan, originally from west Belfast, joined the republican cause when he was just 15 and became one of the youngest ever Provisional IRA volunteers at 17 before joining the INLA when he was 19.

His best friend and INLA member Paul ‘Bonanza’ McCann shot himself while drunk during a gun battle with the RUC in 1984. A police officer also died in this incident.

He said: “I was a boy soldier, the youngest ever volunteer in the Provisional IRA. My speciality was gun attacks on RUC stations and gun attacks on British soldiers.

“Then my best friend Paul ‘Bonanza’ McCann died. I fired one of the volley of shots at his funeral.

“Not long after I was jailed for ten years for conspiracy to murder RUC officers. I served about six to seven years in the H-Blocks and when I was released I went straight back to active INLA service.”

Lanigan admitted he tried to murder Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair, who also tried to have him shot dead in 1993. He explained: “A gunman burst into a barbers shop in

Belfast but they got the wrong shop and an innocent barber was shot dead. I was in a shop around the corner.

“Johnny Adair and the Ulster Freedom Fighters were behind that. I’m named in his book. I was shot and my mother was shot in a gun attack on our home. I escaped but when I was recovering in hospital gunmen arrived to finish the job but that hit failed.

“Then not long after that the INLA feud kicked off in 1996 and a lot of my friends were killed.”

The high-profile internal war was sparked when Gino Gallagher tried to muscle the leadership of the INLA from Hugh Torney, who was jailed for a period following the seizure of guns in Balbriggan.

Gallagher was shot dead by Kevin McAlorum as he waited in a Falls Road dole queue in January, 1996. Six more people died in the feud, including McAlorum’s nine-year-old sister Barbara.

It ended when Torney was shot dead in Lurgan in September, 1996. However, associates of Gallagher waited until 2004 for revenge against McAlorum, who was shot dead outside a south Belfast primary school as he dropped his kids off.

It was this killing which inadvertently led the authorities to close in on Lanigan. He told the Irish Sun on Sunday: “I was aligned to Torney’s GHQ faction and Kevin was my friend, I’d never do anything to hurt him. When I first came down south I had friends in the IRA who set me up with a new identity and new papers.

“I was enjoying life, wasn’t involved in any criminality and had started a family. People were good to me and I enjoyed working for myself as a self-employed barber.

“A couple of years after Kevin’s murder the PSNI told his family that I killed him but this was such a lie, he was my friend.

“In 2004, when Kevin was murdered I was down south cutting hair and keeping my head down, of course I had nothing to do with it.

“His family gave up where I was and my new identity in 2008. It wasn’t until 2012 that gardai came knocking . . . and I was arrested in January, 2013.

“Who spends nearly three years in prison without being charged with anything? Surely they messed up because no one has ever spent that length of time on remand, I didn’t get bail until the end of 2015.”

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As well as the Knocker and McAlorum killings, it’s understood authorities in the North also want to question him about the murder of dealer Brendan Campbell in February, 1998.

The High Court ordered Lanigan’s surrender to Northern Irish authorities in August, 2015 but he was subsequently bailed, with his extradition delayed on several occasions.

His case has come before nine High Court judges, the Court of Criminal Appeal, the Supreme Court and was once before the European Court of Justice. There is currently a reserved judgement in his case.