Security sources believe Peter Butterly may have been killed in an internal 'clean out' of suspected informers within Real IRA

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

A dissident republican has been shot dead at a pub on the east coast of Ireland.

In a follow up operation the Garda Siochana arrested four men in connection with the fatal shooting.

The dead man is understood to be Peter Butterly who was arrested back in 2010 after the Irish security forces found a large Real IRA arms dump in Co Louth.

Butterly was murdered while sitting in a car outside The Huntsman pub in the seaside resort of Laytown in Co Meath close to the M1 motorway linking Dublin to Belfast.

Security sources said the gang responsible for the shooting had been under surveillance and after shots were heard armed Garda officers moved into the scene and arrested four men. They are being held under the Republic's anti-terror laws, the Offences Against the State Act.

Although the remnants of the Real IRA in Dublin – now part of the anti-peace process coalition styling itself as the new IRA – has been involved in a violent feud with non-political armed criminals in the Irish capital, it is not thought Butterly's murder was linked to that turf war. Security sources indicated he may have been killed in an internal "clean out" of suspected informers within the republican terror group.

Butterly walked free from the Republic's special criminal court last year after the case against him and another man collapsed because the non jury court ruled he had been unlawfully arrested after the seizure of explosives in Co Louth.

No evidence was heard in the trial of Butterly, of Cortown, Togher, Dunleer, who had pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Óglaigh na hÉireann, on 8 October 2010.