Hitman suspect in Scots hoods' costa murders moved across Spain to avoid brother of victim

Crime

Michael Riley has been transferred 700 miles to a maximum-security prison ahead of Steven Lyons' expected extradition from the Netherlands

Gerard Couzens

The suspected killer of Scots hoods Ross Monaghan and Eddie Lyons Jnr has been moved from the Costa prison the brother of one of his alleged victims is expected to end up at if he gets extradited to Spain.

Crime boss Steven Lyons, currently in custody in the Netherlands after his March 28 arrest there, is likely to spend time in Alhaurin de la Torre jail if as expected he is remanded into custody after being flown to Madrid to face money laundering and gang membership charges.

Michael Riley was sent to the tough prison near Malaga close to the court probing him over the May 31 2025 murders of Steven's sibling and Monaghan shortly after his extradition last October from the UK following a short spell at a VIP jail north of the Spanish capital.

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It can now be revealed, a year on from the shootings at Monaghan’s Fuengirola pub, that Riley has been moved to a maximum-security lock-up nearly 700 miles away.

The 45-year-old's new home is Teixeiro Prison in Spain’s north-west region of Galicia, a 10.5 hour drive from the place where he was being held.

The reason for the transfer has not been officially disclosed, but is thought to be part of a pre-emptive security move to neutralise the problems that could occur if he and Lyons end up together.

Spanish prison chiefs said they couldn’t comment on individual cases.

But a prisons' spokesman said: “Remand prisoners are normally held close to the courts which have ordered them to serve pre-trial detention.

“There are many reasons why a transfer can take place.

“One could be that the inmate himself has requested it, that another court in another locality wants to question him, that a particular penitentiary centre is the most adequate one for that person if he’s undergoing treatment for addictions.

“Another reason could also be that it’s decided it’s inadvisable for a prisoner to be in a certain prison for security reasons.”

A well-placed source added: “Riley’s new home is almost about as far as you can travel on the Spanish mainland from his old prison.

“If Steven Lyons is the reason he’s been moved, and it looks likely it is, then prison chiefs have gone overboard to make sure they put distance between them.”

Teixeiro Prison, Galicia’s largest lock-up, was officially opened in 1998 for just over 1,000 inmates and its facilities are currently being modernised.

Alfonso Basterra, sentenced to 18 years behind bars for the 2013 murder of his adopted 12-year-old China-born daughter in a crime dramatised by Netflix in its 2024 hit series ‘The Asunta Case', has been one of its most infamous inmates in recent years.

Others have included convicted ETA terrorist Jose Antonio Borde Gaztelumendi, convicted of killing two people although he was linked to more than 20 bomb attacks that claimed 16 lives.

Riley’s new prison made headlines in 2021 with a pioneering mixed-gender cell block called the Nelson Mandela wing, although the Brit is not thought to be one of its inmates.

Court sources confirmed overnight he is still under investigation by the judge in Fuengirola who ordered his remand to prison, but said he has yet to be formally indicted.

Indictments in Spain are normally only laid shortly before trial after investigating judges have concluded criminal probes that can take months if not years to complete.

After Michael Riley’s capture in Liverpool last June for the murder of Steven Lyons’ brother and pal, Malaga-based police chief Pedro Agudo Novo claimed he was about to flee his UK bolthole for a “paradise island tax haven” when he was held on an international arrest warrant.

He also said the man accused of shooting dead the mobsters at Ross Monaghan’s now-renamed Irish pub Monaghans Fuengirola, was a member of a rival Scots gang he identified as the Daniel crime clan.

Police Scotland insisted afterwards they had “no intelligence” to suggest the killings were linked to the turf war there.

Steven Lyons’ next court hearing in the Netherlands, to decide whether he can be extradited to Spain to face charges, has been scheduled for this Thursday.

He was held in Amsterdam on a European Arrest Warrant issued by a Malaga judge after being put on a plane to Holland following his deportation from Bali.

His detention followed a series of raids in Scotland and on the Costa del Sol resulting in the arrests of more than a dozen people as part of Operation Arborum against the Lyons Gang.

The seven arrested in Spain, who include Lyons’ sister-in-law Rebecca Hayes, are also being investigated on suspicion of money laundering and membership of a criminal organisation by the same judge who made the crime boss a wanted man.

Steven Lyons’ glamorous moll wife Amanda, 38, was held at Dubai’s airport at the request of Spanish police who remain confident she will also end up in custody on the Costa del Sol after being extradited along with her husband.

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