From drug theft to Dubai arrests: How a Scottish gangland feud went global

Arrests of four major Scottish crime figures in Dubai remain shrouded in mystery more than a week after they were taken into custody. Steven Lyons, Ross McGill, Stephen Jamieson and Steven Larwood have been held in the United Arab Emirates since Sept. 16, and Police Scotland has said the men are connected to criminal activity ranging from drug importation to violence that has punctuated Scotland’s central belt in recent years. The UAE has not publicly confirmed the arrests, and British authorities have provided limited detail as investigators work to determine the nature of the charges.

The four are tied to a long-running feud between the Lyons and Daniel crime families, a conflict that has spanned roughly a quarter of a century and now involves a second generation of leaders. The Lyons group is led by Steven Lyons, one of the men detained in Dubai, and traces its power back to Eddie Lyons, a figure from Cumbernauld who died before the feud’s modern escalation. The Daniel clan was built around Jamie Daniel, who built a substantial criminal enterprise after a scrap-metal background. When Daniel died in 2016, the leadership cycle that followed was said to have passed to Jamie Daniel’s nephew, Steven “Bonzo” Daniel.

The origins of the feud trace to a 2001 theft of a £20,000 stash of cocaine from a Daniel safe house in Glasgow’s north end, but it rose to headline status in 2006 after Michael Lyons, 21, was shot in a MoT garage near the city. Two masked gunmen entered the property and fired, leaving Lyons and his associate Robert Pickett injured. The attack was later described in court as a scene out of The Godfather, and it marked a turning point in the feud. In 2008, Daniel gang members were convicted for the shooting and handed lengthy sentences, a sequence that triggered a wave of retaliatory violence across the west of Scotland over the following years. In 2010, Kevin “Gerbil” Carroll, a known enforcer for the Daniel faction, was killed in a crowded supermarket car park after a tense confrontation that ended with 13 shots fired at him as he sat in the back of a vehicle.

The violence did not stop there. In January 2010 the feud claimed a second victim, Kevin Carroll, a high-profile enforcer for the Daniel faction who was killed in a Glasgow car park. The shooting was followed by a series of retaliatory attacks that polarized communities and intensified police scrutiny. A notable episode in the Lyons’ rise occurred in May 2017, when Steven “Bonzo” Daniel survived a high-speed chase that ended in a crash and a brutal bladed-weapon assault, an incident that later formed part of court testimony about the gang’s code and methods. In 2015, William “Buff” Paterson, who had fled to Spain after Carroll’s murder, was convicted of murder and given a minimum 22-year sentence. The dashboard of violence that followed drew widespread attention to the extent of the feuding and the reach of its players beyond Scotland’s borders.

The Dubai arrests are not the first time UK authorities have linked the feud to international networks. Jamie “Iceman” Stevenson, who was jailed last year for masterminding a £100 million cocaine-smuggling plot from South America in boxes of bananas, referenced the case during his trial and connected Jamieson to ongoing investigations. Jamieson’s current whereabouts were described as unknown during that proceeding, complicating efforts to trace leadership and control across the network. The Lyons-Daniel conflict also intersected with more recent episodes in Edinburgh in March, where a flare of violence suggested the feud’s reach had spread beyond its Glasgow heartland. In that period, a house in Milton, Edinburgh, and other targets were attacked, with the violence acting as a reminder that the rival factions maintained a capacity to strike far from their traditional bases.

The Dubai development comes amid broader links between Lyons and the Kinahan cartel network. US authorities in 2022 offered substantial rewards for information on Kinahan leadership, and investigators believe Lyons cultivated ties to the Dubai-based Kinahan operation, a connection that has fed tensions within the UAE-linked criminal space. Daniel kinship with global cartels has been cited by researchers and law enforcement as a factor that can magnify violence and expand the geographic footprint of feuds once contained to a single city or country. A BBC Scotland Scotcast producer noted that by the mid-2010s the Lyons group had expanded its profits and reach by leveraging international networks, particularly in the UAE and Spain, where they could access sophisticated financial systems and property markets that offered a degree of leverage for illicit activity.

The Jose Lambert-like complexity of these networks has made extradition and cross-border policing a central challenge. In recent months, law enforcement has pursued a series of operations under the umbrella of a Scotland-wide strategy to disrupt organised crime and target gang leaders. Operation Portaledge has yielded dozens of arrests, bringing the total number of suspects detained in Scotland to 57 at the time of the Dubai arrests. The Dubai cases add another layer of intrigue and raise questions about how far overseas jurisdictions will go to repatriate suspects to face charges. Interpol and UK authorities have indicated that they would pursue extradition where appropriate, though such requests must navigate the legal frameworks and human rights considerations of the country holding the suspects.

The UAE’s role in global crime enforcement has evolved in recent years. Officials note that Dubai’s regulatory environment and its position as a financial hub have attracted many international criminals seeking a degree of impunity, while also making it a focal point for intelligence-sharing and cross-border prosecutions. In the wake of the Dubai operation, observers said that any potential extradition of the four men would likely involve careful legal consideration of due process rights, evidentiary standards, and the possibility of fair trials abroad. In Dublin, a separate development unfolded as Sean McGovern, a suspected gangland figure, appeared before the Special Criminal Court on charges including a 2016 murder. His case has underscored that Irish authorities and UK law enforcement are increasingly coordinating on cross-border crime matters, and it has fueled discussions about how extradition requests to the UAE are handled, given historical caution over due process guarantees.

On the ground in Scotland, officials have stressed that the Dubai arrests, if confirmed, could signal a turning point in the authorities’ ability to disrupt the leadership of powerful, cross-border criminal networks. Police Scotland Chief Constable Jo Farrell has publicly pledged to target crime bosses who direct violence from abroad, and she has said investigators would continue to work with the Crown Office and the National Crime Agency to pursue suspects wherever they reside. Authorities in the UAE have not publicly commented on the cases, and a Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office spokesperson said the government was in contact with the families of British nationals in the UAE and with local authorities as part of ongoing liaison.

The precise charges, timelines, and potential extradition outcomes remain unclear, and officials warn that any formal procedure could take weeks or months. The development underscores the global reach of Scotland’s gangland feud and signals that the fight is far from contained within the country’s borders. As investigators connect the dots between drug trafficking, extortion, violence, and international networks, watchers will be closely monitoring whether the Dubai arrests act as a catalyst for further cross-border prosecutions or, conversely, create new uncertainties about where the next flashpoints will occur.