Scotland's gang underworld - Key figures from Daniels, Lyons and Gillespie Brothers

We take a look at the key players in Scotland's underworld.

Scotland is home to several dangerous and powerful organised crime gangs who flood the country with deadly drugs and exercise extreme violence on rivals in a bid to keep control.

The stakes are high in such a lucrative business. The big hitters among the syndicates involved pocket millions of pounds every year, but the threat of death and destruction are very real.

As well as running the risk of being caught and convicted by police, prominent players have legitimate safety fears with several key figures suffering horrific and sometimes deadly attacks over the years.

Here we take a look at some of the most important organised crime figures and the reasons why they came to have such notoriety.

Jamie Stevenson

Thought by many to be Scotland's most prolific drug dealer, Jamie Stevenson is currently serving a 16-year jail term after being caught masterminding a £76million shipment of trafficked cocaine. The 59-year-old was initially caged for 20 years last year over the South America to Scotland smuggling plot, but his prison sentence was cut to 16 years and three months after an appeal by his lawyers.

The gangster, nicknamed Iceman, pleaded guilty to being involved in the supply of cocaine and also admitted his guilt over a plot to flood Scotland with 28 million Etizolam tablets - which are often sold as valium - from a factory in Kent. The authorities thwarted his plot to smuggle 952kg of cocaine to Glasgow Fruit Market from Ecuador.

A total of 119 packages of the Class A drug were seized in the summer of 2020. The seizure came after Border Force officers monitored bananas arriving at Dover and bound for Glasgow. The Etizolam tablets were then discovered following a raid on a factory producing "industrial" amounts of the pills south of the border, and Stevenson was arrested over the find.

But he was released on bail after appearing in an English court over the haul, and was eventually extradited to Scotland after being caught hiding out in the Netherlands. Sources claim he was snared due to an associate, who was also on the run, using a credit card which police had been monitoring, giving them a real-time location where he and Stevenson were hiding out.

He was snared over those offences after being released from prison for an earlier jail term imposed for laundering drug money. In 2007, he was jailed for 12 years and nine months over £1million of crime cash. His arrest then came following an operation by the now-defunct Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency's.

The organisation's probe into Stevenson - codenamed Operation Folklore - was launched in 2004. It was a groundbreaking three-year investigation involving forensic financial analysis and electronic surveillance the likes of which Scottish crime cases had never seen. Stevenson - who is also nicknamed Bull - first came to national attention in September 2000.

He was accused of murdering his friend, Glasgow gangster Tony McGovern, outside a pub in the city. The pair had been best man for each other but Stevenson, who grew up in the notorious Red Road flats in Glasgow's tough Barmulloch area, was identified as a suspect in the killing. It remains unsolved, nearly 25 years on.

The Daniel Clan

One of Scotland's most dangerous gangs, the infamous Glasgow-based Daniel clan has been at war with the Lyons gang for over 20 years. Their feud has turned into a vicious tit-for-tat turf war which has seen stabbings, shootings and murders.

Both outfits operate in the north of the city but have links to other Scottish mobs.

The gang was headed by late crime boss Jamie Daniel, who started his criminal enterprise while a scrap metal dealer in the city's Possil area. Over the years he branched out into other avenues and led the gang until 2016, when he passed away following a battle with cancer.

Steven "Bonzo" Daniel - Jamie's nephew - assumed control of the group, and was subjected to a horrific attack. He was ambushed by members of the rival Lyons group following a Rangers match at Ibrox. He was left horrendously disfigured after his attackers forced him off the road near Port Dundas.

A key Daniel enforcer, Kevin "Gerbil" Carroll, was assassinated in the car park of the Asda store in Glasgow's Robroyston in 2010 - a killing linked to the warring families. Gerbil built up a reputation as one of Scotland's most feared gangsters, said to be responsible for a number of so-called 'alien abduction' attacks.

The abductions would see Gerbil and his crew targeting rival drug dealers while pretending to be police officers. They stormed homes and businesses while claiming to be cops, before beating their rivals and stealing their guns, cash and drugs.

But Gerbil met a violent end himself, when the 29-year-old was shot 13 times in 25 seconds and was found slumped in the back seat of a black Audi A3, having been locked inside the vehicle. Two key Lyons members - Ross Monaghan and William "Buff" Paterson - were charged over the murder, with Paterson being convicted and Monaghan walking free.

And two Daniel-linked hitmen were convicted of a gun ambush which led to the death of Michael Lyons at the Lyons family's Applerow Motors garage in the city's Lambhill area. James McDonald and Raymond Anderson were caged for life over the 2006 incident, which saw them storming the business while masked and dressed in trench coats.

The Lyons Gang

The gang is headed by Steven Lyons, who fled Scotland nearly 20 years ago. He was at Applerow during the attack which claimed his 21-year-old cousin Michael's life. David Lyons - the owner and Steven's uncle - took cover as the carnage unfolded. But Steven, Michael and family associate Robert "Piggy" Pickett were all injured.

Michael was shot dead and Pickett was so badly hurt he lost a kidney. Steven was left nursing wounds but survived the assassination attempt and left Scotland for good almost immediately. He is now understood to be living in Dubai, after initially settling in a Spanish bolthole when he fled abroad.

Pickett went on to exact revenge over the attack himself, being one of the six-strong gang which left Bonzo scarred for life in the Port Dundas ambush attack in May 2017. The High Court in Glasgow heard Pickett and key Lyons member Andrew "Dumbo" Gallacher carried out the attack.

They pulled off the ambush, which took place close to the M8, with the help of four others - Brian Ferguson, John Hardie, Andrew Sinclair and Peter Bain. All six were found guilty of conspiracy to murder, with the court hearing targets were tailed using tracking devices, while the gang used high-power stolen getaway cars and encrypted mobile phones.

Gallacher, who died in prison while serving his jail term for the offence, was a close pal of Ross Monaghan and William Paterson. The attack on Bonzo came just months after Monaghan had been shot. He was targeted by a gunman who had his gun stashed in a buggy, after Monaghan dropped off a child at St George's Primary School, in Glasgow's Penilee area.

Monaghan, a convicted cocaine dealer, had been charged with Gerbil's murder but was acquitted when the case against him collapsed. Monaghan's DNA had been found on one of the guns used to kill Carroll. But he walked free following a DNA blunder involving a technician at the lab where samples were tested.

The DNA of the lab tech - who had not touched the gun and worked three floors above where it was stored - was also found in the sample tested. William Paterson was later convicted and jailed for life over the killing. He had fled to Spain 10 days after the killing but claimed he returned to Scotland from Spain to face justice as he was innocent.

The Gillespie Brothers

Supergang mobsters James and Barry Gillespie ruled the most sophisticated gang ever seen in Scotland, but the pair are missing-presumed-dead after falling foul of South American gangs while hiding out in a Brazilian bolthole. It's understood the pair became embroiled in a row over protection money.

Sources say the crime fugitive siblings - nicknamed The Escobar Brothers in South America, due to their similarities to notorious drug trafficker Pablo Escobar - were murdered by their former associates. When last seen, they were living in a £320,000 ­apartment.

The had fled to the Brazilian city of Fortaleza amid claims from Police Scotland that they ran a multi-million ­pound ­organised crime empire that flooded Scotland with drugs and guns. They posed as wealthy tourists living in the ­apartment - which was four times the size of the average Glasgow flat - and overlooked the idyllic Praia do Meireles beach.

But friends and family went months without hearing from the duo, who ran their own encrypted mobile phone company, leading to Police Scotland to say the "may have come to harm" following their reported fall-out with gangsters. Their MPC Communications firm sold encrypted phones and hinted at the counter-surveillance techniques they deployed to avoid capture.

The pair were wanted over a worldwide probe into money laundering, drug smuggling and weapons trafficking, and were linked to a number of brutal attacks on Scottish soil. After the pair vanished, James "The Don" White, who was a key lieutenant of the pair, assumed control of the gang.

Prosecutors claim White - now serving a 10-year sentence after being extradited from Brazil, where he'd been living in the same apartment block as the Gillespies - made over £126million from his life of crime. A proceeds of crime hearing is set for later this year. The gang was also linked to shamed soldier Martyn Fitzsimmons, who stole ammunition and explosives for gangsters.

As well as being accused of the primary school shooting of Ross Monaghan, Fitzsimmons was caged alongside Gillespie henchmen David Sell, Barry O'Neill, Gerard Docherty, Steven McCardle and Francis Mulligan as part of a police probe into drugs, guns and violence. And cocaine dealer Mark Richardson, linked to a series of recent Edinburgh-based firebombings, was also part of the gang.

Supergang members John Bonner, Christopher Laycock and David Kelly were later caged over their roles in the gang. Bonner was a close ally of Gerbil - and even drove the feared hood to his death. He ferried Gerbil to his execution on the day of the assassination, and was named by police as a suspect in the gangland hit.