Armed special branch detectives and officers from the emergency response unit raided a house in Tallaght on Friday night after being tipped off that a kidnapped man was being held there.

They arrested eight men and one woman and freed the hostage who had been stripped naked and badly beaten. He had earlier been abducted from his home in Tallaght.

Gardai believe that the kidnapped man was about to be murdered to send out a message to a south inner city drugs gang to pay the INLA protection money.

One of those being held is Declan 'Whacker' Duffy, a senior INLA leader and one of the men jailed for the infamous 'Ballymount Bloodbath' incident in 1999.

Gardai say that Friday's kidnapping bears striking resemblance to the 1999 incident in which an INLA man was killed after the terrorist group kidnapped and interrogated a man at an industrial estate only for his friends to come and rescue him.

Duffy and his INLA colleagues have recently been attempting to extort money from a south inner city drugs gang but the gang refused to pay and have thrown a number of grenades and other explosive devices at the homes of the INLA figures.

A contract has also allegedly been taken out on the life of Duffy.