'Gangster' behind Greenock firebombing spree 'distributing drugs'

Shocking phone footage posted on social media by Robert Warnock shows two inmates filling blue bags with white powder within what appears to be a cell room while music blares out from a speaker system.

Warnock, 27, shows off an expensive Samsung folding phone in the clip and laughs as he tells his pals to 'get the lines out troops', in apparent reference to trails of white powder on a nearby desk.

READ MORE: Greenock firebombers jailed for 64 years at High Court

A jail insider claims Warnock - who tried to murder seven people, including a six-year-old child in the firebomb attacks in 2020 - has been distributing smartphones and drugs at HMP Addiewell in West Lothian.

The source said: “After all the political kick up and newspaper coverage of Warnock using illegal smartphones to organise those petrol bombings, he is still using and flashing not only illegal smartphones in prison, but drug dealing in prison as well.

“He’s currently in Addiewell prison, he’s not long out of segregation, were he spent over a year for his own protection."

Another prison source said: “He’s well known for buying friends and protection in prison with his smartphones and drugs, and as you can see he’s not wasted time in getting back to his old ways now that he’s back in normal circulation.”

Warnock used an illicit sim card to issue orders to his henchman on the outside, Craig McFarlane, who in turn recruited others to target properties on Union Street in Greenock and Cumberland Road in Larkfield.

The thug -  who was already serving an 11-year sentence for attempted murder - orchestrated the attacks against relatives of his arch enemy Lenny Cole.

His use of a banned device sparked a response from the then-Conservative shadow justice secretary and Greenock-born MSP Jamie Greene, who demanded a probe into the Covid pandemic plan which saw Warnock receive a mobile phone.

Warnock - sentenced along with McFarlane to 15 years for the bombings - was given a fresh prison sentence earlier this year after being caught for the sixth time with a banned communications device in prison.

The phone was found concealed in his clothing after prison officers subjected him to a full body search in HMP Addiewell.

At the time of the firebombings, Warnock was serving time at Shotts Prison in Lanarkshire for trying to murder a woman while she waited for a taxi in Greenock.

He was armed with a meat cleaver and an axe when he attacked the defenceless victim in the east end of the town, inflicting horrific injuries.

Warnock also seriously wounded her partner when the man went to her aid during that brutal assault.

A Scottish Prison Service risk an interventions manager told the fire bombing trial last year that mobile phones were issued to prisoners in early September of 2020.

The High Court in Glasgow heard that illicit SIM cards were found 'on a fairly regular basis then, and indeed now' and this had resulted in 'any monitoring of the phones being avoided'.

Lord Mulholland - a former Greenock prosecutor - branded Warnock, McFarlane and their cohorts Brendan O'Donnell, Kieran McAnally, Drew Darling and Cain Carr 'gangsters' following the trial.

Lord Mulholland told them: "You sought to turn Greenock into a warzone.

"The good people of Greenock deserve better than being subjected to this gangsterism."

The Telegraph asked Addiewell Prison operator Sodexo for comment but the company had not responded at time of going to press.