A gangland enforcer who admitted abducting, torturing and murdering rivals has died after an illness.
Drug runner James “Jaimba” McLean was hired to carry out violent crimes by some of Scotland’s most feared thugs.
He died in a Glasgow hospital on Saturday after suffering from several illnesses in recent years and battling with serious mental health disorders.
Dad-of-two McLean, 53, was closely associated with former gangland enforcer Paul Ferris and also boasted of ties to the IRA, claiming he was a hired gun who killed four people for the terrorist group and tortured far more.
A source said: “He was quite a personable guy but always had that coldness in his eyes and a fearlessness that meant he would take things to a higher level than most others.
“Jaimba would brag a lot about the stuff he’d done but had become a bit delusional.
“It would be best to take the stuff about being an IRA killer with a pinch of salt but he did a lot of damage locally in Cranhill and people were genuinely terrified of him.”
The source added: “He suffered lots of health problems and had a major operation on his stomach a few years ago. He was also hard to talk to on account of his mental health problems, which were probably connected to the huge amount of cocaine and heroin he had smoked over the years.”
In newspaper interviews, McLean claimed to have murdered several people and was featured in Bravo TV documentary series Danny Dyer’s Deadliest Men, about the UK’s toughest criminals.
McLean said he collected £25,000 for a hit on a drugs associate in London and later admitted abducting and torturing other rivals in Glasgow’s drugs wars.
He said of the London hit: “I shot the victim in the back of the head. Then I took him to a scrapyard and put him in a furnace. I tortured people and killed a few more but they were informers.”
McLean grew up in the Springburn, Glasgow. He claimed he learned to drive stolen cars aged seven, before graduating to ram-raid thefts.
He was jailed in 1987 for six years for the £20,000 armed robbery of The New Inn in Glasgow.
In his last known interview, he said: “I feel confident that when I die, I’ll be going straight to heaven. There’s no way I’ll be going to hell because I’ve done nothing wrong.”
