Witness claims he was told to report ‘death threat’ by garda

A MAN who falsely claimed he had been threatened with death by a silver bullet was put up to it by a garda sergeant, the Morris Tribunal into garda corruption in Donegal heard yesterday.

Bernard Conlon, 49, from Cartron Bay in Sligo, said he regretted making the false allegations, which led to the arrest of two men in 1998 and 1999. “I was led and said by a certain person up the garden path. I feel sorry for the people who were injured and the guards that got involved in it.”

He said it was Sergeant John White, from the Donegal Division, who had prompted him to make the death threat allegations against two members of the extended McBrearty family, Mark McConnell and Michael Peoples.

“I seemed to have been under pressure from Sergeant White. He was anxious to get Mark McConnell and Michael Peoples and he was anxious to get the McBreartys. He was set on those people, he didn’t like them.”

The invented events of July 20, 1998, involved two men with Northern accents visiting Mr Conlon at his home and threatening him over his involvement in a liquor licensing prosecution being taken against the McBreartys. Mr Conlon said that, as well as being pressurised by Sergeant White, he felt obliged to him because he had already received money in brown envelopes for his court appearances. “The favour was to say they called to my home and that they produced a silver bullet to me and to say they seen me at the courthouse in Letterkenny and that they called in a state informer.”

Senior counsel Peter Charleton asked Mr Conlon if he had been acting to a script, when he turned off the lights in his home and acted frightened when his housemate returned that night.

“That was Sergeant White’s idea, he told me to look worried and depressed.”

Mr Conlon got his friend to call the gardaí and added that he ‘hoodwinked’ the two officers who arrived to take his statement.He told the tribunal that, with the help of Sergeant White, he later pointed out Mark McConnell and Michael Peoples on separate occasions in Letterkenny courthouse as the two men in his fictional story.

“I knew it was wrong but I had no other option,” he said.

Mr Conlon received around IR£2,000 in witness expenses for making more than 30 court appearances at the behest of gardaí in connection with the prosecution against the McBreartys. “I was blue in the face from travelling up and down in an unmarked patrol car. I got my bellyful of court cases.”

However, he said he was well fed by the gardaí in the station canteen in Letterkenny and on one occasion he was given a bottle of Paddy whiskey by Sergeant White for being a ‘star witness’.

“He used to call me Detective Garda Conlon. ‘Stick to your guns, Detective Garda Conlon’, that’s what he’d say,” said Mr Conlon.

Sergeant White, who is currently suspended from the force, was acquitted oncharges of perverting the course of justice at Letterkenny Circuit Court lastJanuary. He has denied the allegations made by Mr Conlon, who was convicted of making false statements against Mr McConnell and Mr Peoples.