‘Dangerous and dictatorial’

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell was under mounting pressure last night after he admitted leaking documentation from a garda file on Frank Connolly to a national newspaper.

The opposition claimed Mr McDowell had abused his office, acting in a “dangerous and dictatorial manner” by releasing information on Mr Connolly, a former journalist who allegedly travelled to Colombia on a false passport in April 2001.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) said it was profoundly ironic that Mr McDowell had leaked garda documents given the stiff sanctions he introduced against members of the force who divulged certain information to the media.

Mr McDowell has accused Mr Connolly of participating in “an arrangement whereby the Provisional IRA furnished know-how in the use of explosives” to Colombian rebels.

The minister released to the Irish Independent a copy of the bogus application which Mr Connolly is alleged to have used to obtain the false passport.

Mr Connolly, however, insists that he has never been to Colombia. He is not facing charges, as the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) has directed that no prosecution be brought against him.

NUJ secretary Seamus Dooley said Mr McDowell had behaved in a manner prejudicial to Mr Connolly. “Regardless of the alleged wrongdoing, suspects have a right to due process.”

Professor of Law at the University of Limerick Dermot Walsh said the minister should retract his statements about Mr Connolly and apologise.

“The central issue here is the extent to which a Government minister, a partisan politician, can effectively arrogate to himself the whole power and authority of the courts and the criminal justice system by making statements as if they were fact, as if they were judicially proved, about criminal conduct on the part of an individual. That’s what you get in a police state.”

However, Tánaiste Mary Harney gave full backing to her party colleague. The Taoiseach did not comment on the matter, his press office saying last night it did not have opportunity to broach it with him because of his busy schedule. However, Mr Ahern is expected to endorse Mr McDowell’s stance in the Dáil today, when the opposition will raise the matter.

Mr McDowell yesterday insisted he stood over “every single word” of what he had told the media and the Dáil about Mr Connolly. He rejected assertions that he was damaging the reputation of Mr Connolly, who heads the independent Centre for Public Inquiry.

“It’s not blackening somebody to tell the truth as you see it,” Mr McDowell told RTÉ Radio.

He was entitled to release the false passport application to the media, he said, because it was not a confidential document.

Meanwhile, although Mr McDowell said he told billionaire businessman Chuck Feeney “the plain, unvarnished truth” about Mr Connolly, the minister’s office insisted he did not show Mr Feeney the garda case file when they met.

Mr Feeney’s charitable organisation, Atlantic Philanthropies, pulled its €800,000-a-year funding from the CPI last week.

The CPI had in recent months begun researching the €30 million purchase by Mr McDowell’s department of the Thornton Hall site in Co Dublin, earmarked for a new prison complex.