McKevitt wanted Iraq’s support, court hears

ALLEGED Real IRA mastermind Michael McKevitt wanted Iraq to help fund his new terror offensive, a court heard yesterday.

FBI agent David Rupert also claimed the dissident Republican leader tried to forge an alliance with Sri Lankan guerrillas and was searching for suicide bombers to attack a British Navy ship.

Even though the case against McKevitt, 53, depends heavily on the evidence of the US businessman, Mr Rupert said he initially refused to testify because of fears he would be shot.

It was only after he watched a heart-wrenching TV documentary on the Omagh bomb attack that he changed his mind, he told Dublin’s Special Criminal Court.

But defence lawyers later attacked his credibility as the star witness in the trial of McKevitt, who denies two charges of directing the Real IRA and being a member of the grouping which killed 29 people and injured hundreds more in the August 1998 Omagh outrage.

They accused him of being a failed businessman who drove a Rolls Royce despite being declared bankrupt twice and failing to pay off his debts.

The former trucking company boss allegedly infiltrated the rogue Republican outfit during the late 1990s and made regular Transatlantic trips to Ireland until his final visit as a double agent in October 2000.

At that time he said he met with McKevitt, of Blackrock, Dundalk, Co Louth on a number of occasions, including once when the accused allegedly told him he had sent some of his top men on a field mission to drum up state sponsorship at a human rights convention in Geneva.

When this scheme did not work out, Mr Rupert said McKevitt told him he had a female contact with Irish connections who was linked to the Tamil Tigers, a guerrilla faction in Sri Lanka.

He added: “They were also looking for possible Iraqi sponsorship.”

The court had heard how McKevitt was planning a new dissident Republican umbrella organisation styled as Oglaigh na hEireann (the IRA) whose first strike he wanted to be even more spectacular than the Omagh bombing.

Mr Rupert said that as McKevitt was mapping out his terror campaign, he went with him on a house-hunting trip along Carlingford Lough near the Border.

During the conversation the accused allegedly spoke about how British naval vessels, which patrolled the waters off the Co Down coast, were seen as provocative by Republicans and also raised the subject of a terrorist strike on a US ship in the Yemen.

Mr Rupert: “He said unfortunately for the IRA, they didn’t have any suicide bombers to run explosive devices into it (the British ship).”