Gardaí failed to pass on allegations of brutality

EVIDENCE of alleged garda brutality was not included in an official police report on a botched murder investigation, it emerged yesterday.

A solicitor’s letter of complaint about the mistreatment of Frank McBrearty Jnr — wrongly accused of beating Donegal cattle dealer Richie Barron to death — went missing either through negligence or “nefarious” reasons, it was claimed.

Lawyer James Sweeney wrote up the document and delivered it to gardaí after his client, Mr McBrearty, claimed officers had physically abused him, called him an alcoholic wife-beater and a “murdering bastard” during his interrogation.

Mr McBrearty was arrested on December 4, 1996, as a prime suspect in the murder of Mr Barron. It later emerged that the dead man was a hit-and-run victim, and that Mr McBrearty was innocent.

The Morris Tribunal discovered a copy of the solicitor’s letter passed on by gardaí to the Director of Public Prosecution (DPP), as part of the case files, was different from the original.

Most of the serious allegations — including the use of a bogus confession from Mr McBrearty’s cousin — were carried on the second page of the letter.

This was not included in the copy the tribunal obtained as part of the ‘Lennon Report’ — the official files on the case that sent to the DPP, in early 1998, by Supt Kevin Lennon.

Another page had been inserted in its place, apparently a copy from a different letter concerning Mr McBrearty’s father, making no reference to abuse.

Tribunal barrister Paul McDermott SC said: “It may be that it was inserted for that purpose and the real second page was removed for nefarious purposes. Or it may not be. It may be simply chaos or negligence.”

Mr Sweeney produced at the hearings into garda corruption his copy of the letter from a “skeleton file” his firm had retained on the case, after Mr McBrearty changed solicitor.