McKevitt appeal over conviction dismissed

A bid by the Real IRA’s Michael McKevitt to have his conviction for directing terrorist activities declared a miscarriage of justice has been dismissed by the Court of Criminal Appeal.

In Aug 2003, McKevitt, aged 63, became the first person in the history of the State to be jailed for directing terrorist activities.

Yesterday, the three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal, with Mr Justice John MacMenamin presiding, dismissed McKevitt’s application, made under a section of the Criminal Procedure Act on the grounds that it was “unstateable and unarguable”.

The State, in a preliminary application, had asked the court to strike out McKevitt’s application as an abuse of process.

McKevitt was not present for yesterday’s ruling.

His lawyers had argued his conviction for directing terrorist activities should be set aside because a search warrant used to search his home was issued under section 29 of the Offences Against the State Act, which the Supreme Court subsequently ruled as unconstitutional, following a case brought by Ali Charaf Damache.

Any question of the warrant issue being unconstitutional was not raised by McKevitt or his lawyers at the trial or at his appeal. They also argued that evidence used against McKevitt at trial was taken while he was not legally represented.

The State asked the appeals court to dismiss the application as it was not based on any new or newly discovered fact. The State added that McKevitt had exhausted all rights of appeal in respect of his conviction and that the case had reached finality.

McKevitt’s lawyers argued that the court should not dismiss an application and that it should be allowed to proceed to the full hearing.

In its ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeal said any application to strike out a case such as this must be exercised sparingly. It held that McKevitt’s case was unstateable, and it was the court’s duty to dismiss the application.