‘One of the prayers I had was that the truth would come out’

Ian Bailey believed the power of prayer would help him out the truth, he told the High Court yesterday.

On his first full day in the witness box in his action against the gardaí, the Department of Justice, and the attorney general over his wrongful arrest, he was asked how he had got through the past 18 years.

“I’ve always believed in the power of prayer and one of the prayers I had was that the truth would come out,” he told the jury of eight men and four women. It was one of a number of occasions during his evidence when he reflected on the impact on his life as a result of what he claims was wrongful arrests for murder and all that flowed from them thereafter.

He recounted for the court what he knew about the murder of Sophie Tuscan du Plantier outside Schull in West Cork in December 1996, and the attempts, he claims, of the gardaí to blame him for the crime.

The evidence was harrowing at times. It included an allegation of a death threat from a garda who is now deceased.

On the day of his first arrest on February 10, 1997, Mr Bailey says a previous cordial relationship with members of the gardaí turned nasty. The driver of the car dispatching him to Bandon Garda station allegedly told him: “Even if we don’t pin this on you, you’re finished in Ireland. You’ll be found in a ditch with a bullet in the back of your head.”

Inside the station, things went from bad to worse, as told by Mr Bailey. The atmosphere was one of “hostility and accusatory”, he said. “One officer who looked like he was going to lose his temper made a fist going, saying oh ah, going to… and I was bracing myself pending assault. During the entire period, I was accused and accused… ‘we know you did it, everybody else knows you did it, just admit it’.”

He was arrested again in January 1998, and again released without charge. He has always denied having had anything to do with the murder.

The gardaí and the State deny his allegations of wrongful arrest and culpability in any wrongdoing.

For the most part, the 57-year-old Englishman gave his evidence in an even manner, but he emphasised that he never gave up the fight to out the truth as he sees it.

“This is part of that, trying to clear my name. I’ve never stopped fighting, hoping to one day bring out the truth,” he told his counsel, Martin Giblin.

The courtroom was packed to the extent that an upstairs gallery was opened to accommodate the overflow. Among those at the front row of the gallery were a group of young women, possibly students, who, if alive at all, were just toddlers when the events at issue occurred.

Nearly two decades later, the fallout from a savage and infamous murder, is still grinding through the courts.