Three admit bomb terror plot

Three Irish republicans today pleaded guilty to a bomb plot and trying to procure an arsenal of high-powered weaponry.

Fintan Paul O’Farrell, 39, Declan John Rafferty, 42, and Michael Christopher McDonald, 44, all from Co Louth, were arrested in the small spa town of Piest’any in Slovakia on July 5 last year.

They were later extradited to Britain and had been due to stand trial at Woolwich Crown Court in London.

But today, amid heightened security and in front of a packed public gallery, they dramatically changed their pleas.

They admitted conspiring ‘‘unlawfully and maliciously’’ to cause an explosion in the UK or Republic of Ireland between February 18 and July 6 last year and trying to obtain explosives, detonators, rocket-propelled grenades, handguns, sniper rifles and a wire guided missile.

Ken Macdonald, counsel for Rafferty, told the court: ‘‘They have come to a momentous decision.

‘‘They are extremely anxious now to know their fate, many family members have travelled here from Ireland to watch these proceedings.’’

The judge, Mr Justice Astill, told them they would be sentenced next Tuesday.

The three men were caught following an elaborate six-month sting involving MI5 agents who suspected them of being Real IRA operatives.

The agents posed as arms dealers from Iraq and held several meetings with them, including the final one in Slovakia.

O’Farrell, Rafferty and McDonald, unaware they were being set up, hoped to clinch an arms deal ahead of what could have been a new bombing campaign in the UK.

After the meeting, they were arrested by a team of armed Slovak police who were working with MI5.

They were held at the Leopold prison in Trnava, in the former Czechoslovakia, on an international arrest warrant issued by the British Home Office before being extradited.

In Britain they initially faced a charge of being members of the IRA but that was later dropped.

Today, all three faced five charges under the Terrorism Act and one under the Explosive Substances Act 1883.

Rafferty and McDonald pleaded guilty to all charges.

O’Farrell denied two of the charges under the Terrorism Act which related to an earlier meeting with the agents on April 9 when Rafferty and McDonald tried to procure weapons.

O’Farrell’s pleas were accepted by the Crown Prosecution Service.

During extensive legal argument before today’s turn of events, defence counsel had insisted their clients were ‘‘consciously lured’’ to Slovakia by the British authorities.

Once there, it was maintained, they were incited to ‘‘commit offences to order’’.

The court was told the former Iron Curtain territory was allegedly chosen because its extraditional procedures were ‘‘so flawed’’.

That would enable the trio to be returned to Britain ‘‘so swiftly they would not have time to test the legality of this extradition’’.

Indeed, argued counsel, there was no legal entitlement in the country for either the men or their advisers to even see the extradition requests.

Dissident republicans are thought to have been buying weapons from eastern Europe for several years.

Awash with cheap Kalashnikovs, machine-guns, M-50 grenades, high explosives, detonators and telescopic sights, it is an attractive destination for terrorists.

Many weapons are left over from the Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav armies.

Two years ago Croatian police seized a dissident Irish republican arms cache in Dobranje, which included a rocket launcher, and another arms haul was uncovered in Slovenia.

Eighteen months ago a rocket launcher, believed to have been smuggled in from the former Yugoslavia, was used against the MI6 headquarters in London.

Weapons from eastern European bloc countries have also been found in arms dumps in Ireland.

In October 1999 a large haul, including ready-made bombs, was found in a barn on a farm in Co Meath.

Anti-terrorist detectives believe the explosives came from Russia.