Trial witness in peril, says police chief

A senior Garda today told of a decades-old security file on Michael McKevitt, the alleged leader of the Real IRA paramilitary group which claimed responsibility for the Omagh bombing in Northern Ireland.

Detective Chief Superintendent Martin Callinan, head of Garda Siochana intelligence and security section, also said he had “great concerns” about the safety of David Rupert, the American citizen set to be the chief witness against McKevitt in his trial at Dublin’s anti-terrorist Special Criminal Court early next year.

He told a preliminary hearing linked to the trial that given the information he had, the threat to Mr Rupert’s life was “a very real and very substantive one”.

He added that he knew of “extreme efforts” by members the Real IRA to to locate Mr Rupert and members of his family.

Mr Callinan also said the exposure of names of personnel from America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation and the British security services, who have provided sworn affidavits in the case against McKevitt, would “place their lives in real danger”.

He told the Special Criminal court hearing: “I have no doubt of the lengths the Real IRA will go identifying people who supply information to the Gardai and the retribution that follows.

“There are several examples of it.”

McKevitt, 51, from Dundalk, Co Louth, is the first person to face charges of directing terrorism under the terms of legislation introduced by the Irish government in response to the 1998 bombing of Omagh, when 29 people died and more than 200 others were injured.

He is also accused of membership of an illegal organisation.

Chief Superintendent Callinan said his section of the police monitored subversive and criminal activity in Ireland and there was a file on Michael McKevitt with information going back three decades.

McKevitt is claimed to be the leader of the Real IRA, formed by dissident former members of the IRA after that organisation began its ceasefire as part of the current Northern Ireland peace process.

McKevitt’s defence lawyers have made it clear they will be questioning the credibility of Mr Rupert. Earlier this week, counsel Hugh Hartnett referred to evidence that the key witness had sought as much as two million dollars over a 15-year period for providing information to the security services.

The preliminary hearing – focusing on documents present in the case against McKevitt – has heard from prosecutor George Birmingham of a series of meetings Mr Rupert, who was recruited to pass on information on behalf of both the FBI and the British intelligence services, had attended together with McKevitt and other hard-line Irish Republican movement members over a period of years.

At one such meeting, Mr McKevitt was alleged to have said that the Omagh attack was a joint operation involving both the Real IRA and fellow dissidents in the Continuity IRA.

On other occasions he talked of an American who “if you wanted to have Tony Blair assassinated, is your man”, spoke about an unspecified incident that would “overshadow Omagh”, and referred to terrorist incidents in Northern Ireland and a bombing in Hammersmith, London.

Mr Birmingham told the three-judge no-jury court that Mr Rupert had first gone to Ireland in the early 1990s, together with a political activist girlfriend from Florida, who had a strong interest in Irish affairs.

He later agreed to collect and pass on information, first for the FBI and later for British intelligence.

He also referred to payments that may have been made in return for intelligence and highlighted evidence that Mr Rupert wanted to be be paid two million dollars over 15 years to testify.

He added the claim that Mr Rupert had been described by a New York police officer as “an extremely street-smart criminal, who let others take the risks and would do anything for money”.

Mr Hartnett said there were signs that Mr Rupert had been suspected of smuggling in the United States, and asked: “Was a deal done?”

Mr Hartnett was told yesterday by Ivor Roberts, the British ambassador to Ireland, that certain papers relating to the McKevitt case could not be handed to the defence “in essence because of the desire to avoid putting lives at risk and prevent the undermining of efforts to prevent and disrupt terrorism”.

FBI officers have told the court there are no records of criminal activity on the part of Mr Rupert.