Corruption claims withdrawn under duress, tribunal told

Key Morris Tribunal witness Sheenagh McMahon today insisted a statement she made retracting allegations of Garda corruption had been the result of “coercion and pressure”.

But she also denied hating one of the officers most closely caught up in accusations against the force in Co Donegal.

Mrs McMahon’s alleged hatred for Superintendent Kevin Lennon was reported to the inquiry last week by Garda Alison Teape, who is now in a relationship with Mrs McMahon’s estranged garda husband, Noel.

The feelings were said to have been prompted because the superintendent had destroyed her husband’s career.

Today, though, Mrs McMahon insisted: “It has been suggested that I hate Superintendent Lennon. That is not the case.

“I do not hate anybody, and I have never had hatred for him.”

She added, however: “Noel was continuously unhappy with Superintendent Lennon - and that made me unhappy.”

The tribunal has heard that Superintendent Lennon has maintained he has been “the victim of both circumstances and of the malicious personalities” of gardai in Co Donegal.

The tribunal – headed by former High Court President Mr Justice Frederick Morris, and expected to go on for as long as two years – was established by the Dail to investigate allegations focusing on garda inquiries over a number of years into a series of cases, including terrorist bomb-making, arson, the mystery death of a cattle dealer and a series of arrests, as well as the treatment and alleged harassment of the McBrearty family, of Co Donegal.

The inquiry has been told of allegations by Mrs McMahon that her husband, Superintendent Lennon, and one-time garda informant Adrienne McGlinchey mixed explosives in a shed beside the McMahon home in Co Donegal, and that the material was later planted and subsequently “found” by gardai in staged strikes against terrorism.

Mrs McMahon finally began giving evidence early this afternoon – almost a week behind schedule.

The dark-haired 42-year-old estranged wife of Garda Noel McMahon, and mother of three boys, was due to have appeared as witness at the Morris tribunal soon after it began hearings in Dublin at the start of last week.

Wearing a grey trouser suit she gave early evidence about moving to Co Donegal in the 1990s – and went on to explain how her marriage had broken up, with both herself and Noel receiving hospital treatment after they started drinking.

Mrs McMahon said the relationship with her husband had begun to deteriorate after Noel was transferred from Buncrana – where most of her family lived – to Letterkenny.

The move was prompted by problems Garda McMahon had experienced at work in Buncrana, his wife told the tribunal.

She added: “The worst thing I did in my life was to move to Letterkenny.”

At one stage, the gardai had to be called to the McMahon home in Letterkenny because of an incident of domestic violence, and as a result Mrs McMahon and her children went back to Buncrana.

The children stayed with their aunt, Mrs McMahon’s sister, Moya Jane O’Doherty, to whose home a number of abusive phone calls were made by Noel McMahon.

After one call – in which Mrs McMahon said her husband was “very, very aggressive,” amounted to the final straw – Ms O’Doherty decided to contact the gardai.

Mrs McMahon then told the gardai about threats relayed to her by Deirdre McGlinchey – whom she described as “portrayed as a member of the IRA” - following the allegations she had made about activities involving the mixing of explosives in a shed at the McMahon home.

Ms McGlinchey had been a frequent visitor to their house for meetings with her husband and Superintendent Lennon, and had “helped locate explosives”. They also met at other places.

She made her statement about that after a long period of talks with her legal advisors in May, 1999. Two months later she withdrew the statement “after Noel had told me we would lose everything” if it went ahead.

“We had lunch together. He said he was going to lose his job and we would lose the house. I was hoping that maybe all this would go away, and we could get back on track.

“He said the Carty team (an internal investigation into her allegations by Assistant Garda Commissioner Kevin Carty) were no good, and I was confused. I was uneasy about the whole thing.

“He asked me to withdraw the statement and I was shaking. I suffered an awful lot from the anxiety.

“I agreed when he asked me to withdraw the statement.”

Mrs McMahon said that in the presence of two gardai, she later signed a statement, withdrawing the original one, and saying she had felt “completely used” by the investigation team.

But she told the tribunal: “They were not my words.”

Asked by tribunal counsel Paul McDermott whether she now felt used by the investigation team, Mrs McMahon replied “No,” and that she felt under pressure from Noel at the time of the second statement.

Told by the judge there was a difference about being coaxed to withdraw the original statement rather than being put under pressure, she replied: “I was being coerced into it. I was under pressure to do it.”

She added: “Nobody put me up to re-instating the statement – only the withdrawal.”

Mrs McMahon referred, as well, to being “unlawfully arrested” at one stage “for being in breach of an order that did not exist”.

She went on to recall an incident when she saw two men, she later knew to be her husband and Kevin Lennon walking up and down outside her kitchen window.

She had not been worried at that point, but later Superintendent Lennon entered the house to wash his hands and afterwards Noel McMahon came in and told her “there was a bomb,” in either the shed or the garage.

Mrs McMahon said: “I was shocked and terribly, terribly worried that it would blow the house up. But Noel said not to worry because the bomb was not assembled, and he took me out to show me.

“All I saw was black plastic refuse bags.

“My idea was that this was Garda work and if Noel was doing it, I had no problem with it. I trusted him.”

Before Mrs McMahon made her keenly-awaited appearance on the witness stand, Superintendent Tom Long, the officer who initiated investigations of the long-running corruption suggestions, ended his own marathon period of evidence.

His testimony began more than a week ago, and, with interruptions, continued for five days, mainly because of a detailed cross examination by the now-suspended Superintendent Lennon, who acting for himself ahead of a High Court ruling on his bid for legal expenses at the tribunal.