McKevitt 'tried to secure Iraqi funds for terror campaign'

Alleged Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt tried to secure backing from Iraq to fund his terror campaign, a court was told today.

FBI agent David Rupert also claimed McKevitt considered forging an alliance with the Sri Lankan rebel group the Tamil Tigers.

McKevitt has been charged with directing the Real IRA, the group behind the Omagh bomb atrocity and with membership of the dissident republican organisation.

The 53-year-old, of Blackrock, Dundalk, Co Louth, has pleaded not guilty to both offences.

But as he continued giving evidence at Dublin’s Special Criminal Court Mr Rupert claimed the suspected terror boss’s plans were disclosed to him during his last visit to Ireland as a spy in October 2000.

Mr Rupert told the court: “He said there had been a human rights convention in Geneva and he had sent some of his people to seek out state sponsorship from other attendees at the human rights convention.

“They had come home empty handed and he was a bit upset by that.”

The prosecution’s star witness added: “He said he had a contact with a lady with some Irish connections who had some connections with the Tamil Tigers.

“They were also looking for possible Iraqi sponsorship.”

McKevitt is the first person ever to stand trial for the offence of directing terrorism which was brought in by the Government following the August 1998 attack on Omagh which killed 29 people and injured hundreds more.

Mr Rupert, a former US trucking company boss turned FBI and MI5 agent, had earlier claimed McKevitt told him of his plans to set up a new dissident republican paramilitary organisation and wanted its first strike to be even more spectacular than the Omagh bombing.

He had also recruited a former French foreign legionnaire gunman who could be used if an assassination attempt was made on Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, it was alleged.

The court has heard that Rupert who worked for the FBI and the British Security Service (MI5) was paid €1.7m for infiltrating dissident republican groups.