Morris witness quizzed over stolen radios

A Letterkenny man told the Morris Tribunal into Co Donegal garda corruption allegations today how he was asked to hide two walkie-talkie radios and a charger in a stable 12 years ago.

John ‘Bobs’ Kelly said the request was made by neighbours Pearse and John Devine, who hailed him from a window as he took his pony for exercise in a nearby field.

They told him the items had been taken from the local fire station and he assumed them to have been stolen.

A key figure in the Morris proceedings, alleged IRA informer Adrienne McGlinchey, was later arrested in connection with the stolen radios, valued at around €1,300 each, but she was never subsequently charged in connection with the affair.

The inquiry is currently investigating claims that Ms McGlinchey, together with two detectives, Superintendent Kevin Lennon and Garda Noel McMahon, mixed explosives that were later planted to be found in subsequent bogus garda arms finds.

The two officers have denied those claims, and Ms McGlinchey has maintained that she was never an informer.

Mr Kelly, a teenager at the time of the incident, said he had agreed to store the radios and the charger in the shed where he kept his pony. One night four or five days later, after hearing a “clatter” from the stable he had seen Pearse Devine take the items away.

They had never told him why they needed the radios or the charger, and “I never asked any questions”.

He was later “hauled in” and questioned by gardaí about the theft from the fire station, but, Mr Kelly told the tribunal he had nothing to do with it, adding: “I was not long out of prison and did not want to go back.”

Tribunal counsel Paul McDermott put it to Mr Kelly that Adrienne McGlinchey, then a friend of Yvonne Devine, the sister of Pearse and John Devine, had claimed that the radios and the charger had been bought from someone called Kelly, but he repeated his denial of any involvement in stealing them.

For security reasons, the tribunal spent all but 30 minutes of today’s five-hour hearing in private session, dealing with the part of the closing stages of evidence from a superintendent based in Co Donegal during the 1990s, the period under investigation.

Superintendent John Fitzgerald was being questioned for the third day about incidents that happened while he was district officer in Donegal.

The present phase of the tribunal, chaired by former High Court President Mr Justice Frederick Morris, is focusing on the explosives claims. The inquiry returned to that dimension of the allegations against gardaí last September after a gap of four months.

During the summer, the tribunal looked into separate allegations, centring on controversy over the mystery roadside death six years ago of Raphoe cattle dealer Richie Barron.

That module of the process has now been adjourned until later this year and a series of other issues are also due to be dealt with afterwards.