Three jailed in Continuity IRA trial

Three men were jailed by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin today after a major garda operation against the Continuity IRA led to the discovery of a bomb making operation near the border last year.

Mr Justice Diarmuid O' Donovan, presiding at the non-jury court, said that the court was satisfied that there was a joint enterprise to manufacture explosives for the purpose "of terrorising the public" and these activities were "well planned and well executed".

The judge paid tribute to the Garda National Surveillance Unit and the Emergency Response Unit and said their painstaking work had thwarted those plans.

He said the quantity of explosives found had the capacity to cause destruction to life and property to an enormous degree.

The court jailed Joe Fee (aged 40), of Blackstaff, Inniskeen, Co Monaghan to ten years for the possession of an explosive substance - ammonium nitrate and sugar (ANS) - with intent to endanger life at Thornfield, Inniskeen, Co Louth on June 13, 2003.

The court sentenced Seamus Mc Kenna (aged 49), of Marian Park, Dundalk, Co Louth to six years imprisonment to date from the time he went into custody on June 15, 2003 for the same offence. Fee was convicted last month after a long trial and McKenna pleaded guilty to the charge in October.

A third man, Eamonn Matthews (aged 25), of Dublin Road, Killeen, Newry, Co Down was jailed for three years and nine months after he was convicted yesterday of membership of an illegal organisation styling itself the Irish Republic Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hÉireann, otherwise the IRA on June 13, 2003.

A fourth man, Gerard Sweeney (aged 51), of Louth Hall, Tallanstown, Co Louth was given a three-years suspended prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to withholding information from the gardaí under the Offences Against the State Act.

Detective Superintendent Diarmuid O' Sullivan, of the Special Detective Unit, told the court that gardaí found Mc Kenna and another man using a cement mixer to make home made explosives from ammonium nitrate and sugar at a farmyard at Thornfield. He said that gardaí discovered 1200lbs in weight of the explosive mixture in the yard and he added that those explosives were in the final stages of completion.

Fee was arrested as he drove away from the farmyard and gardaí found 13lbs of the home made explosives in his van. Matthews was cleared of the explosives charges at an earlier trial but was convicted of membership yesterday.

He said that Sweeney had been approached by Fee six months before June 2003 and had allowed Fee to bring a grinder to his farm at Tallanstown where fertiliser had been ground down.

The Detective Superintendent said that the garda operation in Co Louth was carried out against the Continuity IRA which arose from a split in Sinn Féin in 1986.

He said a number of people had left Sinn Féin then and had first set up Republican Sinn Féin with later a military organisation known initially as the Irish National Republican Army, later as the Continuity Army Council and is now known as the Continuity IRA.