IMC report ‘not based on uncorroborated intelligence’

The Independent Monitoring Commission has insisted that its report on the £26.5m (€38.5m) Belfast bank heist was truly independent and not based on information provided by the Irish and British authorities.

The commission said it had conducted its own investigations and used its own sources when compiling a report that blamed the Provisional IRA for the robbery.

It said it was not just regurgitating intelligence information provided by the PSNI and gardaí.

Commission member John Grieve, a former head of the London Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorism squad, said he and his colleagues considered "all other hypotheses", but still concluded that the IRA was behind the raid and that senior members of Sinn Féin sanctioned it.

"I am not coming to these conclusions on the uncorroborated word of some intelligence agency," he said.