Nightclub owner claims he was victim of garda harassment campaign

Nightclub owner Frank McBrearty Snr was subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation instigated by gardaí investigating the death of Raphoe cattle dealer Richie Barron, he claimed today.

Mr McBrearty told the Morris Tribunal into alleged Garda corruption in Donegal that following Mr Barron’s death, which is now believed to be the result of a road traffic accident, he and his family were the victims of a “state-sponsored conspiracy”.

Mr McBrearty’s son, Frank Jnr, was arrested for murder and Mr McBrearty Snr was also arrested following claims he had interfered with witnesses.

Mr McBrearty today denied claims that he had intimidated witnesses, and said he had employed a private investigator Billy Flynn on the condition that if he found any evidence against the nightclub owner he was to go to the Gardaí with it.

“I’m an innocent man and I want the truth. I did not intimidate any witnesses,” Mr McBrearty told the tribunal.

Mr McBrearty Snr said he had gone to Superintendent John Fitzgerald to ask him to stop the “frame-up”.

“He told me he was going to deal with it, that was the last I heard of it. I thought it would be the end of it – John Fitzgerald knew me so well. I knew he knew I could not be involved in any kind of crime like that.”

But he said the harassment continued and that gardaí were inside his pub 350 times in three months.

“The guards were still carrying on round my premises,” he said.

Checkpoints were put around the pub and there were gardaí sitting inside his premises night after night, he told the tribunal.

Mr McBrearty Snr said he felt “terrible” when he saw a Crimeline programme about Richie Barron’s death, which he claimed was made with information fed by former Garda John O’Dowd to Supt Fitzgerald and other officers.

“I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms about the manner in which the Crimeline report was portrayed on national television by gardaí, where the centre of the investigation was pinpointed as being my premises when the movement or death of Richie Barron was nothing whatsoever to do with me,” he said.

Mr McBrearty accused Mr O’Dowd - the handler of informer William Doherty, who has been blamed for putting Noel McBride up to making a statement implicating Frank McBrearty Jnr - of orchestrating the harassment.

“From the actions of Mr O’Dowd I can see it clearly - he was the main man in this whole thing. He orchestrated it, he set it up, he used William Doherty.”

He said he believed that “high-up officers right down to gardaíi” were lying over what had happened.

“All they have to do is admit the wrong they have done instead of trying to tell lies,” he said.

Mr McBrearty told the tribunal that his family had received death threats and defamatory graffiti was scrawled on roads and his premises in Raphoe as a result of the rumour that the McBreartys were involved in Mr Barron’s death.

Mr McBrearty, who served with a peace-keeping mission in the Congo and spent 15 years living in the UK before returning to Ireland in 1976, said his life had been destroyed by the incidents in Raphoe.

“I’ve never got my business back to full capacity. I’ve borrowed a lot of money to keep going,” he said.

Earlier today Mr Brearty Snr took the tribunal chairman Mr Justice Frederick Morris out of the hearing to see the mass of legal documents in the back of his car.

The nightclub owner currently has no legal team, after the High Court ruled that the chairman did not have the power to guarantee Mr McBrearty’s costs.