Cocaine accused 'hid in shed while drug packages floated off Mizen Head'

Two of the men on trial in the biggest drugs case in the history of the State walked for hours across country and hid for two nights in a shed after seeing dozens of packages of drugs floating in the sea off the coast of West Cork last July.

One of the accused, Joseph Daly (aged 41), from 9 Carisbrook Avenue, Bexley, Kent, described today how he and a co-accused, Perry Wharrie (aged 48), of 60 Pryles Lane, Essex, walked away from Dunlough Bay at around 8am on July 2 2007 and hid for two nights in a shed with nothing to eat.

Prosecution senior counsel, Tom Creed, put it to Daly during lengthy cross-examination at Cork Circuit Criminal Court: “You made no effort to reveal yourself and declare yourself innocent of this situation. And likewise Mr Wharrie.”

Daly agreed and said: “I was hoping situation would resolve itself or someone would resolve it for me.”

Earlier Mr Creed said: “Here you are sitting in court charged with a very serious offence, do you think Michael (Daly’s brother) is the cause of all your problems?”

Joseph Daly replied: “I certainly would not be sitting here if it was not for my brother, Michael, yes.”

Daly claimed that Michael asked him to bring a jeep and Rigid Inflatable Boat to Ireland and he did, and he brought Martin Wanden – a man he said he did not know but was a friend of his brother, Michael – with him.

He testified that he knew nothing about the fact that the boat was going to be used for drugs. He said the only reason he went to Dunlough Bay with Perry Wharrie that day was to help Michael as he was told that Michael was in trouble at sea.

Mr Creed SC suggested to Joseph Daly that he saw a man in the sea and would have presumed that it was his brother but that he turned around and left him there.

Daly said: “I was in a panic because of the situation I was put in. I went down to Dunlough Bay on the premise of saving Michael, when I got there it dawned on me the seriousness of what was there. I saw a boat sticking out of the water. It was more than likely the boat I had taken to Ireland. I was in a panic, more than I had ever been in my life.”

Pressing him on the question of why he left the scene, Mr Creed, said that Mr Dermot Sheehan and other coastguard personnel also looked in the water and saw the man and the boat and the floating bales and did not say: “Yikes! Let’s get out of here.”

Daly replied: “Mr Sheeehan never travelled to Ireland with the boat that was sticking out of the water.”

Mr Creed said: “The boat sticking out of the water is highly suspicious.”

Daly replied: “Certainly, that’s why I’m here. Whether we (he and Wharrie) took the right decision or the wrong one it is what we done, we decided to leave.”

Daly said he replied, ‘no comment’ to various questions from gardaí on the basis of advice from his solicitor.

Daly, Wharrie and their co-accused, Martin Wanden (aged 45), who is also English but has no fixed abode, all deny charges including possession of cocaine for sale or supply when its street value exceeded €13,000 on July 2, at Dunlough Bay, Mizen, Goleen, Co Cork.

The trial continues at Cork Circuit Criminal Court before Judge Seán Ó Donnabháin and a jury.