IRA-linked men in court in England on blackmail charges

Two men linked to the IRA used threats in a bid to get a share of £6m (€6.64m) said to have been been raised using the name of the republican organisation, a court heard today.

Nick Mullen, aged 60, once alleged to have been a “quartermaster” for an IRA active service unit, and Ronald McCartney, aged 55, who tried to kill three policeman in Southampton in the mid-1970s, warned two businessman to pay £150,000 (€116,119) each “or face the consequences”, it was claimed.

Mark Heyward, prosecuting, told London’s Southwark Crown Court the defendants made it clear the money was destined for the IRA’s coffers.

Mr Heyward said: “It is difficult to imagine a more concentrated kind of threat than the threat purported to have come from a paramilitary organisation, like the Irish Republican Army, notwithstanding the lessening of the Troubles and also the Good Friday Agreement in the late 1990s.”

The barrister said the court would hear evidence of threatening phone calls, visits and letters to the two alleged victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

He said each letter bore the Irish for the IRA – Óglaigh na hÉireann - and was signed with the organisation’s nom de guerre “P O’Neill”.

“You will hear that is an historical signature often used by the Provisional IRA in the course of the height of the Troubles, in the course to sign off official statements,” he added.

Mullen, of Birlington Mews, West Acton, west London, and McCartney, aged 55, of Ross Road, Belfast, and co-defendant Louis O’Hara, aged 43, of Collard Avenue, Loughton, Essex, each deny two counts of conspiracy to blackmail between January 1 and April 16, 2008.

Each accuses them of “conspiring together and with others to make, with a view to gain for themselves or another, unwarranted demands for payment of monies in the sum of £150,000 (€116,119) with menaces”.