British agents aided capture

ON February 22, 2007, a Cork man met two arms dealers in a London warehouse — everyone at the meeting stripping naked to show that they were not wearing wires or any electronic surveillance devices.

By April 20, 2007, this Cork man, Glen Geasley, was being arrested at Rochestown Park Hotel as he handed over a Tommy Hilfiger bag stuffed with £45,000 in sterling made up of English and Northern Irish notes.

At another hotel, the Ibis in Dunkettle, at the same time, Geasley’s friend and accomplice, Seán Callinan, was getting into the back of a Ford van laden with a lethal arsenal of guns including rocket launchers and AK47s, only to be arrested seconds later by members of the Emergency Response Unit.

Those two dates book-ended an investigation which made legal history by sanctioning the deployment of secret agents from a foreign country on Irish soil.

As far as Geasley was concerned he was talking to two arms dealers in London when he had the secret meeting with men who called themselves John and Raj. In fact they were undercover agents employed in Britain by the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

These agents had organised for the videotaping and audio recording of everything that happened during the 45 minutes of that meeting.

Det Chief Supt Tony Quilter said a significant amount of resources was put into the investigation, not least to ensure the security of the weapons involved.

Arrests were made of the two accused as Geasley handed over the cash and Callinan got his hands on the weapons.

After the arrests, a book was found under a sofa in an apartment the pair had shared. It dealt with all of the firearms in the consignment of guns.