Forensic expert tells of anger at evidence loss
A TOP forensic officer has said gardai were either “unbelievably incompetent” or “deliberately obstructive” in their treatment of the Narrow Water firing point.
Dr Alan Hall was giving evidence to the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin which is probing claims of Garda collusion with the IRA.
It is specifically looking at allegations that a Garda officer helped the IRA murder Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan.
They were killed in an ambush on March 20, 1989, shortly after leaving a meeting at Dundalk Garda station.
This week the tribunal has been examining the Narrow Water bombs which killed 18 soldiers on Monday, August 27, 1989.
It is believed that the bombs just outside Warrenpoint, Co Down, were detonated by remote control from a firing point in the Republic, a short distance across the Newry River from Northern Ireland.
The atrocity – which was the Army’s single biggest disaster of the Troubles – was designed to maximise the slaughter by placing a second bomb at the point where the IRA had worked out the soldiers would shelter following the first blast.
The first bomb, hidden in a trailer of straw at Narrow Water close to Warrenpoint, contained 500lb of home-made explosives and caught the end of a procession of Army vehicles, killing six soldiers.
The second bomb was hidden in the wall of the gate lodge of Narrow Water Castle and contained 800lb of explosives. It exploded 39 minutes later and killed 12 soldiers.
Earlier in the hearing, one of the first RUC officers to arrive at the scene described it as “appalling carnage”. But it emerged yesterday that the gardai appeared to have ignored a request by a top Ulster forensic officer to preserve the scene where it is thought the bombers activated the bombs.
Dr Hall told the tribunal of his “fury” upon arriving in Omeath with a team of experts to examine the bombers’ “nest” and instead finding it “scythed”.
He described how he was invited to examine the scene by the RUC on Thursday of that week – three days after the bombing.
Upon arriving at the scene on the Co Louth side of the border, Dr Hall described a “nest” of a 3ft by 8ft flattened area of grass and ferns where sandwich wrappings and a bottle lay within perfect sight of where the bombs had exploded.
He told the tribunal that he wanted to return the following morning with a team to examine it so he spoke to a uniformed Garda officer who he understood to be in charge of the scene in what he described as talks with the RUC in which he asked that the scene be preserved.
But when he returned the following morning with a team of experts he said he was “astounded” to see the site had been “obliterated”.
Dr Hall also claimed that the gardai had been “entirely uncooperative”.
“I was furious at the loss of potential evidence,” he said.
“I was furious that having gone to the effort of setting up a whole team to do a job that was no longer necessary.”
He said that the clearance was the result of “either unbelievable incompetence or deliberate obstruction”.
Garda lawyer Dermot McGuinness said the Garda technical bureau did examine the scene before Dr Hall’s visit. He said they recovered a cigarette butt and a bottle which were examined for forensic evidence.
Two men, Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan, were arrested but were never convicted of the attack.
No one has ever been convicted of the Narrow Water bombs.
The hearings will resume on Tuesday, February 28.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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