Smithwick Tribunal defends garda’s IRA collusion warnings
THE tribunal investigating Irish state collusion yesterday defended the testimony of a man who said his warnings about an IRA mole in the Garda fell on deaf ears at the highest level of the force.
And counsel for the tribunal also said that there had been no proper investigation into collusion despite the Garda having three separate intelligence reports about its officers working with the IRA.
The Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin is investigating claims of collusion in the murders of RUC Chief Supt Harry Breen and RUC Supt Bob Buchanan by the IRA in south Armagh in 1989.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Peter Smithwick, chairman of the tribunal, defended retired Monaghan Chief Supt Tom Curran.
Last June, Mr Curran said that murdered officer Mr Buchanan had visited him less than a year before he was killed to warn that the RUC were concerned about Dundalk sergeant Owen Corrigan “associating unnecessarily” with the IRA and asking that he be moved.
Mr Curran then brought Mr Buchanan’s warning in person to Assistant Commissioner Eugene Crowley in Dublin but said that Mr Crowley showed no interest in the issue.
The sole witness yesterday was retired garda, Assistant Commissioner Dermot Jennings, who was one of the leading anti-terrorist garda officers along the border in the late 1980s.
He said of Mr Curran’s warning that he “should have committed the information to writing” and that the Mr Crowley he knew “would have demanded a report” on such claims.
But Mr Smithwick added that “if he [Mr Curran] had been expected to provide his complaint in writing he [Mr Crowley] would have been expected to have asked for a report”.
Counsel for Mr Corrigan – who denies being the IRA mole – said yesterday that “just because a witness gives evidence it does not have to be accepted. Maybe Mr Curran is mistaken in what he said”.
But Mr Smithwick said a range of gardai “had spoken in very laudatory terms about Mr Curran”, adding: “Nobody said he was telling a lie.”
Counsel for the tribunal referred to three Garda intelligence documents, one of which claimed Mr Corrigan had escaped a trial for a traffic offence because the IRA had intimidated the witness. The other two reports claimed that an unnamed garda gave “short notice” information to the IRA, facilitating the murders of Breen and Buchanan. There was “double hearsay that there was a contact in the Garda that facilitated the murder of Lord Justice Gibson and two RUC officers”, the reports said.
Mr Jennings said he had not been aware of the three intelligence reports until he had engaged with the tribunal.
The tribunal heard that following allegations of Garda collusion by journalists Toby Harnden and Kevin Myers, the Garda reviewed five IRA attacks and published their findings in 2000.
But the report made no mention of the three intelligence reports and Mr Jennings went on record in 2000 to affirm that the investigation had found “no tangible evidence” of collusion.
The files were sent to an officer of rank at Garda headquarters but counsel for the tribunal said there was no evidence Mr Corrigan was ever investigated despite being named in one of them.
But counsel for Mr Corrigan said there was a difference between intelligence and evidence, and that just because an intelligence file mentioned his client it did not mean the intelligence was accurate.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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