The protection of witnesses in cases involving gangland crimes has had limited success, with the DPP now openly expressing doubts about the programme, writes CONOR LALLYCrime Correspondent
ANYONE IN any doubt about how difficult it is to give evidence against gangland criminals should consider the story of Afek Alquasar.
The 50-year-old came to Ireland from Jordan in the early 1980s. He settled in Blanchardstown, west Dublin, and married an Irish woman with whom he had three children.
Everything was fine until the early hours of February 20th, 2006, when he was working a shift as security manager in his local Leisureplex. Just after 4.30am, Darren Larkin (23) walked in carrying a sawn-off shotgun.
Larkin was a local drug dealer who had been involved in a criminal feud with two Irish men related to Alquasar through marriage. He wanted to shoot the completely innocent Jordanian immigrant as part of that row.
Larkin fired one shot from the double-barrel shotgun, grazing his target on the side of the head. A second shot hit the ceiling before Larkin ran off.
Alquasar recognised his attacker and agreed to give evidence against him. Immediately it became known he had given a statement to gardaí his life became hell. He was threatened by Larkin’s associates.
One of them told him: “You f***ing black bastard. I will blow your head off, fire an RPG into your house and cut up your son.”
On another occasion he was taunted that the Garda couldn’t protect him. “You have to live in the area, your family, not the Gardaí.”
But Alquasar stood firm and went into the Witness Protection Programme. Larkin was jailed for life on the basis of the protected witness’s evidence. And the man who had threatened the Jordanian was sentenced to three years for those threats.
But Alquasar’s story doesn’t end there.When Larkin was jailed, Alquasar told Mr Justice Éamon de Valera that giving evidence in the case had profoundly changed his life.
His marriage had effectively ended. He and his wife had planned to purchase their local authority house, “but this will never happen now. My wife has suffered with her nerves and can no longer go back to her family and friends,” he said.
His eldest son had been moved to several mental institutions following a nervous breakdown. His younger son, who was studying for his Leaving Cert and was a promising soccer player, had to leave school. His daughter had lost four months of schooling as a direct result of the shooting and witness protection.
He said in court: “I will never reside in Ireland again and I will have to endure the loss of my family and friends.”
In the past 10 days, Limerick publican Steve Collins has bravely told the story of the loss of his 34-year-old son, Roy. The young father of two was fatally shot in the back in his casino arcade in Roxboro shopping centre on Holy Thursday.
The Collins family believe Roy was shot dead because a member of their family gave evidence in court against a gangland figure four years ago. The Collins family received anonymous threats during that trial and have been under garda protection because of those threats.
The link between the 2005 court case and Roy Collins’s murder has not been proven. Nonetheless, the brutal killing raises questions about the safety of protected witnesses. If Roy Collins could be shot dead while his family was being given garda protection, is anybody really safe?
THE WITNESS PROTECTION Programme was established in the aftermath of the 1996 murder of Veronica Guerin. So-called supergrass Charlie Bowden was the first person to participate in the programme.
The former soldier, who prepared the gun used to kill the crime reporter, entered the programme and gave evidence – with varying degrees of success – that helped secure convictions against members of the John Gilligan gang.
Bowden was imprisoned for his role in the gang. It is widely believed that on his release the terms of the protection programme he signed up to were activated and that along with his wife he was given money and a new identity to settle abroad.
The protection programme operates in secret. It was never put on a statutory footing. It is effectively a fund of money operated by senior Garda management for the best protection possible of those people whose testimony will be, or has been, used to convict serious criminals.
The number of people who have passed through it is unknown. But just 10 years ago, in 1999, only £41,608 was spent on the programme. This year €1.2 million has been set aside. While spending has grown enormously the fund remains modest, indicating that relatively few witnesses are being maintained under it.
According to Garda sources, a very small number of gardaí attached to the Garda crime and security branch, along with representatives of the DPP’s office, deliberate on the suitability of a candidate for the protection programme.
The bona fides of a potential trial witness must be established. The veracity of their evidence and the likelihood it will be crucial in securing a conviction must also be measured. The would-be witness is interviewed several times to assess their suitability for being protected by gardaí for long periods, ranging between several years to indefinitely. Any alcohol or drug dependencies are studied to see if they will jeopardise the candidate’s ability to go the distance.
It must also be established if the evidence they have to offer genuinely puts their lives at risk – do they really need to be protected?
While this assessment is taking place – and it can sometimes take months – a witness may be taken out of their community for short-term protection. This involves them being housed in Ireland, sometimes in the same city where they live. In the preliminary stages of the programme, protection is provided by local detectives who are investigating the case the witness is involved in. More long-term protection is provided by the Special Detective Unit.
Many witnesses simply cannot make the sacrifice of being under 24-hour armed protection away from their families in the preliminary stages of the programme. Some leave and return to their homes. This usually means they withdraw their evidence and the potential case collapses.
In some cases witnesses opt to stay in their own homes and avail of garda protection. This usually involves armed detectives being constantly present outside their homes and escorting them to and from their places of work. It was this kind of protection that was offered to the Collins family in Limerick.
When a witness agrees and is approved to enter the full protection programme they are effectively leaving behind life as they know it. They sign a contract on entering the programme. In it, the State makes commitments – which vary from case to case – to protect the witness as best it can.
Details of the accommodation to be provided and sums of money to be paid to the witnesses while being protected in Ireland are also outlined. In cases where it is likely witnesses will need to be relocated abroad after a trial, a contract will outline how that is to be done.
IN THE RUN-UP to the trial they are due to give evidence at, they are assigned armed garda protection on a 24-hour basis at secret locations in Ireland. If they are married they can decide to take their wife and children into the programme.
Before the trial, if the gardaí managing the case the witness is involved in want to contact him or her, they must do so through a liaison officer. Even the investigating team is not told where the witness is being protected.
When protected witnesses have given their evidence and the criminal case is complete, a review of the continued threat against them is carried out. Some remain under protection in Ireland, others return to their homes.
In a smaller number of cases, witnesses are given a lump sum to help them and their families relocate abroad in a range of countries. In these cases witnesses get new names and new passports. But once they leave they are more or less on their own.
Any sums of money they are given either while in Ireland or when moving abroad are only meant to provide for the maintenance of a lifestyle that the witness was used to before they entered the programme. People are not given vast sums to retire on.
The success of the programme has been extremely limited. The Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy conceded in an interview with The Irish Times earlier this year that asking people to given evidence and relocate abroad was difficult.
The former Garda commissioner Noel Conroy said many people are simply too scared to give evidence against members of armed drug gangs. In recent weeks, the DPP James Hamilton expressed his doubts about the programme, saying it was of “limited use” in tackling gangland crime because the demands on people entering it were “fairly drastic”.
As one Garda source told The Irish Times: "A lot of potential witnesses for gangland cases are people who live on social welfare. For a good few of them the extent of their ambition in life is to get a flat or corporation house as close to their parents house as possible.
“They have small close-knit worlds. Expecting them to move even to England under the Programme is like asking them to move to the moon.”
Under surveillance
The reliance on witness testimony in gangland trials looks set to be reduced by a range of new measures revealed by the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern this week.
The new Criminal Justice Surveillance Bill provides for the Garda to plant covert audio and visual recording equipment in the homes of criminals and other places they frequent.
Any material recorded of suspects planning drug or gun crime would be used in evidence against them. Criminals’ telephones have been monitored for many years but the information gathered has been used as intelligence by the Garda rather than as evidence in a court case.
Under separate proposals, Mr Ahern is also formulating plans to create a new offence of membership of a crime gang. Anybody charged with this offence will be tried before the non-jury Special Criminal Court, which has until now rarely been used for non-terrorist cases.
Convictions of gang membership may be secured using evidence gathered using covert surveillance. This would be supported by senior members of the Garda who would take the witness stand and swear under oath that they have reason to believe an accused is a member of a particular crime gang.
If civilian witnesses were available to give evidence, it would strengthen a case. But prosecutions could still be secured without the need for such evidence.