Ex-gardaí say sergeant implicated in inquiry

TWO FORMER detectives from Dundalk Garda station told the Smithwick Tribunal yesterday they believed former colleague Sgt Leo Colton was implicated in an investigation into the provision of false passports.

Mr Colton had retired from the force in 2001 when then Sgt Finbarr Hickey of Dundalk Garda station was convicted of signing application forms for false passports, some of which ended up in the hands of the IRA.

He spent a year in prison for the offences.

Yesterday, retired detective Jim Lane and retired detective Joe Flanagan both told the tribunal that Mr Hickey had alleged he had procured the passports at the behest of his former sergeant, Leo Colton.

Mr Lane and Mr Flanagan said they believed Mr Hickey’s allegation. Mr Lane told Judge Peter Smithwick: “I have known Finbarr Hickey since he was a child. It was my opinion that he wouldn’t say that when it wasn’t true.”

Mr Flanagan said: “It was my opinion that Finbar Hickey was telling the truth.”

Mr Colton was never charged in relation to the offences, and denies the allegation. He is to give evidence to the tribunal in due course.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that members of An Garda Síochána or other employees of the State colluded in the IRA murder of two RUC officers, Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan.

They were murdered as they returned from a meeting in Dundalk Garda station in March 1989.

While both Mr Lane and Mr Flanagan said they believed Mr Colton was implicated in the passports affair, they said they were not aware of any links between Mr Colton or Mr Hickey and the IRA.

Both men said they believed former Det Sgt Owen Corrigan had been treated shamefully in being named as an IRA source within Dundalk Garda station.

Mr Corrigan, now retired from the force, was named by DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson in the House of Commons in 2000.

“I do not believe the allegations. I’ve known Owen Corrigan a lifetime,” said Mr Lane. Mr Corrigan “had stood up to them [the IRA]”. Mr Flanagan said Mr Corrigan and others had endured severe harassment at the hands of the IRA, and it was “shameful” Mr Corrigan “was tarnished in this way”.

He said up to 400 members of illegal paramilitary organisations were listed by gardaí as operating in Dundalk in the 1980s, and the large number of subversives made the town a “difficult and dangerous place” for frontline gardaí, who were frequently harassed in public, along with members of their families.

Homes belonging to a number of gardaí including Garda David Shannon and Det Sgt James Green were burned; at least one, unnamed, uniformed garda was wounded by terrorists in a shooting incident; and Mr Corrigan was assaulted in a public house, the tribunal was told. It also heard that after Det Garda Corrigan had retired he was kidnapped and badly beaten.

Mr Flanagan also told the tribunal he had been shot at by paramilitaries as he gave hot pursuit close to the Border. Both men said they had no evidence any officer in Dundalk Garda station was a secret mole for the IRA.