A GARDA denied to the Central Criminal Court yesterday that he referred to a man accused of raping a prostitute as a "knacker", a "coward and a queer" or that he threatened to "kick the guts out of him".
Det Sgt Patrick Tully, of Rathfarnham, told Mr Blaise O'Carroll SC, defending, that the claims were a "total fabrication and they did not happen.
The accused was not ill treated en route to, or in, Dublin's Harcourt Terrace Garda station as he claims, Det Sgt Tully said.
Responding to a suggestion that he begged to be allowed to take the man "upstairs for half an hour", Det Sgt Tully said there were no interview rooms upstairs in the station.
Det Sgt Tully also denied that he earlier took a condom and other items from a bin in a guesthouse room rented by the accused man in Cork and claimed to have found them at the scene of the alleged rape.
The man was initially arrested for a road traffic offence on January 1st 1995, minutes after leaving the guest house.
Det Sgt Tully said he travelled with other gardai to Portlaoise Prison on January 23rd, 1995 to arrest the man for the alleged rape, on his release from a short sentence for the motoring offence.
The garda was being cross examined by Mr O'Carroll on the 11th day of the trial of the 36 year old man who has denied falsely imprisoning a prostitute in his car on the eight of December 29th-30th, 1994 and raping and sexually assaulting her a short time later in the Wicklow Mountains.
Det Sgt Tully agreed he was aware that the man was a member of the travelling community but denied calling him a "knacker" on the journey to Dublin. He also denied saying, "we have got you good this time".
In reply to Mr O'Carroll, Det Sgt Tully denied he told the accused man: "Look, we don't want to send you away for a prostitute who would sell her mother for a shot of heroin."
He did not say the gardai had been waiting since 1993 for the man "to do something" so he could be charged with a serious crime.
Det Sgt Tully denied telling the man that gardai knew the accused man's mother from a certain campsite in 1972, where she was "riding everything around town".
Mr O'Carroll said his client would claim that Det Sgt Tully said: "We have got you good now, 20 years, you dragged the poor girl up the mountains and raped her".
Earlier the alleged victim recalled seeing her two assailants kissing each other as they took a cigarette break from sexually assaulting her. Det Sgt Tully said he did not call the man a "coward and a queer".
He also denied telling the accused man: "You wrote to the wrong newspaper - the Sunday World is not the one to write to for equal rights for knackers. The Irish Times is the paper you should have written to...".
Det Sgt Tully totally denied that officers held the accused down in a chair to collect forensic samples in the station. He said it was not true, as the defence claims, that a doctor pulled down the accused's trouser and underpants and rubbed his fingers on the accused's inner leg.
The trial before Mr Justice Moriarty and a jury continues.