AN IRISHMAN accused of trying to buy weapons for the Real IRA has condemned the case against him as a set-up orchestrated by intelligence services led by Britain’s MI5.
Michael Campbell faces 16 years in a Lithuanian jail if found guilty.
He expresses little hope of being cleared despite the insistence of his lawyers the prosecution case is based less on hard evidence than the fact he is the brother of alleged senior Real IRA member Liam Campbell.
“I haven’t got a chance with this court and in this country,” he said yesterday in court. Asked whether he believed MI5 had framed him, he replied: “Oh, for sure.”
Mr Campbell was arrested in January 2008 in a sting operation involving Irish, British and Lithuanian intelligence agencies, when he was allegedly seeking automatic weapons, explosives and rocket-propelled grenades for use in Real IRA attacks.
What Lithuanian prosecutors have called a good example of European intelligence agencies co-operating to foil arms smuggling which would have potentially deadly results, Mr Campbell’s defence lawyers are deriding as a clear case of manipulation and entrapment.
They say Mr Campbell, who turned 39 on Thursday, was lured to Lithuania by an undercover MI5 agent known as Robert Michael Jardine – not believed to be his real name – with whom he had previously smuggled cigarettes.
The lawyers insist it was Mr Jardine who persuaded their client to move from tobacco to arms smuggling and who organised for him to meet undercover Lithuanian agents posing as weapons dealers – and who encouraged him to pretend he had links to the Real IRA so as to “appear more serious”.
In secretly recorded conversations between Mr Campbell, Mr Jardine and the supposed arms dealers, “all the initiative came from Jardine. He claimed to be translating into Russian for Michael, but he was actually the decision-maker,” said lawyer Ingrida Botyriene.
“There is no hard evidence and the only witnesses are various intelligence agents. They were active and arranging everything,” fellow defence lawyer Rasa Aurelija Kucinskaite said.
Prosecutor Gedgaudas Norkunas, who is seeking the extradition in this case of Liam Campbell and fellow Irish citizen Brendan McGuigan, rejected claims of entrapment and said “the role of the three countries’ intelligence services was very important. They worked together on this.”
He added: “The prosecution believes there is enough evidence for Michael Campbell to be found guilty.”