A prosecution witness in a murder trial was arrested and questioned about the crime 24 hours after raising the alarm, a jury heard yesterday.
Mr Bashkim Osaj brought gardaí to the scene of the murder of a young Albanian woman in Sligo last year and implicated a friend who had visited the town with him, the Central Criminal Court in Sligo heard.
Mr Osaj, from Kosovo and in Ireland since 1997, continued his evidence yesterday in the trial of Mr Eduart (Ardi) Kulici (24) from Albania, of Maltings Apartments, Bonham Street, Dublin.
Mr Kulici has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Lindita Kukaj (23) who was strangled at her flat on Wolfe Tone Street, Sligo, on February 22nd, 2003.
Mr Osaj, who drove the accused to Sligo the day before the murder, told the court he raised the alarm at Kennedy's Statoil filling station on the Dublin side of Carrick-on-Shannon as they returned to Dublin.
He said Mr Kulici had earlier thrown a long knife and a crowbar out of the car window on the Sligo/Dublin road. The court heard yesterday that when these weapons were recovered about 20 miles from Sligo there were no fingerprints on them.
Mr Peter Finlay SC, defending, put it to Mr Osaj that a similar set of knives were found in an apartment he had rented for a friend in Dublin. When counsel pressed Mr Osaj on how Mr Kulici could have hidden such a blade on his person, witness replied: "Jesus I have seen men hiding bigger ones than that."
The witness told Mr Justice Carney and a jury of five women and seven men that the accused had backed him against a wall at knifepoint in Ms Kukaj's flat after the murder to compel him to drive him back to Dublin.
He rejected Mr Finlay's suggestion that it was he who had thrown the weapons out of the car window. Garda Michael Farrell of Carrick-on-Shannon Garda station told the court he had stopped Mr Osaj and the accused in Dromod after they left the filling station. He had earlier got a call from the petrol station's owner who said there were two men there and something funny was going on.
Garda Farrell said the driver, Mr Osaj, had got out of the car in Dromod and told him in a low voice that the passenger had killed a woman in Sligo. Mr Kulici was later arrested under the Aliens Order while Mr Osaj brought gardaí to a house on Wolfe Tone Street, Sligo, where the body was discovered under a duvet on a bed.
Mr Osaj had pointed out all the locations around Sligo he and the accused had visited with Ms Kukaj, including the bar and night club they attended before she was killed. Mr Osaj spent almost six hours at Sligo Garda station that night making a statement but shortly after he resumed it the next morning he was arrested on suspicion of murder.
Det Garda Michael Carr, a Sligo-based immigration officer, told the court he knew Ms Kukaj quite well. On the morning of the murder he went to Wolfe Tone Street and confirmed it was her body.The trial resumes on Wednesday.