McKevitt denies garda tipped him off about search of his home

MICHAEL McKEVITT, who is serving a 20-year sentence for directing terrorism and membership of the Real IRA, has told the Smithwick Tribunal he was not tipped off by a member of the Garda about an imminent search of his home.

The tribunal, which moved to the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin to hear from McKevitt yesterday, was told evidence had previously been heard that gardaí believed he was in possession of a false passport in January 1990.

Gardaí had obtained a search warrant for his home on the evening of January 26th and conducted the search between 7am and 8am on the following day, when no false passport was found.

Mary Laverty SC, for the tribunal, told McKevitt evidence had been heard from retired detective inspector Dan Prenty of Dundalk that McKevitt may have been tipped off about the impending raid.

Ms Laverty said Insp Prenty “told the tribunal somebody had called you up and basically tipped you off”.

She said given that the warrant was granted at 11pm and the search executed at about 7am the next day, the existence of the warrant would have been known to a few people.

She said it had been suggested the person who provided the tip-off “may well have been somebody” in the Garda.

McKevitt, who was taken from Portlaoise Prison under an armed Garda and Army escort, said he had never been tipped off about a Garda search warrant.

He said his home had been searched a number of times over the years but he had never been told a passport was the subject of any of the searches.

“I’ll be honest with you, over the years I remember the house being searched, but I couldn’t say about 1990.”

Dressed in a dark suit and open-necked shirt, McKevitt said: “I can be very clear I have never been told there was a search in the house for a passport.

“Searches were carried out but there was never any false passport to find in the first place,” he told the tribunal.

“In fairness we are talking here about 20 years ago,” he added, before saying he was certain there was “no tip-off”.

Ms Laverty: “If there was would you be telling me?”

McKevitt: “I would probably have to, I am under oath.”

Asked a few moments later again to confirm he did not get any tip-off, he replied: “No, never.”

Tribunal chairman Judge Peter Smithwick told McKevitt the tribunal knew why the search warrant was granted, and this was because gardaí were searching for a false passport.

Judge Smithwick said the tribunal had been told “you received a tip-off, and [as a result] it wasn’t there”.

The judge also said it was understood the alleged tip-off may have come from within the Garda.

“Did you receive a tip-off?” he asked.

“Definitely not,” replied McKevitt.

Summing up, Ms Laverty asked McKevitt whether he had received a call to the effect that “you are going to have visitors, get rid of the package”.

McKevitt said this was not the case. “Nobody tipped me off,” he said. McKevitt also said: “I don’t recall getting any phone call like that ever.”

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that gardaí based in Dundalk conspired with the IRA in the 1989 killings of two RUC officers, Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan.

They were seeking to co-ordinate Garda, British army and RUC action against IRA-controlled smuggling.

The two officers were killed in an IRA ambush minutes after they left a meeting with a senior garda in Dundalk Garda station on March 20th, 1989.

The tribunal, now six years in existence, began its public hearings in June this year. The chairman expects to file a final report by the end of May 2012.

The tribunal continues today.

WHO IS MICHAEL McKEVITT?  REPUBLICAN IMPRISONED FOR DIRECTING REAL IRA ACTIVITIES

MICHAEL McKEVITT (62), from Blackrock, Co Louth, was sentenced in 2003 to 20 years in prison for directing the activities of a terrorist organisation, the Real IRA.

The court imposed a concurrent six-year sentence for membership of an unlawful organisation. Both sentences were backdated to 2001. The convictions were upheld on appeal.

In June 2009 McKevitt was one of four people found liable for the Omagh bombing by a civil court in Belfast. Twenty-nine people died in the bombing, among them a woman pregnant with twins.

The four men were ordered to pay £1.6 million in compensation after the landmark civil case brought by some of the bereaved families. No one has ever successfully been convicted of the bombing in a criminal court.

In July this year, appeals lodged in Belfast by McKevitt and fellow republican Liam Campbell against the civil-case finding were dismissed by a panel of three judges. Delivering the judgment, Lord Justice Michael Higgins said "McKevitt has failed to establish that the [trial] judge erred in reaching a conclusion that McKevitt was one of those responsible for trespass to the person in relation to the victims of the explosion."

The Real IRA was formed from a splinter group of the Provisional IRA after the latter organisation signed up for the peace process.

McKevitt is reported to have joined the IRA in the mid-1970s and risen to the rank of quartermaster general. He is married to Bernadette Sands McKevitt, a sister of Provisional IRA member Bobby Sands who, while on hunger strike, was elected to the House of Commons and died in 1981.

McKevitt's earliest release date would be 2016.