A former top aide to former French president Francois Mitterrand has been cleared by France's highest court of accusations that he planted arms and explosives at the home of three suspected Irish Republican Socialist Party activists more than 20 years ago.
Presidential security adviser Mr Paul Barril had been facing long-standing charges of illegal arrest for framing Mr Michael Plunkett, Mr Stephen King and Ms Mary Reid at their flat in Paris in August 1982.
The raid and their arrest was said to have been carried out on the personal orders of Mr Mitterrand. They were held in custody for more than a year before Paris gendarmes admitted during their trial they had planted evidence.
Mr Barril - the head of their elite anti-terrorist gendarmerie unit at the time - was accused of issuing the order to plant the weapons and bomb-making equipment. The three have been pursuing him for 21 years until this March, when Paris's Cour de Cassation finally ruled Mr Barril should not face trial.
In August 1982, Islamic terrorists bombed a Paris restaurant, killing six people. A French IRA sympathiser who believed there was an Irish link, tipped off the gendarmerie about a flat in Vincennes where the three IRSP supporters were living. A private prosecution against Mr Barril is understood to be under consideration.
14-year-old boy took mother's car
A 14-year-old boy was arrested for taking his mother's car for a drive after she let him sit in it to listen to the radio, the Dublin Children's Court heard yesterday. Judge John O'Neill heard that the boy, now 15, admitted to taking the car in Rathfarnham without his mother's permission, as well as to charges of driving without a licence or insurance on July 1st last year. He had not been in trouble before, the court heard.
Garda Gerard Travers stopped the boy driving the car at 2.25 a.m. The boy's mother had given him the keys to listen to its radio but on the spur of the moment he took it for a drive. His mother said the incident arose out of her "lack of judgment". Her son now went to bed at 10 p.m. every night and was also working.
Judge O'Neill remanded him on bail pending a probation report.
Man abused four of his daughters
A Galway widower who raped and sexually abused four of his daughters over a number of years has been remanded on bail for sentence on June 20th by Mr Justice Carney.
The 59-year-old farmer and labourer pleaded guilty at the Central Criminal Court to 12 sample counts of rape and indecent assault on dates from 1983 to 1997 from the 153 on the indictment. The victims are now aged from 17 to 31 years of age.
He admitted four charges each of raping his eldest and his youngest daughters, and two charges each of raping another daughter and indecently assaulting the fourth girl.