A witness giving evidence at the trial of two men accused of murdering two friends in a Poyntzpass bar in Co Armagh has told of seeing four men later arrested for the murders in a flat together hours before the attack.
Mr Edgar Nugent said he had gone to Mr Stephen McClean's flat in Banbridge to ask him to take him for a driving lesson but Mr McClean had refused, saying he had to see his girlfriend in Portadown. Mr McClean (30) from Hillside Park, Banbridge, Co Down, and Mr Noel McCready (32) of Dickson Park, Seapatrick, are on trial at Belfast Crown Court for the murders of Mr Philip Allen and Mr Damien Trainer, two friends who were shot dead in the Railway Bar, Poyntzpass, on the evening of March 3rd, 1998.
Mr Nugent said the two defendants were in the flat with two other men, Mr David Keyes and Ryan Robley. Mr Keyes was found murdered in the LVF wing of the Maze Prison two weeks after the shooting and Robley is on remand awaiting sentence after pleading guilty to the murders. Mr Nugent added that when he went into the flat, "I felt there was a tension, as if I was disturbing something - that these guys had private business".
He also told Mr Justice Kerr that a week before the shooting Mr McClean had accompanied him on a driving lesson when they had gone to Poyntzpass and Mr McClean had chosen the route. During cross-examination, Mr Nugent admitted that about 16 years ago he had been questioned by police about a car bombing in Lurgan and about membership of the IRA. He said he and a friend had been stopped while walking through a disused housing estate, apparently because they were near the place where a car used in the bombing had been abandoned. He said he had been released without charge the following day.
He denied suggestions from Mr John McCrudden QC, for Mr McClean, that he had invented the story about being at the flat. He also rejected the claim that Mr McClean had never taken him to Poyntzpass on a driving lesson. Cross-examination will continue this morning.