Chief Omagh witness a 'confidence trickster'

THE STATE’S chief witness against Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt was by his own admission a “drug smuggler, people smuggler, brothel keeper and confidence trickster”, the Omagh bombing civil trial heard yesterday.

Despite a past which included multiple bankruptcies, being investigated for fraud and owing hundreds of thousands in unpaid taxes, the Garda never bothered to investigate the past of David Rupert, counsel for McKevitt told the trial, which is sitting in Dublin at present.

Michael O’Higgins SC said David Rupert, the FBI informant who infiltrated the Real IRA, was the “beginning, middle and end” of the case against McKevitt, who was convicted for directing terrorism in August 2003 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

He said Mr Rupert had a long history of deception and greed and that he fleeced and ripped off everybody he came into contact with, yet the State had never asked questions of his credibility as a witness.

He said that the Garda was aware of a document produced by the FBI in 1995 which showed that Mr Rupert had been involved in a $1 million lawsuit involving one of his trucking companies and had fleeced his own employees by withholding €750,000 in taxes from the US Internal Revenue Service.

Mr O’Higgins suggested that gardaí should have investigated his credibility as a witness and had a duty, as set out in the Supreme Court, to investigate all claims and witnesses whether they helped or hindered the State’s case.

Mr Rupert had asked for $2 million to infiltrate the Real IRA, Mr O’Higgins also stated.

Mr O’Higgins put it to Det Insp Diarmuid O’Sullivan, one of the principal investigators in the original trial involving Michael McKevitt, “Do you not think you should have sat round a table and said this man is greedy, avaricious and trying to extract money from people and that we should have concerns about that?”

Det Insp O’Sullivan said he was aware that McKevitt’s defence team was already investigating Mr Rupert’s past and that, if the Garda had got involved, it would be regarded as “interference”.

Mr O’Higgins repeatedly asked Det Insp O’Sullivan if he felt that the Garda had discharged its duties by leaving the defence to raise the issue of Mr Rupert’s credibility rather than carrying out its own investigation.

He suggested that the Garda had “unlimited resources” to carry out such an investigation.

Det Insp O’Sullivan said that Mr Rupert’s past activities were a matter for the FBI and it was not up to the Garda to investigate.

He said that, when gardaí contacted the FBI, the FBI informed them that Mr Rupert was a credible witness and that he had no previous criminal convictions.

“Our responsibility was to take a statement from Mr Rupert and best corroborate that statement by conducting inquiries and by assisting the DPP in coming to a conclusion,” he said.

He said that 90 per cent of the evidence given by Mr Rupert could be corroborated independently.

Det Insp O’Sullivan also stated that Mr Rupert’s credibility was called into question for 11 days while he was in the witness box at McKevitt’s trial and that three Special Criminal Court judges had found him to be a credible witness.

McKevitt’s 20-year sentence in 2003 was not directly related to the Omagh bombing.

He is one of five defendants in the long-running civil case being brought by relatives of the 29 people who were killed in the bombing on August 15th, 1998. The other defendants are Liam Campbell, Séamus McKenna, Séamus Daly and Colm Murphy.