Garda evidence to focus on Real IRA and testimony of FBI agent Rupert

FIFTY GARDAÍ will testify at the historic Omagh bomb civil trial, which began to hear evidence in Dublin yesterday. The 50 are listed in a document issued by the court.

Gardaí will be questioned on the history, objectives and methods of the Real IRA, surveillance meetings involving the Real IRA and the evidence of FBI agent David Rupert.

Interviews with the five defendants in the case, Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell, Colm Murphy, Seamus McKenna and Seamus Daly, will also be examined at the action. All five deny any involvement in the bombing.

Much of the evidence that will be given has already been heard in separate cases involving the five defendants.

The statements of five gardaí relating to the activities of Mr Rupert will be read into the record when the case returns to Belfast next month. The evidence involved is not contested.

Mr Rupert's original testimony was critical in the conviction of Michael McKevitt for directing terrorism. He spent 15 days in the witness box during the trial that led to McKevitt's 20-year conviction in August 2003 for directing terrorism.

The first Garda witness Det Sgt Thomas Healey, from the National Surveillance Unit, told the court that he witnessed a "clandestine" meeting of the Real IRA at Oaklands Park, Dundalk, on February 18th, 2000.

The meeting was attended by McKevitt and by Mr Rupert. At the time of the surveillance operation, McKevitt was under suspicion of being the leader of the Real IRA and the man ultimately responsible for the Omagh atrocity.

Det Sgt Healey told the hearing: "Any day that you get Michael McKevitt at a meeting was a good day's work."

He said Mr Rupert had done very well in succeeding in getting McKevitt to speak to him in the pathway outside the house so he could be observed by gardaí.

He also suggested that McKevitt may have been trying to impress his American guest by walking outside with him.

Kieran Vaughan, counsel for McKevitt, suggested that the meeting had never taken place. He said there was no independent evidence of the meeting, as neither the dictaphone nor the computer records of the event were kept, and there was no corroborative evidence from a photograph.

Det Sgt Healey said that, at the time, he was just involved in a surveillance operation and was not gathering evidence that might be used in a criminal trial.

Mr Vaughan also suggested there were discrepancies in the time that Mr Rupert was alleged to have left the house, gone to a house in Dundalk and returned to his room at the Carrickdale Hotel to send a five-page e-mail.

Mr Vaughan said that Det Sgt Healey had placed Mr Rupert at a house in Wolfe Tone Terrace in Dundalk at 9.05pm, yet he had sent an e-mail from the Carrickdale Hotel at 9.18pm, although the hotel was at least a 15-minute drive away.

Det Sgt Healey also told the court Mr Rupert was observed meeting McKevitt in McKevitt's home at Beech Park, Blackrock, Co Louth, on October 20th, 2000.