Gardai caused "frustrating" delays to detectives investigating the June 1996 Manchester bombing, a former UK special branch officer said yesterday.
The ex-detective chief superintendent said that police in Greater Manchester became so frustrated at their lack of progress with the Garda Síochána in 1996 that an officer was sent to make inquiries in the Republic with no-one being told.
The former head of special branch in Greater Manchester was giving evidence under an assumed name and from behind a curtain at the trial of the former senior investigating officer in the inquiry, who is accused of leaking details of a top secret file to the press and naming a prime suspect.
The witness, referred to in court only as Mr Bernard, said the Garda, police from Greater Manchester, the RUC, and the security services were all involved in the investigation following the IRA explosion in which nearly 400 people were injured.
Mr Bernard said: "There were considerable difficulties encountered with the Garda in obtaining the simplest of statements and there were delays that didn't seem to have any apparent cause." He agreed with Mr Peter Wright, defending Det Chief Insp Gordon Mutch (51), who denies misconduct in a public office, that these delays were of "months and even years". Mr Bernard, now retired, said the lack of co-operation led to him authorising a trip to the Republic by an officer "without the knowledge or approval of other officers in the department".
Mr Bernard said it was "a highly unusual course of action" to take but it had been caused by the inability to make any progress through normal channels.
Det Chief Insp Mutch denies leaking details of the investigation, including the identity of prime suspect, Mr Declan McCann (31), to Manchester Evening News crime reporter Steve Panter in 1999.
The jury heard that Greater Manchester Police agreed to a secret request from the RUC not to arrest and interview Mr McCann over the the 1996 bombing.
A file that was being prepared for the Crown Prosecution Service naming McCann and other suspects arrested in England in a separate operation was not forwarded for another 16 months as a result of the agreement, Mr Bernard said.
Officers investigating the lorry bomb were given a "cover story" to account for the fact that no arrest was taking place, he said.
He said that at a meeting in March 1997 he and former assistant chief constable Colin Phillips were asked by a senior RUC officer not to arrest and interview the suspect.
He said because of the RUC request, Greater Manchester Police decided there was no point in submitting the file to the CPS. He had to explain this to Mr Mutch, who was then the deputy senior investigating officer.
The file eventually went to the CPS in July the following year after the RUC said they no longer had concerns. But the CPS decided there should be no arrest.
The Crown alleges that Mr Mutch leaked information on the investigation, including details of the secret agreement with the RUC, after he was "disappointed" by the decision that the suspect should not be arrested.