Gardai told McDowell of decision not to prosecute

Gardaí informed the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, that they would not be proceeding with a prosecution of Frank Connolly…

Gardaí informed the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, that they would not be proceeding with a prosecution of Frank Connolly before the Minister went public on allegations that Mr Connolly had travelled to Colombia on a false passport.

The Irish Times has confirmed that Mr McDowell, along with the Secretary of the Department of Justice, Seán Aylward, told Atlantic Philanthropies' chairman Mr Chuck Feeney, and senior vice-president Mr Colin McCrea, about the bogus passport application linked by the Minister to Mr Connolly at a meeting on September 2nd in Dublin.

Near the end of the meeting, Mr Feeney asked about the status of the information they had been given and whether it could be made available to anyone else, or whether it had to be kept confidential.

The Minister and Mr Aylward asked that the details be kept confidential because they were not sure at that stage whether the Garda would try to press charges against the then executive director for the Centre for Public Inquiry, Mr Connolly.

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However, Mr Aylward released the two men from a pledge of confidentiality last month after Atlantic Philanthropies contacted the Department of Justice again to check on the status of the information given at the September meeting.

Following that request from Atlantic, Mr Aylward spoke to senior Garda officers who told him that they would not be pursuing a prosecution against Mr Connolly, The Irish Times has learned.

During the September 2nd meeting, Mr Feeney was given a copy of a bogus passport application, made falsely in the name of John Francis Johnson, Andersonstown, Belfast, accompanied by a forged signature of a Belfast priest, Fr Thomas Tarney.

A copy of the application was subsequently given by Mr McDowell to the Irish Independent in late November which reported the information on November 26th.

Besides linking the bogus passport application to Mr Connolly, Mr McDowell and Mr Aylward also told Mr Feeney about Mr Connolly’s 1983 two-year suspended prison sentence for rioting and his involvement with a group called "Revolutionary Struggle" while he was at college.

Following the second approach from Atlantic about the confidentiality of the information, Mr Aylward checked the status of the Garda investigation against Mr Connolly.

The Secretary General was then told by senior Garda officers the Garda would not be pursuing a prosecution for the illegal possession of a passport against Mr Connolly because there was not enough evidence on which to proceed.

Mr Aylward then spoke again to Atlantic Philanthropies "during the course of November but before a copy of the bogus passport application was given to the Irish Independent ", The Irish Times was told last night.

During this conversation, Mr Aylward released Atlantic from its pledge of confidentiality, telling them they could release the information to Mr Connolly and to the CPI’s chairman, ex-High Court judge Feargus Flood.

The controversy caused by the allegations against Mr Connolly, who has refused to say where he was in April 2001 at the time of the withdrawing its funding last week for the CPI.

During the September 2nd meeting, Mr McDowell stressed his own nationalist background, describing himself as an Irish republican, and pointed to his grandfather, Eoin McNeill.

In a written Dáil reply to Independent TD Finian McGrath on December 6th, Mr McDowell charged that Mr Connolly had travelled to Colombia in April 2001 along with his brother, Niall, and a convicted IRA member, Pádraig Wilson.

Citing intelligence reports, the Minister said the three men were involved in an IRA bid to earn millions of dollars from left-wing Farc guerrillas in return for bombmaking training.