In the quiet of Court No. 1 at the Old Bailey yesterday the members of the jury donned headphones and listened to a covert tape recording of the final moments before the fatal shooting of Diarmuid O'Neill. After he and two alleged IRA members could be heard shouting repeatedly "OK, we're down", "we're unarmed", six rapid shots were heard on the tape, followed by more shouts and pleas.
The tape-recording was played yesterday afternoon at the beginning of the third week of the trial of four alleged IRA members charged with conspiring to cause explosions between January 1st and September 24th, 1996, and with possessing explosives.
It follows the shooting on September 23rd last year of O'Neill, who was unarmed, during a raid by up to 20 members of Scotland Yard's firearms squad to arrest people they believed were members of an IRA active service unit. Intelligence gathered on O'Neill in the weeks and months leading up to the raid had singled him out as being "at the heart of the conspiracy" to launch a devastating series of bombings in Britain, the court heard.
The other men alleged to have been members of the active service unit - Mr Patrick Kelly (31), originally from Birmingham and with an address in Co Longford; Mr Brian McHugh (31), with an address in London; Mr James Murphy (26), from Chelsea, London, and Mr Michael Phillips (22), from Crawley, Sussex - had been described to police officers in a briefing at Scotland Yard before the raid as "terrorists, possibly armed, and dangerous".
Mr Kenneth MacDonald QC, for the defence, put it to the police officer, code-named "Kilo", who shot O'Neill six times, that he had given a "partial account" of the events leading up to the shooting. He repeatedly asked him if he had heard the shouts of O'Neill and two other people in the room saying "We give up" and "We're on the deck." Officer Kilo replied: "No, I did not hear that."
Officer Kilo, a firearms officer for the past seven years, said that Operation Tinnitus had gathered information on the group by use of covert surveillance methods, which included bugging by MI5 of a hotel room used by O'Neill in west London.
The security services considered the men "dangerous" and believed that they had discussed "bluffing" their way out of a confrontation with the police. "And, if that didn't work, they would shoot their way out."
When the police arrived at the guesthouse on the day of the raid an officer code-named "Delta" had attempted to make entry with an electronic power key. However, the operation did not go according to plan. The key did not work and a battering ram, which had been brought along as a back-up to break down the door, only managed to punch a hole in it.
At this point, Officer Kilo said, an order was given by another officer, code-named "Hotel", to fire disabling CS gas canisters into the room through the hole in the door. Officer Kilo said two rounds were fired, but because he was not wearing a respirator his eyes began running and he had difficulty breathing. He moved away from the door to take a breath of air and it was then, he said, that he heard another officer shout: "There's one kneeling down at the back of the room."
Returning to the door, which was still shut, Officer Kilo said he heard shouts of "armed police" and he screamed: "Show me your hands." Officer Kilo described how the door of the room opened only slightly at first and then a little more until he could see a "silhouetted figure" standing in the doorway. "I felt I was about to be shot", Officer Kilo recalled. "He hadn't reacted to anything I said, or replied. His body language was aggressive and he was leaning towards me in a boxer-type stance."
With CS gas engulfing a dark room and believing he was about to be shot, Officer Kilo said he then fired two shots. Then, when the man - O'Neill - did not move, he "quickly" fired another four shots before pushing him on to a bed in the room. O'Neill died a few hours later in London's Charing Cross Hospital.
At the end of the cross-examination Mr MacDonald put it to Officer Kilo that O'Neill had had trouble opening the door when he was ordered to do so "and that was when he was shot". Officer Kilo replied: "He didn't appear to be having trouble opening it."
The trial continues.