FBI agent David Rupert, the key witness for the prosecution in the trial of the first person in the State to be jailed for directing terrorist activities, was "a life-long criminal", the Supreme Court was told yesterday.
When convicting Michael McKevitt on the evidence of Mr Rupert, the non-jury Special Criminal Court had failed to address Mr Rupert's past activities, Michael O'Higgins SC said.
Counsel said Mr Rupert was involved in criminal conduct such as smuggling contraband, people and drugs, and had been investigated by the Inland Revenue Services in the US. Mr Rupert was "not embarrassed" to be known as "a street-smart criminal" and had borrowed money before applying for bankruptcy so that he would not have to pay it back, counsel added.
Mr Rupert was also involved in a plan to set up a floating casino in international waters off the Florida coast for tax purposes which would be used "to launder hot money", Mr O'Higgins said.
He also said Mr Rupert had conspired with two others, a mafia lieutenant and a man who was an associate of former Panama leader Manuel Noriega and the Chilean dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet, to launder money from the drugs trade. However, the project never got off the ground due to a lack of funds, he added.
Mr O'Higgins was making submissions for McKevitt (54), Beech Park, Blackrock, Co Louth, on the second day of his appeal before the five-judge court against his conviction by the Special Criminal Court (SCC) in August 2003 for organising terrorist activities for the Real IRA. McKevitt is serving a 20-year sentence for the offence and the appeal is being conducted amid tight security.
McKevitt has argued he did not get a fair trial because his legal team had not been supplied with all information in relation to Mr Rupert, a New York native who infiltrated the Real IRA and attended Real IRA army council meetings where he said McKevitt was present.
Mr Rupert was described by the SCC as "very truthful" and the court rejected the defence's attempts to discredit him.
Yesterday, Mr O'Higgins said the Special Criminal Court judges had described Mr Rupert as "very truthful" and the court rejected the defence's attempts to discredit him. In its judgment, the Special Criminal Court had also described Mr Rupert as being somebody who had a "chequered business career", who sailed close to the edge, counsel added.
Such remarks indicated the Special Criminal Court had not addressed Mr Rupert's past activities, counsel said.
He said Mr Rupert was arrested on one occasion in the US with another person in connection with efforts to smuggle runaway underage girls across State lines. During his detention, Mr Rupert had said to the police that his friend had planned to take one of the minors home and "keep her as a puppy", counsel said.
Mr O'Higgins also said that, during the trial, Mr Rupert was asked if he was a crook and had replied: "Not to my knowledge". Mr Rupert had also failed to answer whether he had paid tax on the money he was paid by the FBI and the British security service.
Among the grounds of the appeal is an argument that there was a failure by the prosecution to have an appropriate system of disclosure of documents during the trial.
The disclosure would have included information about Mr Rupert having been allegedly investigated for fraud in 1974 and 1994 which went to motivation for him acting as an informer for the FBI, it is submitted.
The omission of that material about Mr Rupert's past activities should have been addressed, McKevitt has argued. Had the material been provided, it would have shown the secret services' "attempt to mask" Mr Rupert's alleged criminality, it is submitted.
No schedule of documentation was ever presented to the defence and McKevitt's lawyers got material relating to Mr Rupert "by chance or mistake" it has been submitted.
McKevitt is the first person to be convicted in the State for the offence of directing terrorism, which was introduced after the Real IRA bomb attack in Omagh in 1998 in which 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, died.
McKevitt appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeal which upheld the conviction in 2005. However, the appeal court certified that a point of law arising in the case should be determined by the Supreme Court, a decision which effectively means a fresh appeal against conviction.
The appeal continues today.