MAZE PRISON escapee Brendan McFarlane went on trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday for the 1983 kidnapping of supermarket boss Don Tidey during which a trainee garda and soldier were killed.
McFarlane (56), a father of three, of Jamaica St, Belfast, was arrested outside Dundalk and charged in January 1998.
Yesterday he pleaded not guilty to falsely imprisoning Donald James Tidey on dates unknown between November 24th and December 16th, 1983.
He also denied possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life at Derrada Wood, Drumcronan, Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, between November 25th and December 16th, 1983, and possession of a firearm for an unlawful purpose between the same dates.
Opening the prosecution case, Edward Comyn SC said Mr Tidey was a well-known businessman who was kidnapped by a group of armed men on November 24th, 1983, and kept for three weeks at Derrada Wood.
He said a trainee garda and a member of the Army were killed when Mr Tidey was rescued. Apart from the accused, no other person has been charged in relation to the kidnapping or the killing of the garda and soldier.
Mr Comyn said Mr Tidey left his home at Woodtown near Ballyboden in south Dublin at 7.50am with his daughter Susan, whom he was dropping to school before going to work. His son Alastair was in his own car behind them.
Mr Tidey noticed a car with a flashing light that looked like a Garda car pulled across the exit of the laneway and a man dressed as a garda waving him down. There was another man standing nearby who was also dressed as a garda.
This man came over and asked his name and then pulled a handgun from inside his jacket and told Mr Tidey to get out of the car. The man kept the handgun trained on Mr Tidey, who was forced to get into the car with the flashing light.
Mr Tidey noticed there were three kidnappers in the car. His daughter was pulled from his car and pressed against a fence by a man with a machine gun. Three other men appeared on the scene and one of them fired shots.
The car containing Mr Tidey then sped off while Mr Tidey's own car was also driven off by one of the hooded men. Susan and Alastair ran to a nearby house to alert gardaí.
Mr Tidey was unaware of a collision between the car he was in and another car. He was taken out of the car and put in a van.
When the van stopped Mr Tidey was interrogated. "He was told that a ransom would be demanded and that his own life would be in his own hands," counsel added.
He was put back in the van and after a journey of about an hour he was chained to one of his captors and led cross country to a hideout.
Mr Comyn said Mr Tidey would tell the court that he eventually heard the security forces near the hideout and they were approaching closer all the time. He would say that the situation "became a blur of activity with a lot of firing . . . A battle started to rage around him. He heard a violent explosion and he threw himself to the ground."
Mr Tidey managed to get into a slight depression in the ground and then he saw a soldier with an automatic weapon trained on him standing over him. Mr Tidey was wearing camouflage clothing and wasn't easily identified.
Mr Comyn said the court would hear that the search parties advanced in two groups through thick undergrowth. The evidence would be that the kidnappers took hostages and managed to escape through the back of the woods. They used a blue Opel Kadett car and when they approached gardaí they opened fire and a detective was wounded. The kidnappers escaped through fields and gardaí were not able to find them.
The kidnappers took Army weapons from their hostages and some of these were later recovered.
Mr Comyn said Mr Tidey was kidnapped by a group that was well organised, tightly knit and who were armed with a variety of weapons and prepared to use these to threaten Mr Tidey and to fire on the security forces.
He said the prosecution case is that McFarlane was part of of the group who kidnapped Mr Tidey and he acted in concert with the group in a common design.
There were two pieces of evidence against McFarlane: his fingerprints were found on a milk carton, a plastic container and a cooking pot found at the hideout;certain things he said to gardaí after his arrest in 1998 would also be used as evidence.
McFarlane was the OC (officer commanding) of the Provisional IRA prisoners at the Maze prison at the time of the hunger strike in 1981, and escaped in the mass breakout by 38 prisoners from the jail in September 1983.
He was arrested in Amsterdam in January 1986, extradited to Northern Ireland and released on parole from the Maze in 1997. He was arrested by gardaí outside Dundalk in January 1998 as he travelled back to Belfast from Dublin following a trip to Copenhagen.
Supermarket executive Don Tidey, who was employed by Associated British Foods, was kidnapped by an IRA gang in 1983 and rescued after 23 days in captivity.
A trainee garda, Gary Sheehan (23), of Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, and a member of the Defence Forces, Pte Patrick Kelly (35), from Moate, Co Westmeath, were killed in a shoot-out with the kidnapping gang when Mr Tidey was rescued.