It was 6 a.m. at the Buccaneer Motel on Deerfield Beach when the resident of Room 6 beside the swimming pool got an unwelcome wake-up call.
Conor Anthony Claxton, an IRA volunteer on an arms-buying mission in Florida, was confronted by two armed members of the US Joint Terrorism Task Force. Then he was on his way to the FBI office in Miami and a prolonged interrogation.
It was July 26th last year. The Northern Ireland peace process was in crisis as the IRA refused to decommission its weapons and the Ulster Unionist Party refused to allow Sinn Fein members into the new Executive.
Over the next year, from his cell in a Miami jail Claxton watched the US Attorney's office patiently build up a damning indictment that could put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
US Assistant Attorney Richard Scruggs did not put a tooth in it at the bail hearing: Claxton and the IRA were trying to wreck the peace process. But at the trial Claxton claimed the guns were needed to defend Catholics because the unionists were collapsing the Belfast Agreement.
Just three weeks before the arrests, an English Special Branch officer, Steve Norman, was woken by a phone call telling him an X-ray screening machine at West Midlands Airport had detected weapons in a package posted from Florida and addressed to a person in Dublin.
Seven more packages with hidden weapons and ammunition from the Fort Lauderdale area were later detected, addressed to individuals in Ireland.
The FBI in Florida, working with the British and Irish police, soon tracked down where the weapons had been posted. The FBI got surveillance videos from the post offices and identified Claxton as one of the two men who were sending the packages.
In the FBI office Claxton was shown pictures from the video tapes of himself. He immediately admitted he was gun-running for the Provisional IRA but insisted that the guns were not to be used against any children.
He told his interrogators who had arrested him, FBI Agent Mark Hastbacka and Special Agent James Combs of the US Department of State, that he was not part of the Continuity IRA or the "Real IRA" which was responsible for the Omagh bombing.
Speaking freely after being advised of his rights, Claxton said the guns were only to be used against British soldiers, the RUC and Protestant paramilitaries but not against the Irish police. According to the report written later by Agent Hastbacka, Claxton's "rationalisation for sending the weapons back to associates he would not name in Ireland was that the Protestants were not negotiating a peace agreement in good faith".
After Claxton's claim of acting for the IRA was highlighted at the bail hearing, the IRA's army council issued a statement saying it had not authorised this operation.
Claxton told the agents they were lucky to get him - he was due to leave for Shannon in two days' time. "You didn't get all of us," he said.
Claxton said he was sent by someone higher up in the IRA, whom he named in his trial as "Paul". He would not have been able to carry out such an arms mission without higher approval, he said. Florida was chosen because the gun laws were so lax.
A third interrogator, David Frasca, pressed Claxton on who had ordered him to send guns from Florida and asked if it were "Adams". Claxton retorted: "You sound like a loyalist."
While Claxton was being arrested, another dawn raid was taking place in the affluent Weston suburb of Fort Lauderdale, resulting in the arrests of Anthony Smyth from Belfast and his girlfriend, Siobhan Browne, from Co Cork but now a US citizen. A fourth member of the operation, Martin Mullan, from Dunloy, Co Antrim, was arrested in Philadelphia.
Siobhan Browne, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges and so was not on trial yesterday, was the first to attract the attention of the authorities in Florida when her name showed up on the computers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco as having bought 16 handguns in a short time. Agent Regina Lombardo's investigation of Browne led to Smyth, who was also buying large quantities of weapons.
It is legal to buy handguns in Florida after a background check, but Smyth and Browne had got one arms dealer to falsify the paperwork so fewer guns were recorded. They told the dealer, Ed Bluestein, the guns were for a "cause" they held dear.
The surveillance of Browne also led to Claxton who was using one of her numerous mail boxes. The surveillance of Claxton led to Mullen. The court was shown video tapes of the two men posting packages which were identified as those intercepted.
Just three weeks after the first package with guns was discovered, the FBI had seized 122 weapons and ammunition, including deadly .50 calibre bullets used by IRA snipers and magazines for high-powered AK 47 rifles. Most of the handguns seized had been sent in 23 packages.
The first conspiracy charges, of illegally buying and exporting weapons, were expanded in January to the more serious ones of conspiring to murder and maim.
The maximum penalty was life imprisonment. All three were found not guilty of these charges yesterday but guilty of illegally buying and exporting weapons.
In the trial gardai testified about guns which reached a house in Inverin, Co Galway, where Claxton's girlfriend, Jackie McIntyre, was staying. She was arrested but charges were dropped.
Claxton was the only defendant to testify. He gave a bravado account but insisted the guns from Florida were to be kept in the Republic and only go to Northern Ireland if Catholics were in danger from attacks.
He also claimed that Irish-American sympathisers had threatened to give funds instead to the Continuity and "Real IRA" if guns were not sent to Ireland.