A witness, granted anonymity for his own safety, has told the inquests on the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings how he was taken to a house and to Dublin airport to identify one of the suspected bombers. Olivia Kelly reports
In the week following the atrocities of May 17th, 1974, the former bus-driver was brought by gardaí to the airport and to a house at an unspecified location to identify a man believed to have planted the car bomb that killed two people in South Leinster Street, Dublin.
The man told gardaí at the time that the person seen at both locations was "very much like" the man he witnessed getting out of the car at South Leinster Street minutes before it exploded.
The Dublin City Coroner, Dr Brian Farrell, yesterday granted the witness anonymity because of "serious personal safety issues" for the man and his family. He is the first witness to have been granted anonymity.
The man had driven a group of school children and nuns from Derry to Dublin on the morning before the bombings. He parked his bus on South Leinster Street at around 5 p.m. and remained on board while his party went into a nearby hotel.
A short time later he saw a man in a large green Austin 1800 drive into a parking space next to the railings of Trinity College. The man waited for some minutes and appeared to be "fiddling" with something beside him, before getting out and walking in the direction of Grafton Street. "He got out of the car slowly and closed the door very easy. He never locked it, which I thought was strange."
The bus-driver continued to observe the man in his mirror as he walked down Nassau Street. The man paused briefly to look over his shoulder, before turning left into Grafton Street.
"The next thing I saw was a large ball of fire. There was an explosion and the front window of the bus was sucked out."
The driver was propelled to the back of the bus before being sucked out the front window. He suffered flash burns and a blow to the head.
Out in the street he saw a woman running towards him engulfed in flames. He put out the fire and helped her into a building. That night he gave gardaí a description of the man.