Republican Evictions
Known members of the INLA were recruited to carry out a forced eviction of tenants in a Dublin house.
A Dublin businessman paid a leading INLA man to evict his tenants after a young female tenant spurned his sexual advances. The businessman, Thomas Gear, a middle aged jeweller, is now facing possible civil action by his young victim, Magill has learned.
The alleged leader of the INLA in the Republic, Gary Adams, was recently jailed for 12 months for his part in the illegal eviction. Adams' co-accused, Thomas Murray and Damien Bond, were also sentence for taking part.
Because all three pleaded guilty in the Special Criminal Court to unlawful intimidation, few details emerged. However, statements obtained by Magill show that the INLA gang were recruited indirectly by Thomas Gear in July 1996, after his lodger Saoirse Mullen rejected his sexual approaches.
On July 23, Mullen was asleep in her room at 8 Oaktree Drive Castleknock, when Gear arrived home after playing badminton. According to Mullen, Gear ‘barged' into her room, threw himself on top of her in the bed and started to kiss her forcibly. ‘He kept saying he loved me. I put my hands around his neck to push him off me' stated Mullen. ‘I was screaming for my friend Marguerite to come and help me to get away.' Marguerite Beggan was also lodging in the house at the time.
Saoirse Mullen said she was ‘so frightened by the incident' she asked her boyfriend Michael Murphy to stay in the house until she found other accommodation. “Each night I used to put the chest of drawers up against the door to avoid a repetition of this assault,” stated Mullen. Gear then moved out of the house and into a hotel when Beggan threatened to report the attack on Mullen.
A week after the incident, Saoirse Mullen was in the house at 8.15pm, when the front door opened and three men wearing baseball caps appeared. One of them was holding a sheet of paper containing the names of the occupants. He was later identified as Gary Adams, of Muirhevnamore Estate Dundalk. “Right, I've been given orders to clear this house,” he said. Turning to Mullen, he said, “get your stuff packed, you're leaving now.”
Mullen stated that she felt scared and threatened as the men were verbally aggressive. She asked Adams for more time to get her things together, as she had furniture and belongings to remove. Warning her not to telephone anyone, he said: “Right, 11pm we'll be back, you better be gone by then.”
Unknown to the INLA gang, however, they had been tailed going to the house by Special Branch detectives who received a tip off that the INLA was planning a ‘job' in Dublin that night. The detectives watched Adams, Damien Bond, and Thomas Murray as they drove to a house at Whitethorn Close, Beaumont, owned by Bart O'Connor, an associate of Damien Bond's. There they took baseball caps, dark jackets and a lump hammer out of the boot of Adam's car. All four got into a blue van driven by O'Connor and headed for Castleknock, making several U turns along the way, apparently to avoid surveillance.
At 8pm, O'Connor let Adams, Bond and Murray off at a roundabout near Oaktree Drive. After threatening the lodgers inside Number 8, the three men tried to leave the house, but were immediately surrounded by armed gardai. Detectives found Saoirse Mullen inside the door with a telephone in her hand. She was crying and shaking uncontrollably.
The following day, Thomas Gear was arrested at his jeweller's shop at Parnell Mall in the Ilac Centre on suspicion of being a member of the INLA. When questioned about the incident at his home the previous night, he said he first met Saoirse Mullen in April 1996 when she replied to his advertisement for lodgers. Mullen and Gear had a cordial landlord-tenant relationship until July 23, the night he entered her room. He admitted trying to kiss her, but said he stopped when Mullen made it clear she wasn't interested. He admitted going to Bart O Connor to see about having his lodgers removed.
According to Gear, O'Connor said, ‘they'll never bother you again.' He said there would be no cost involved, but if Gear wanted to pay a nominal expense he could do so at a later stage. Gear denied being a member of the INLA.
When O'Connor was arrested he admitted contacting Gary Adams ‘as a favour' to Thomas Gear. “I know he (Adams) is involved,” he told detectives. “I don't want to mention he is in the INLA, but you know yourself, it's no secret.”
During questioning, Damien Bond said he had known Gary Adams for about 18 months. When asked how much he was getting for the job he said: ‘“I don't know, I was told it was a small job for drink money.” According to Thomas Murray's statements, the gang members were to get £100 for the job. He said he wouldn't have used the lump hammer found on him, “unless I had to.”
Gary Adams refused to make a statement. The 36-year-old republican is a member of the executive of Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP), the political wing of the INLA. According to security force intelligence reports, he is also the INLA's most senior member in the Republic. He was one of just 11 IRSP members to vote in favour of an INLA cease-fire at the IRSP ·rdfheis in Dublin last year. The vote was overwhelmingly defeated. Ironically, one of the issues he addressed at the ·rdfheis was forced evictions, caused by ‘unionist-loyalist pogroms'. He condemned the evictions as ‘cowardly attacks on defenceless men, women and children. Adams, from Co. Antrim, has one previous conviction for armed robbery in the Republic. Last year, he gave the oration at the graveside of Johnny Morris, the young INLA man from Tallaght who was shot dead by gardai in an abortive robbery at Goldenbridge in Dublin.
Adams and Bond (31) of Doolargy Avenue, Dundalk, were charged with INLA membership and intimidation at Oaktree Drive on August 1, 1996. The State later dropped the membership charge in return for both men pleading guilty to intimidation. Thomas Murray (25) of Marion Park, Dundalk, and Bart O'Connor (60) of Whitethorn Close, Beaumont, were charged with intimidation, although the charge against Bond was later dropped. The DPP recommended that no charges be brought against Thomas Gear.