Tales of corruption and intimidation

At an anti-corruption meeting in Dublin on Saturday (19 November) people spoke of Garda harassment, corruption and criminality and how the system leaves them unaccountable

Frank McBrearty (Jnr) opened the meeting at the Mansion House in Dublin with an attack on crime correspondents, whom he accused of attempting to "brainwash" people by "hyping" gangland criminality and criminality in general. He said they were just an arm of the Garda press office.

He said posters posted around Dublin by the organisers of the meeting, advertising the meeting were torn down by officials of Dublin City Council.

Derry journalist and Socialist Workers Party member, Eamon McCann, recalled his career as news editor of the Sunday World and how, in that capacity, he had been invited to dinner with then Tánaiste Michael O'Leary. At the dinner he challenged O'Leary on the question of the incarceration of Nicky Kelly, who, along with two others, had been wrongly convicted for involvement in the Sallins mail train robbery of 1976. O'Leary said the Garda Commissioner had assured him that Kelly was guilty and after all, as O'Leary explained, you "don't question the word of a guard" (Nicky Kelly was later pardoned by the President of Ireland).

McCann said: "Politicians are frightened of the guards because the guards know where the bodies are buried." He said political, financial and Garda corruption are all mixed up together and it's no good tackling it via individual cases. He called for a broad political campaign and the running of anti-corruption candidates in the forthcoming general election.

Sinn Féin TD, Sean Crowe, said he knew, while growing up in Dublin, that in certain Garda stations people were routinely beaten up by gardaí, even over small things. But at the time, "society said this didn't happen". Allegations were just dismissed, claiming that "this was just the words of subversives or criminals". He said when people take a case against gardaí, it is routine for false charges to be served on the person making the claim and then they will offer to drop that charge if the claimant drops their (real) charge against the gardaí.

Crowe himself was assaulted in a Garda station by the heavy gang for putting up anti-EU posters. He personally experienced the physical and mental abuse that people suffer in Garda stations. He stated that it was "not a handful of corrupt gardaí" that was the problem: rather it was "down to a police force with unimpeded power", but now there were "a few cracks in the wall" of this corruption in the justice system.

Journalist and director of the Centre for Public Inquiry, Frank Connolly, said that when attending meetings such as this, he was struck by the "vast number of people deeply hurt by agencies of the State... and the avalanche of allegations against the judiciary, the Garda etc". He said the Centre for Public Inquiry was actually inundated with so many cases that he now realises that it simply doesn't have the resources to deal with them.

Aisling Reidy of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties said that, during the course of the ICCL's existence, the Garda and State agencies had received more and more draconian powers, despite all the evidence that has emerged since the Sallins case (in 1976) of gardaí abusing those powers. This, she said, is because the majority of people still need to be persuaded that this abuse of power is the main problem. In fact the public are heavily influenced by the media's highlighting of such things as gang warfare, which is what happens when the "government constantly plays the politics of fear".

Osgur Breatnach, one of the three wrongly convicted and sentenced in connection with the Sallins mail train robbery in 1976, said: "I bear witness to torture... conspiracy to kidnap"... that was conducted in this State. He traced the origin of the Garda "heavy gang" to former commissioner, Ned Garvey, who, he said, was later discovered to have worked for British Intelligence. He said Garvey recruited that group (the "heavy gang") as a "systematic torture system". He was obviously arrested, on false charges, as part of a roundup of 40 people taken into custody in connections with the Sallins Train robbery.

Over ten of those arrested were subsequently tortured and he spoke of the screams he said he heard in the Bridewell (the Garda station at the rear of the Four Courts) before his turn came to be "tortured". He said that during his "ordeal", he contemplated hanging himself and eventually was driven to sign a false statement. This was done during the Fine Gael-Labour coalition (1973 - '77) and when they were succeeded by the incoming Fianna Fáil government, Garvey was sacked but all the other gardaí involved were promoted. In any case, the subsequent legal proceedings went on for a long time, during which he and his family were constantly harassed by gardaí.

Joe Higgins TD of the Socialist Party said he owed Fingal County Council €15,000 in legal costs for five hours' work put in by a barrister employed by the council when they successfully took legal action against him over the bin tax protests. He said there were large numbers of people who were completely unable to pay those kind of sums and that this makes constitutional rights a bit of a dead letter for a large swathe of the Irish population. There is also in practice no way that a TD can hold judges to account, since any criticism at all of judges are ruled out of order by the Ceann Comhairle in the Dáil.

A former inter-county GAA player said she was sexually assaulted by a garda who was working as a coach of the local ladies GAA club. She made a complaint to the Garda Complaints Board but that got nowhere until another person made a similar complaint against the same person. This time the Garda in question was tipped off and intimidated the potential witnesses and the victim. Now she finds herself constantly harassed, intimidated and ostracised in her local community, while the Garda has risen in the ranks of the GAA. It is, she feels, a complete and blatant cover-up by gardaí and the ladies GAA.

Phillip Flood said he was beaten unconscious by gardaí and it was his efforts to get justice over that which has led to his being harassed by them. "Taken into custody several times but never found guilty of anything... Nobody would help... solicitors... politicians... even doctors." He has been left mentally and physically damaged.

John Clery, speaking on behalf of a relative who was raped, said that his nephew and the relative get nothing but a litany of obscene verbal abuse from gardaí in Kilkenny when they try to have it investigated.

A person speaking on behalf of the late John Maloney told how Maloney had been arrested as part of a drugs search and taken to Rathfarnham Garda station. No drugs were found but he was reported to have been held on an existing warrant over car insurance. He was found in a coma outside, but near, the Garda station the next day and died 13 days later in hospital. Although it was stated that he died as a result of a drugs overdose, the hospital test done on him showed only minute traces of cocaine.

The family feel that the statements given by gardaí to the inquest are very "choreographed" but they have run out of options in trying to get justice, because they don't have enough money to take any legal action. Meanwhile, they now face "cruel, vicious and organised harassment" from the gardaí. A relative had an arm broken over this and their house is raided regularly, including twice the previous week as part of the "so-called crack down on gangs".

Larry Wheelock, brother of Terence Wheelock who died while in Garda custody, said the cell where his brother was alleged to have committed suicide was renovated immediately after the incident effectively ruining it as a potential crime scene. Meanwhile, this family are also facing intimidation by the gardaí.

Joe Mooney (on behalf of the Mulhall family of Dublin city) said Jimmy Mulhall and the rest of this family were prominent anti-drugs campaigners and for this reason they have faced ten years of constant harassment from gardaí. They were constantly stopped, strip-searched etc (to look for drugs on a family that was campaigning against them). Jimmy was beaten up in Garda stations ("unrecognisable when he came out") and his ten-year-old son Wayne was stopped and searched.

Wayne has now had non-stop harassment as well since this time, for example he was beaten up at one point by gardaí repetitively banging a car door against him. The family are at their wits' end. All the local politicians know about this harassment but still it doesn't stop and this family know of this kind of thing happening to other families all over the city.

Dan McCaffrey from Omagh spoke of a case involving fraud, blackmail and extortion in the Republic from 1981. He said he couldn't get a solicitor to take his case, despite huge efforts to get one. Amazingly, and tellingly, the only politician who has tried to help this proud Irish Republican is one Dr Ian Paisley!

Padraig O'Reilly, a psychiatric nurse from Co Mayo, said he had been trying for many years to highlight what was done to a psychiatric patient who died while in Garda custody. He elaborated on the sustained campaign of slander waged against him since he started making these complaints. Posters were put up, forged documents on Garda note-paper were distributed in the locality in a slander campaign very similar to that which hit the McBreartys. Because of this campaign and blacklisting he and his family have not had a steady wage for 13 years.

A woman who used the name Eileen said her son was murdered by a Garda informant who had 20-plus warrants out for his arrest but still met with his Garda handler on the day of the murder without being arrested. The informant in fact advised gardaí on that date that there was going to be a killing, but no effort was made to stop it. This happened to her son as he coming back from his father's funeral. She has not got one positive answer back from any of the political parties.

Jim Gunney told of how he and his neighbours had made a citizen's arrest of a man who was attempting to abduct his (Jim Gunney's) daughter. While they held him before his transfer to Ashbourne (Co Meath) Garda station, this man told them that he was a very powerful person and that they didn't realise the full implications of what they were trying to do. It also transpired that he knew all about Jim and the fact that he had custody of his daughter after a family case. When they got to the Garda station they found out that this man was in fact "a senior Garda" who was in some sense in charge of some of the investigations into the missing person cases elsewhere in the country. He described then that after this incident all hell broke loose in terms of his relationship to the Garda. Both he and his neighbour have been subjected to assaults (including a broken leg) and threats etc from gardaí.p

This is an edited version of a report on Indymedia: www.indymedia.ie reproduced with kind permission of the author