IN/0598

Defiant RIRA chief will appeal verdict

MICHAEL MCKEVITT faces up to 20 years in jail after being convicted of masterminding the organisation behind the Omagh bomb outrage.
After McKevitt was found guilty of directing terrorism and membership of the Real IRA, police in both the Republic and Northern Ireland said the conviction was a blow to the breakaway republican grouping. Meanwhile relatives of a number of those families bereaved in the Omagh bombing, in court yesterday to hear the verdict, said it would strengthen their £10 million civil action against McKevitt and four other men they blame for what was the worst atrocity in 30 years of violence. McKevitt, who refused to leave his holding cell to hear the verdict, later sent out a defiant message that he would be appealing against his conviction. But Stanley McCombe, whose wife Ann died in the explosion, said: "The net is closing in on the Omagh bombers. Having come this far, we cannot let them get away."
McKevitt (53), of Blackrock, Dundalk, Co Louth, is the first person ever to be found guilty of directing terrorism in the Irish Republic. He is due to be sentenced today, but can expect a mandatory life sentence of up to 20 years imprisonment.
The republican was damned on the evidence of central prosecution witness David Rupert. The US trucking boss turned FBI and MI5 spy, infiltrated right to the core of the Real IRA during an undercover operation for which he was paid $1.25 million. For more than half of the five-week trial the 6ft 5in, 20 stone former businessman from upstate New York revealed McKevitt's plans to launch new paramilitary strikes even more shocking than Omagh and to branch out into 'cyber terrorism'.
An ex-French Foreign Legionnaire was also recruited as a sleeper agent who could be used in an assassination plot against British Prime Minister Tony Blair, it emerged. Rupert had told how he knew McKevitt was clearly the boss right from their first meeting at a Co Monaghan hotel in August 1999 after the Omagh attack.
Even though McKevitt's lawyers tried to destroy the agent as a serial fantasist before they were sensationally sacked by McKevitt, the judges decided his frightening account of the Real IRA leader's plans could not be ignored.
Mr Justice Richard Johnson said: "David Rupert is a truthful witness and his credibility has in no way been impugned."
McKevitt plotted a series of Real IRA bombings, including a September 2000 rocket strike on MI6 headquarters in London, bomb attacks on Ealing Broadway station in London and explosions at army bases in Northern Ireland between 1999 and 2001, Garda detectives said.
A hardline republican paramilitary since the 1970s, he had even more time to map out his campaign against British forces in Northern Ireland once he was made redundant from his factory job in Dundalk in 1991. Occasional work as a self-employed video cameraman at weddings did little to hamper his violent plans. He quit as Provisional IRA quartermaster in protest at the organisation's renewed ceasefire in 1997, the court was told. Determined to show his former comrades how to wage a war against British forces, he formed the rogue outfit that would sicken the world with the Omagh bombing.
The officer who headed the investigation against McKevitt, Chief Superintendent Martin Callinan, praised Mr Rupert's courage in helping to take out the key figure in dissident republicanism.
He said: "It was a very brave thing to do. Obviously he has to have very grave concerns about his security for the future."
Mr Callinan added: "This is a significant conviction, there's no doubt about that.
"What we have seen today is one example of the tools available to us to counter this type of terrorism.
"I would hope the Omagh families can take some measure of comfort from this particular prosecution."
McKevitt's wife Bernadette, the sister of hunger striker and republican icon Bobby Sands, who was in court right up until her husband dismissed his defence barristers, was also absent for the judgment. Tonight, Bernadette Sands McKevitt read out a statement outside Portlaoise Prison, saying that her husband had been denied a fair trial and would appeal the judgment. She described the conviction as a "political decision".
"My husband has refuted those allegations and will continue to refute those allegations and he intends to take this further," she said. "The court case that took place was nothing more than a show trial."
She said the evidence put to the court was constructed and that McKevitt had been victim of a stitch-up. She also said the relatives of the Omagh victims had been misinformed by the authorities. "I believe that they have been misled," she added.
But Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aiden was killed in Omagh, travelled to Dublin and expressed dismay that the charges did not cover the atrocity.
He said: "I am very bitter, very disappointed. There is no doubt that this man, who was the senior member of the Real IRA, had responsibility."