CELEBRITY INFORMER USES OMAGH TO TOUT ANTI-TERROR AGENCY
Celebrity' informer uses Omagh to tout 'anti-terror' agency
FORMER IRA double killer turned informer and best seller author Sean O' Callaghan has launched an anti-terrorist consultancy firm.
The new anti-terrorism business operates from the same London address as the Omagh Victims Legal Fund. It uses the Omagh bombing experience as its "sales pitch" to drum up business and give the organisation public credibility.
O'Callaghan's consultancy, Terror Watch Associates, proclaims that it has a number of "ex-terrorists" on its board and bills itself as "poachers turned gamekeepers". It claims to draw on the expertise of operatives from "special forces" and police services from all over the world.
O'Callaghan, who gunned down RUC Detective Inspector Peter Flanagan in an Omagh pub in 1974, recently advised Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble on republican strategy. His consultancy firm now claims to offer clients personal protection packages and risk evaluations, as well as media lobbying and advice services to governments, NGOs and agencies.
The legal advisor of the Terror Watch Associates firm is Jason McCue, 32, a partner in the London law firm of the Henry Hepworth Organisation known as H20 which has taken the civil action for the Omagh families for a discounted fee against named suspects in the Omagh atrocity. Mr McCue says the new consultancy firm is setting up in business to advise "the government, local authorities and businesses on fighting terrorist groups". These include, "al-Qaeda and other groups with paramilitary and terrorist capacity".
In an interview posted last Friday on a legal publisher's website, Butterworth's Lexis Nexis Direct, Mr McCue offered advice on changing the law on rights to privacy to combat terrorist groups.
The article quotes him as saying that "if members of the UK security services tapped into telephone conversations between al-Qaeda members planning another atrocity those recordings could not be used as evidence against them in criminal proceedings".
"This is just abysmal," says McCue. "The sooner this is changed the better."
The article reports that in September, Mr McCue accompanied O'Callaghan to a "UN counter-terrorism conference in Palermo" and believes that ideas could be copied from the Sicilians.
"Education policy and the laws around it have been developed to explain to children how Sicily was formed and how important it is to fight the Mafia," he is quoted.
Mr McCue is billed by the H2O organisation as the partner "specialising in media law (defamation), human rights (including privacy), reputation management (including PR and lobbying) and legal campaigns (e.g. acting for the victims of the Omagh bomb). Expertise in complex investigations (including money laundering, terrorism, organised crime), multi-jurisdictional legal issues, political issues, publishing, media management and internet issues."
Mr McCue is eager to see it made easier for terrorism victims to take civil cases. A particular advantage of civil proceedings is that the victims of their families can get damages awarded to them - and so get a form of financial compensation which does not exist in criminal proceedings.
"There should be a special form of Legal Aid set up for this," says Mr McCue, who is romantically involved with TV personality Mariella Froestrup. "And it should be a form of Legal Aid without the means test. Terrorism does not distinguish between rich and poor."
Named directors of the new anti-terrorism consultancy are Sean O'Callaghan and Henry Robinson. A former member of the IRA's East Tyrone brigade, O'Callaghan shot dead RUC Inspector Flanagan in one attack in Omagh and was responsible for the death of a UDR woman officer in a mortar attack in the Clogher Valley.
While in prison, he became an informer for the Garda Special Branch.
Ex Official IRA member Henry Robinson is the other director of the firm. Robinson, from Downpatrick, spent five years in prison following a kneecapping incident in the early 1980s and was later a prominent member of Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT).
FAIT, an anti-paramilitary organisation set up in Downpatrick and later based in Belfast, collapsed in 1999 following a string of controversies involving its members.
Republican spokesmen at the time claimed that FAIT was funded by British Intelligence in order to undermine the IRA ceasefires.
Former spokesman for FAIT Aughnacloy born Vincent McKenna, who claimed to be a former member of the IRA, is currently serving a prison
sentence for sexually abusing his daughter, Sorcha, in Monaghan town. The IRA has always denied that he was ever a member of its organisation.
FORMER IRA double killer turned informer and best seller author Sean O' Callaghan has launched an anti-terrorist consultancy firm.
The new anti-terrorism business operates from the same London address as the Omagh Victims Legal Fund. It uses the Omagh bombing experience as its "sales pitch" to drum up business and give the organisation public credibility.
O'Callaghan's consultancy, Terror Watch Associates, proclaims that it has a number of "ex-terrorists" on its board and bills itself as "poachers turned gamekeepers". It claims to draw on the expertise of operatives from "special forces" and police services from all over the world.
O'Callaghan, who gunned down RUC Detective Inspector Peter Flanagan in an Omagh pub in 1974, recently advised Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble on republican strategy. His consultancy firm now claims to offer clients personal protection packages and risk evaluations, as well as media lobbying and advice services to governments, NGOs and agencies.
The legal advisor of the Terror Watch Associates firm is Jason McCue, 32, a partner in the London law firm of the Henry Hepworth Organisation known as H20 which has taken the civil action for the Omagh families for a discounted fee against named suspects in the Omagh atrocity. Mr McCue says the new consultancy firm is setting up in business to advise "the government, local authorities and businesses on fighting terrorist groups". These include, "al-Qaeda and other groups with paramilitary and terrorist capacity".
In an interview posted last Friday on a legal publisher's website, Butterworth's Lexis Nexis Direct, Mr McCue offered advice on changing the law on rights to privacy to combat terrorist groups.
The article quotes him as saying that "if members of the UK security services tapped into telephone conversations between al-Qaeda members planning another atrocity those recordings could not be used as evidence against them in criminal proceedings".
"This is just abysmal," says McCue. "The sooner this is changed the better."
The article reports that in September, Mr McCue accompanied O'Callaghan to a "UN counter-terrorism conference in Palermo" and believes that ideas could be copied from the Sicilians.
"Education policy and the laws around it have been developed to explain to children how Sicily was formed and how important it is to fight the Mafia," he is quoted.
Mr McCue is billed by the H2O organisation as the partner "specialising in media law (defamation), human rights (including privacy), reputation management (including PR and lobbying) and legal campaigns (e.g. acting for the victims of the Omagh bomb). Expertise in complex investigations (including money laundering, terrorism, organised crime), multi-jurisdictional legal issues, political issues, publishing, media management and internet issues."
Mr McCue is eager to see it made easier for terrorism victims to take civil cases. A particular advantage of civil proceedings is that the victims of their families can get damages awarded to them - and so get a form of financial compensation which does not exist in criminal proceedings.
"There should be a special form of Legal Aid set up for this," says Mr McCue, who is romantically involved with TV personality Mariella Froestrup. "And it should be a form of Legal Aid without the means test. Terrorism does not distinguish between rich and poor."
Named directors of the new anti-terrorism consultancy are Sean O'Callaghan and Henry Robinson. A former member of the IRA's East Tyrone brigade, O'Callaghan shot dead RUC Inspector Flanagan in one attack in Omagh and was responsible for the death of a UDR woman officer in a mortar attack in the Clogher Valley.
While in prison, he became an informer for the Garda Special Branch.
Ex Official IRA member Henry Robinson is the other director of the firm. Robinson, from Downpatrick, spent five years in prison following a kneecapping incident in the early 1980s and was later a prominent member of Families Against Intimidation and Terror (FAIT).
FAIT, an anti-paramilitary organisation set up in Downpatrick and later based in Belfast, collapsed in 1999 following a string of controversies involving its members.
Republican spokesmen at the time claimed that FAIT was funded by British Intelligence in order to undermine the IRA ceasefires.
Former spokesman for FAIT Aughnacloy born Vincent McKenna, who claimed to be a former member of the IRA, is currently serving a prison
sentence for sexually abusing his daughter, Sorcha, in Monaghan town. The IRA has always denied that he was ever a member of its organisation.
Further Information
Publisher: ULSTER HERALD
Ref: UH/1104
Published Date: 03-Oct-02
Related Images
There have been no images archived for this article.