Top garda 'horrified' at bomb claim
A senior garda said tonight he was horrified by allegations that one of his officers had built an explosive device in the yard of a garda station.
The Morris Tribunal is investigating an arson attack on a controversial telecommunications mast in Ardara, Co Donegal in 1996 which had aroused strong local opposition.
Superintendent Denis Cullinane, now retired, told the tribunal that after an arson attack on the mast, an explosive device was found attached to it two weeks later.
“I was convinced it was a bomb,” he said. “It was a very sinister development. I felt the same people who had committed the malicious damage had done this.”
Senior counsel Peter Charleton, representing the tribunal, asked him if he believed the device might have been planted by the Gardaí.
“No that was the last thing in my mind, absolutely not. I heard it on a TV programme one night. I was horrified, I did not believe it, and I still don’t believe it,” said Mr Cullinane.
The allegations about a garda making an explosive device in the yard of a Donegal garda station and then planting it on the mast were made on a TV3 current affairs programme, 20/20, in 2000.
“I don’t believe in those circumstances that it was put there by a guard. I can’t see what the gardaí were going to gain out of it,” sai Mr Cullinane.
The tribunal heard that locals in Ardara were opposed to the MMDS television system being installed on the mast because they were already able to pick up television signals from Northern Ireland and feared the potential health and financial costs of the new system.
A large force of gardaí had to assemble at the mast site to allow company employees to pass the protestors in December 1995.
Mr Cullinane said there had been good relations between the community and the Gardaí in the area but admitted that the mast issue had heightened tensions.
“When the patrol cars were visiting the site, on a number of occasions nails were placed on the road and the tyres were punctured. Rolls of barbed wire were placed on the road,” he said.
The locks on the gates to the mast were also stuck with glue.
The arson attack on the mast in November 1996 came just days after the company installing the equipment had obtained a High Court injunction to prevent protestors from blocking access to the site. Around 50,000 euro of damage was caused by the fire.
The crude device discovered on the mast two weeks later was described as being nothing more than an assembly of fireworks.
But the person who created it was never found.
The Morris Tribunal, which took Mr Culliane’s evidence out of turn to facilitate him, is due to conclude its investigations into the Silver Bullet module shortly.
