Jury hears closing address in Goleen drugs trial
The prosecution in the €440m cocaine trial made its closing address to the jury this afternoon and asked if it was possible to believe that the three accused men were simply unlucky.
“Could any three people be so unlucky to have coincidence after coincidence after unhappy coincidence heaped one after another on them,” barrister Siobhán Langford said at Cork Circuit Criminal Court.
In her address to the jury, Ms Langford said they might see it as a thousand-piece jigsaw and a case with a large cast of characters. She said that while it was clear that there were others involved in the plan to import cocaine and that the jury did not have the whole picture in relation to them they did have the whole picture in relation to the three accused.
In relation to Joseph Daly, she said he was closely involved in the registration and insurance of the red and blue jeeps, that his fingerprint was found on a map with an important point at sea – 30 miles off the coast – marked with a blue pen.
She said Daly brought the blue jeep into Ireland with Martin Wanden as a passenger and that a large amount of incriminatory documentation was later found in this jeep. She said keys related to the RIB boats were also found in the blue jeep.
Ms Langford said Daly’s fingerprint was found in the Farnamanagh house on a box for a global positioning system that was later found among cocaine bales from the sunken RIB. She also drew the jury’s attention to his fingerprint being found on seating that was removed from the boat and on a list which was described at the pre-operation list.
The barrister asked why Daly left Dunlough Bay on the morning in question if he actually believed that it was his brother who was out in the water.
Turning her attention to Wanden, Ms Langford said that the entire picture that he painted in his evidence was riddled with coincidence.
“He is out in the middle of the ocean with a man whose passport is in the boot of Mr (Perry) Wharrie’s car and he (Wanden) is seen walking down the street with Mr Wharrie three days earlier,” the barrister said.
Ms Langford cast doubt on Wanden’s claim in relation to moving between RIBs relatively easily in 3.5 metre swell and said the account of a man holding the boats together was Herculean and he would have required rubber arms to do what Wanden had described.
Ms Langford said of Wharrie that the man who got out of the sea at Dunlough Bay had his passport in the boot of the car rented by Wharrie’s wife, and that also found in this car was the black spray paint used to blacken out the windows of a green jeep.
“He has been in the Passat, the red jeep and the blue jeep, he also has a false passport in the name of Andrew Woodcraft. He used that name when obtaining a prescription. It seems to me he was using an alias in the same manner as Mr Wanden. And what was he doing at Dunlough Bay?” she asked.
Defence lawyers will address the jury next.
Joseph Daly of 9 Carisbrook Avenue, Bexley, Kent, Perry Wharrie, (aged 48), of 60 Pryles Lane, Essex, England, and Martin Wanden, (aged 45), who is also English but has no fixed abode all deny charges including possession of cocaine for sale or supply when its street value exceeded €13,000 on July 2, at Dunlough Bay, Mizen, Goleen, Co Cork.
