Three Irish people will appear in court again tomorrow at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on charges of unlawfully sending dozens of shotguns, handguns, semi-automatic machineguns and ammunition to Ireland. The three have been living in the south Florida area and were arrested on Monday.
A fourth person wanted in connection with the alleged gun-running was arrested yesterday in Philadelphia.
The first packages containing the guns were intercepted by the British authorities at West Midlands International Airport, Coventry, on July 6th. The interception triggered a transatlantic investigation involving the British police, the RUC, the Garda, the FBI and the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
In a preliminary hearing on Monday in the Federal District Court in Fort Lauderdale, an FBI agent testified that one of the three accused, named as Ms Siobhan Browne, born in Cork, told an arms dealer that the weapons were for something that she and her boyfriend, Mr Anthony Smyth, from Belfast, were "very devoted to".
The third person charged is Mr Anthony Claxton, described as a "citizen of Ireland".
A report in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel describes the three people as "local supporters of the Irish Republican Army" and says that "a source close to the investigation confirmed that the cause was the IRA".
But an FBI agent, Mr Mike Fabregas, told The Irish Times that the FBI was not saying that the IRA was involved in the gunrunning. The affidavit from an FBI special agent, Mr Mark Hastbacka, assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Miami, gives details of the surveillance of the four people and of the mailing of packages with guns and ammunition to Irish addresses, but does not mention the IRA or the republican movement.
The packages were falsely labelled as containing toys, computers, baby clothes, videocassette players, radios and other items.
One package containing a Ruger .357 Magnum revolver was mailed to an address in Oldcastle, Co Meath.
The affidavit tells how the owner of Big Shot Firearms (named in the newspaper as Edward Bluestein) was approached at a gun show in Fort Lauderdale on April 25th by a woman he later identified as Ms Browne, accompanied by Mr Smyth. She selected five handguns and agreed to take delivery at the gun dealer's address three days later.
Ms Browne and Mr Smyth lived at the same address in Weston, Fort Lauderdale, but she has also been leasing an apartment in Boca Raton since 1995 under the name Mary Browne. She is also known as Mary Siobhan Rapaport, from a previous marriage, and she apparently travelled recently to Cancun in Mexico.
According to the affidavit, Ms Browne told the gun dealer that she "was looking for someone she could trust and was interested in purchasing as many guns as he could supply". It was then that she told the dealer that she and Mr Smyth wanted the guns for something they were "very devoted to".
The next day the dealer received a fax from Mr Smyth listing numerous high-powered weapons and concealable weapons he wanted. These included some with silencers and "any full auto submachineguns . . . the smaller the better".
Between April 29th and May 6th, Mr Smyth purchased about 26 handguns and six shotguns, and was accompanied by Ms Browne when he picked them up. Mr Smyth told the dealer that the weapons would never be seen in the US again and that the serial numbers would be removed.
The packages with the weapons were mailed by a man later identified by the postal clerk in Fort Lauderdale as Conor Anthony Claxton. He was observed by FBI agents meeting an unknown individual at Boca Raton in the early hours of July 21st. They were followed to a motel, where they loaded boxes into the unknown person's gold Mitsubishi.
The person described as "unknown" and as "John Doe 1" in the affidavit is believed to be the person arrested yesterday in Philadelphia.
Ms Browne, Mr Smyth and Mr Claxton have been charged with illegally exporting weapons without the required licences; unlawful shipments of firearms through the US Mail; and conspiracy to commit the above offences.
A second gun dealer in Boca Raton is being investigated in connection with the offences.