The Director of Public Prosecutions made an "irrevocable" decision not to prosecute Charles Bowden for the murder of Veronica Guerin, the Special Criminal Court has heard.
Bowden told Mr Eamonn Leahy SC, prosecuting, at the murder trial of Mr Paul Ward yesterday, that he had pleaded guilty at the Circuit Criminal Court on October 8th, 1997, to nine charges including having cannabis for sale and supply and having firearms and ammunition. He had been given a six-year sentence.
Mr Leahy read a letter sent from the DPP's office on July 4th, 1997, to Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey, which said the DPP had decided not to prosecute Bowden for Veronica Guerin's murder and this was "unconditional and irrevocable".
Bowden told Mr Leahy he was from Finglas, Dublin, left school after doing the Inter Certificate, joined the Army in 1983 and left it in 1989. He had worked as a nightclub bouncer and had a black belt in karate. He was separated from his wife and two children and was under pressure financially because he could not keep up maintenance payments and fell behind with his rent.
He met a man at a kick-boxing club in Dublin and asked him for work. Bowden said he was a bouncer at a north Dublin pub where he distributed ecstasy tablets to customers and made about £500 a week. He then began delivering cannabis resin to various Dublin locations and was paid £50 per kilo.
He decided to get out of drugdealing and went back to school where he studied for his Leaving Cert.
At the end of 1994 his girlfriend left him and he fell behind with his rent. He approached the same man as before and began collecting cannabis resin for delivery to various city locations. The amount varied from 20 kg to 500 kg a week.
He would drive to a hotel in Co Kildare where he would load boxes of cannabis into his car and return to Dublin where the drug was sorted into smaller packages.
At first he used a lock-up at Emmet Road and then another at Ballyfermot, but eventually he rented a premises at the Greenmount Industrial Estate in Harold's Cross.
Bowden said that up to 350 kg of cannabis was being brought weekly to the Harold's Cross premises. He and four others helped distribute the drug which they bought for £2,000 a kilo from another man and then sold for £2,150 to £2,200 a kilo. They would distribute it to other customers in Dublin.
Bowden said that sometimes guns and firearms were smuggled in with the cannabis and stored in two graves at a Jewish cemetery at Oldcourt Road in Tallaght. Among the weapons were a .357 Magnum, sub-machineguns and pistols, as well as ammunition.
Bowden said on occasions he would be asked to help count money for the gang which was usually in Irish, Northern Irish and sterling denominations. Bowden told Mr Leahy that when gardai arrested him he had £85,000 he had made from the drug-dealing, stored with a friend. He showed gardai where the money was stored and did not oppose an application to confiscate it.
Cross-examined by Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, for Mr Ward, Bowden agreed he had risen to the rank of corporal in the Army but had been court-martialled for assaulting recruits in 1988 and had been demoted to the rank of private.
He said two recruits had been taken to hospital as a result of the assault. Asked if he thought he was a better person now than he was 10 years ago, Bowden said: "My life is definitely not better now than it was 10 years ago."
When he was in the Army, he had specialised in rifle marksmanship and the use of a 0.5 inch heavy machinegun. He had won competitions for his shooting, including the Eastern Command Rifle Championships, and agreed he had liked, and was good with, guns when in the Army.
He said he had never used drugs and agreed with Mr MacEntee that he did not think of the consequences of his actions when he distributed ecstasy tablets at the same time as he worked as a bouncer at a north Dublin pub. Bowden said he had begun drug-dealing in 1992 and said he needed the money. When asked why, he said: "I wanted more money."
Initially he was making about £500 a week when he was collecting and delivering cannabis and spent the money on "going out, night-clubs, clothes".
"It's not that hard to spend £500 a week, going out, drinking, buying clothes, spending money on the kids," he said.
Bowden said he sometimes bought designer clothes. He gave up drug-dealing in September 1992 when he decided to go back to school and he wanted to study history and philosophy at Dublin City University.
The trial continues today.