A Co Donegal detective has told the Morris tribunal he felt he was being made a scapegoat by the internal Garda investigation team looking into corruption and he did not trust it.
Det Sgt John White yesterday said the team did not fully investigate allegations made against him by Bernard Conlon which he described as "preposterous" and "malicious lies".
Mr Conlon has alleged Det Sgt White put him up to being found late-night drinking in the McBrearty's nightclub in Raphoe to set them up.
He has also alleged that the detective had told him to make up a story that two men called to his house in Sligo and threatened him with a "silver bullet", later identifying two members of the extended McBrearty family.
The chairman said yesterday that Det Sgt White had submitted a lengthy further statement to the tribunal which he would read over the next few days.
Mr Justice Frederick Morris said Det Sgt White was making criticisms of the way in which the Carty internal Garda investigation team carried out its investigations.
Det Sgt White said: "Yes, chairman, but in the statement I do say it's not an attack on the Carty team.
"Those points, by allowing me to get them into evidence, would give me an opportunity to rebut the allegations and show how it could not have happened.
"I'm very anxious after the last 5½ years to show clinically that I'm innocent."
He added: "My life is being consumed by this . . . I'm suffering from depression, I regularly attend the psychiatrist."
Det St White said he first heard about the allegations through a phone call from a garda friend on February 24th, 2000, just days after Mr Conlon made them to the Carty team.
When he heard about the "silver bullet" allegation, he thought it was "so preposterous that I took no heed of it".
Det Sgt White said he did not co-operate with the Carty team in March 2000 as it wanted to put him under caution. "I felt I was under attack. I believed it was a conspiracy," he said.
His perception was that the Carty team had done some sort of deal with the McBreartys, although he was not suggesting the McBreartys were in any way involved in the Carty team setting him up.
"I couldn't imagine skilled policemen would allow themselves to be deceived by a small-time criminal like Bernard Conlon," he said.
"I felt the Carty team agenda was to find a scapegoat or two and it was not investigated fully. I was feeling threatened that I was going to be that scapegoat."
The investigators should have checked into the allegations before they came near him.
Asked why he did not co-operate, he said: "I was afraid of not being treated fairly and didn't trust them, and I'd my own personal fear of being set up and that's the truth. I feared I was being set up.
"It appeared to me they had their minds made up and I was afraid of them.
"I knew I was innocent. I had nothing to do with it. The hierarchy decided I did."
Asked if it was lies, why had Mr Conlon chosen him, Det Sgt White said he believed the Carty team had put his name into it.
He said for him to do such a thing would have been "career suicide".
He would have been entrusting his whole career to Bernard Conlon. What would be his motive?
"It was a very malicious lie. If he [ Conlon] was telling lies to get himself out of trouble, maybe I could understand, but to go to court and try to get me jailed for something I didn't do was very malicious," he said.
Det Sgt White was acquitted earlier this year in Letterkenny Circuit Court on charges of perverting the course of justice and making false statements.
The tribunal continues.