Gardaí have obtained a 72-hour extension to allow them to further detain and question a man arrested as part of their investigation into the €100 million cocaine haul washed ashore in west Cork earlier this week
State solicitor for west Cork Malachy Boohig made the application yesterday at Macroom District Court under the provisions of The Criminal Justice (Drugs Trafficking) Act 1996 which allows gardaí to detain suspect for up to seven days.
Under the Act, suspect can be detained for an initial 48 hours on the authorisation of a chief superintendent but any further detention must be obtained from a district court.
Gardaí sought such an extension from Judge James McNulty yesterday.
Det Garda Bart O'Leary told how he arrested a man in his 20s on the grounds of Bantry General Hospital at 2.43pm on Monday on suspicion of committing an offence of possessing cocaine for sale or supply at Dunlough Bay on the Mizen Peninsula.
Det Garda O'Leary said the man had told a witness that he had been fishing in the area but that his boat had sunk in Dunlough Bay.
Fifty bales were recovered from the sea, including four by gardaí, which subsequent analyses confirmed were cocaine.
Chief Supt Kevin Ludlow said the man had been questioned by gardaí during an initial detention period of six hours and then later periods of 18 hours and 24 hours, but had given no explanation of why he was in the area. He replied "no comment" to Garda questions.
He said gardaí were still seeking to confirm the man's identity and they were now satisfied that the name he had given them initially and an accompanying address in Liverpool were incorrect and belonged to a child who died on the day that he was born on July 2nd, 1985.
Chief Supt Ludlow said the suspect was carrying an Irish passport in the name of that child which had been obtained by a non-existent solicitor's office in Britain. While the man had since volunteered another name, gardaí needed further time to confirm his identity.
Gardaí were currently liaising with police forces in Spain, Britain, South Africa and the US to establish the identities of a number of suspects in the investigation and this would take time as gardaí were dependent on external agencies, he said.
Chief Supt Ludlow said gardaí had arrested two other suspects at Goleen near Schull at about 9.10am that morning and they needed to find out more about them and then put whatever information they obtained on them to the arrested man.
Gardaí had also sealed off a house at Letter West in Kilcrohane, he said, where they had found significant material including satellite communications and navigation equipment which must be forensically examined before it could be put to the suspect.
Gardaí were also waiting the result of forensic examinations of two vehicles found abandoned at Dunlough and Crookhaven.
Inquiries were also being made in Britain about both vehicles and they needed to be able to put the resultant information to the suspect, he added.
Solicitor for the suspect Flor Murphy said his client had no objection in principle to further detention but drug trafficking legislation was one of the most draconian laws in terms of detention and he believed a 24-hour extension with further reviews was more appropriate.
However, Judge McNulty said he was "satisfied that the detention of this man is necessary for the proper investigation of an offence which, if early reports are substantiated, is a very grave matter".
