The Special Criminal Court yesterday was told of calls made between a mobile phone number assigned to Mr Paul Ward and another mobile phone number assigned to a member of the drugs gang behind the Guerin murder.
The court heard that a total of nine calls was made from the Ward mobile phone to the other mobile phone on June 26th, 1996, the day the journalist was shot dead. The court also yesterday postponed further cross-examination of State witness Charles Bowden until next week.
Mr Peter Charleton SC, prosecuting, said the postponement proposal was due to a matter not connected with the case. Mr Justice Barr, presiding, agreed to the postponement.
Mr Paul Ward (34), of Walkinstown Road, Dublin has pleaded not guilty to the murder at Naas Road, Clondalkin, Dublin, on June 26th, 1996.
Earlier, Mr Dave Cox, who owns a mobile phone shop at North Strand in Dublin, said he assigned a mobile phone number to Mr Paul Ward with an address at Walkinstown Road on May 6th, 1994. He also assigned a mobile phone number to another man (who cannot be named by order of the court) from Kimmage on the same day.
Mr Cox told Mr Paul Burns, for Mr Ward, he assigned SIM cards for each phone number but SIM cards could be changed by walking into any Eircell agent and requesting a new card. Mr Brendan McKenna, who is in charge of SIM cards at Eircell, told Mr Burns it was possible to get a SIM card that would allow phone calls to be made from one mobile phone which would be attributed to another mobile phone.
Mr Jim Faughnan, of the Eircell accounts section, told the court he dealt with requests from the Garda for details of accounts for two mobile phone numbers, one for Paul Ward and one for the other man from Kimmage. He said that on June 26th, 1996, there were a total of nine calls from the mobile phone number assigned to Mr Ward to the mobile phone number assigned to the Kimmage man. The calls lasted from five seconds to four minutes.
Mr Faughnan said there were 10 calls made from the mobile number assigned to the Kimmage man to Mr Ward's landline number at Walkinstown Road and to his mobile phone number on the same day. These lasted from three seconds to 44 seconds.
The trial resumes next Monday.