THE SMITHWICK Tribunal is to move to the Criminal Courts of Justice on Monday to hear evidence from Michael McKevitt, who is serving a 20-year sentence for directing terrorism and membership of the Real IRA.
Announcing the move yesterday, tribunal chairman Judge Peter Smithwick also said the tribunal was considering referring the non-appearance of former assistant Garda commissioner Kevin Carty to the High Court.
Michael McKevitt was convicted in the Special Criminal Court in 2003 for directing terrorism and membership of an illegal organisation – said by trial judge Richard Johnson to be the Real IRA. In June 2009 he was one of four people found liable by a civil court in Belfast for the Omagh bombing.
Judge Smithwick said McKevitt would travel from Portlaoise prison for the hearing.
The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that Garda members in Dundalk, Co Louth, colluded with the IRA in the killings of two RUC officers, Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan, in an IRA ambush in south Armagh on March 20th, 1989, minutes after they left a meeting in Dundalk Garda station.
Judge Smithwick said he had been expecting to hear evidence from Mr Carty, who had previously failed to appear before the tribunal in September. He said Mr Carty had taken part in a “bedrock” inquiry into allegations of Garda-IRA collusion in 1989 at the behest of the then government after the RUC officers died.
Judge Smithwick said despite having agreed to turn up yesterday, after the tribunal paid for his flights from Albania where he had said he was now living, Mr Carty had sent an e-mail on November 24th declining to attend on medical advice.
The judge said: “The medical advice is from a doctor in Austria and she gives Mr Carty’s address as one in Poland.”
The judge said he was “inevitably left in the position of having to consider whether I should refer Mr Carty’s non-attendance to the High Court. I hope that this will not be necessary and that he will make himself available so that I will hear evidence from him shortly.”
