The chief prosecution witness in the trial of Mr Michael McKevitt for directing terrorism, Mr David Rupert, will start giving evidence next Monday. Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent, reports.
Meanwhile, it emerged yesterday in the Special Criminal Court that Mr Rupert was paid $1.25 million for his work as an agent of the FBI and British security service.
This revelation was among a number of unprecedented developments in the court when the trial opened yesterday. Others included the move of the accused from the dock into the well of the court, while most of the several dozen journalists attending were moved out of the well of the court into the gallery beside the dock.
The $1.25 million payment was acknowledged by prosecution counsel Mr George Birmingham SC when he opened the case. He said that while Mr Rupert engaged in the task of spying on Irish republicans for remuneration, and was remunerated, it was work of "extraordinary courage" which he undertook with skill.
Mr Rupert, a US citizen who first came to Ireland in 1992, when he visited twice with two consecutive girlfriends, began spying for the FBI in 1994, and later for the British security service and for the Garda Síochána. In the course of his work he was funded in acquiring a pub in Co Leitrim, which failed.
The court also heard that he recently entered into a deal in the US for a book on his experiences. Defence counsel, Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, told the court that two journalists engaged by Mr Rupert as ghost writers for this book may now be in possession of "unredacted", or unedited, material that the defence had sought, unsuccessfully, to have disclosed to it before the trial began.
He said he was concerned about certain foreign journalists sitting in the well of the court, in case they included these ghost writers. They could look over the shoulders of defence lawyers as they were preparing their case, and he requested that media access to the well of the court be restricted. The court agreed that only a small number of specific Irish journalists would be permitted to sit immediately behind the lawyers' benches.
In another unprecedented move, the court granted a defence application to allow the defendant sit beside his solicitor, Mr James McGuill, rather than in the dock. Mr Hartnett said his client could not properly hear the proceedings from the dock, and could not give instructions to his solicitor.
Mr McKevitt, a short, stocky, balding man dressed in beige trousers, a black jacket, white shirt and coloured tie, then moved into the lawyers' benches.
His wife, Ms Bernadette Sands McKevitt, her mother and other members of their families sat in the public gallery, only feet away from Mr Laurence Rush, whose wife died in the Omagh bombing, and who has attended every related trial since.
Mr McKevitt is not charged with the bombing, and when Mr Rush interjected, "What about Omagh?" while the charges were being read, Mr Hartnett objected.
Mr Justice Johnson, presiding over the three-judge court, said there should be no interruptions from the gallery of any kind.