The father of bank clerk Christopher Ward, who is accused of being behind the £26.5 million Northern Bank robbery today broke down as he dismissed the prosecution case “as ludicrous”.
Mr Gerard Ward told Belfast Crown Court that his 26-year-old son would never have set his family up to be held captive in their own Colinmill home in Poleglass nor put his mother through such an ordeal.
His son Christopher denies the December 20th robbery four years ago and to kidnapping his bank boss Kevin McMullan and Mr McMullan’s wife Kyran.
Mr Ward snr described the men who held his family hostage for 24 hours and took away his son as “criminals, gangsters” who would stop at nothing and that he “just felt like a puppet to them”.
He also rejected a suggestion that the family had “a cosy relationship” with their captives.
“That’s completely wrong. It definitely wasn’t relaxing - it was very, very frightening,” he added.
At one stage Mr Ward broke down and wept as he recalled “trying to keep it together” for the sake of his “distraught” family.
Later he added, almost in a whisper, that his son Christopher would have known the “distress, the anguish and the heartbreak” his family were suffering at the hands of their captors.