Club owner says threat from IRA followed raids

A Donegal nightclub owner told the High Court yesterday he had closed his Point Inn club in Inishowen for a time "in the hope of staying alive" after a Denis Bradley from Northern Ireland had told him in September 1993 that the IRA had issued a threat against him.

The IRA threat came after significant publicity about raids of the Point Inn by gardaí, the court heard, and after media articles stating that the raids were part of a crackdown on illegal drugs.

On the second day of a hearing before the president of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, to assess what amount of compensation Mr Frank Shortt should receive arising from his wrongful conviction and three-year sentence imposed in 1995 on drug charges, Mr Shortt said that during the raids in 1992 and 1993, customers were "quite violently and shockingly" treated by gardaí.

On one occasion, one woman was made to stand spread-eagled in the women's toilets while a male garda shone a torch down her lower waist area and a female garda put her hand inside the woman's underwear, he said. Several young men were also told to lower their trousers while torches were shone on their rears.

He said gardaí used sledgehammers to break down emergency doors although the main door was open and chairs and tables were also damaged.

Immediately after the raids, he wrote letters of complaint to senior gardaí who supervised the searches in Donegal, the Garda Commissioner, the chief executive of the Garda Complaints Board and two ministers for justice about the "disgraceful conduct" of the gardaí, Mr Shortt said.

In one letter, he had asked why there was "such bludgeoning of an insignificant little nightclub in the back of beyond" when people were being killed and raped on the streets of Dublin. He wrote that his nightclub was a "sacrificial lamb" and his family business was being destroyed while other nightclubs, which he claimed were owned by some politicians and where drugs were available, were allowed to operate freely.

Mr Shortt said the raids occurred despite his having reached an agreement with Supt Brian Kenny of Buncrana in June 1992 to the effect that gardaí would run undercover operations at his club to establish if there was any dealing of illegal drugs. "I was dumbfounded because my interpretation of the meeting with Supt Kenny was that gardaí were to target drug-dealers and users. I discovered I was the target."

In proceedings against the Garda Commissioner and the State, Mr Shortt (69), a married father of five from Redcastle, is seeking several million euro in compensation arising from his wrongful conviction and three-year jail sentence on charges of knowingly allowing the sale of drugs.

In July 2002, the appeal court certified that Mr Shortt had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice.