GARDA COMMISSIONER Martin Callinan has told the Smithwick Tribunal that a member of the force investigated after false passports ended up in IRA hands claimed he was put up to signing the passport paperwork by a retired colleague.
Former sergeant Finbar Hickey was eventually convicted in the Special Criminal Court in relation to his role in signing the fraudulent passport application forms. He was jailed for 12 months.
When arrested in Dundalk in 1998, he told the investigation team that he had been asked by his colleague, retired sergeant Leo Colton, to sign the forms. Mr Colton denied this and while a file on his alleged role was sent to the DPP, he was never prosecuted.
The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that Garda members in Dundalk colluded with the IRA in the fatal shootings of two RUC officers on March 20th, 1989. Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were killed after they left a meeting in Dundalk Garda station.
The commissioner yesterday told the tribunal he was not aware of any evidence that would suggest Garda collusion in the double murders. The tribunal yesterday heard from the commissioner and Assistant Commissioner John O’Mahony because both were senior members of the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation team that investigated the passports case in the late 1990s.
The investigation began after three passports were found in the house of an alleged IRA member.
Subsequent checks on the paperwork through which the passports were obtained found that Mr Hickey had been the Garda member that signed the forms. There were also five other passports he had signed for that proved to be fraudulent.
The commissioner told the tribunal that during the drive from Dundalk to Navan Garda station after his arrest, Mr Hickey said to him: “Would it make any difference if I told you it was Leo Colton who asked me to sign the form?”
Both the commissioner and assistant commissioner told the tribunal they believed Mr Hickey’s evidence was the truth. The tribunal heard legal arguments before the commissioner gave his evidence as lawyers for Mr Colton argued that his client had been “cleared by the DPP”, and airing the allegations in public would do “huge amounts of reputational damage”.
The lawyers wanted evidence from the commissioner to be heard with the public and press excluded. Tribunal chairman Peter Smithwick refused.
The assistant commissioner said after Mr Hickey was jailed, he went to interview him in the Curragh Place of Detention in Co Kildare.
He wanted to ask him to give evidence against Mr Colton and Jimmy Fox, one of three alleged Provisional IRA members who received the fraudulent passports.
He said Mr Hickey made it be known that he would not give evidence. He said he feared Mr Colton and would not give evidence against him because he had political connections.
Mr O’Mahony said that, while in Garda custody, Mr Hickey had agreed to confront Mr Colton, who was in the same Garda station.
However, while Mr Hickey put it to Mr Colton that he was the one who wanted the signed applications forms, the manner of the confrontation had been “meek” and Mr Colton strongly denied the allegations.