A Garda Inspector (now Superintendent) Kevin Lennon and a Detective Garda Noel McMahon stored fertiliser and sugar in a woman’s flat in Buncrana which was then planted on other people’s lands to be found by gardai, the Court of Criminal Appeal heard yesterday.
A tape recording showed Mr Lennon also knew about drugs being planted by gardai prior to a raid on the Point Inn nightclub, Quigley’s Point, Inishowen, which was owned by Mr Frank Shortt who later served a three year sentence for allowing drugs be sold on his premises, Ms Adrienne McGlinchey said.
A video recording of Mr Lennon coming into a shop in Letterkenny, on an occasion when he allegedly warned Ms McGlinchey not to speak to anyone, had been passed to gardai (involved with the Carty inquiry into allegations of corruption among gardai in Co Donegal), it was stated.
Ms McGlinchey said she looked for the return of the video but had not been given it. The court was told the tape, which has no sound, is in the State’s possession.
Ms McGlinchey said Mr Lennon had come to her shop at the beginning of the Carty investigation. He spoke of another woman "going off her head" and warned her not to speak to anyone.
Mr Lennon also asked her to tell the other woman to shut her mouth, ‘we’re all going to be dragged in’ and that her (Ms McGlinchey’s) prints were everywhere.
The other woman had phoned Ms McGlinchey and said: "Oh my God, do you know they set him up?". Ms McGlinchey said she went to the woman and told her she had no idea what she was getting into. The other woman was terrified.
Ms McGlinchey said Mr Lennon wanted her to tell the other woman Ms McGlinchey was in the IRA, that she’d be shot, and to shut up. Mr Lennon had told her he was going to go down and he was going to take everyone down with him.
Ms McGlinchey, of Port Road, Letterkenny, was continuing her evidence in Mr Shortt’s application for a certificate that there was a miscarriage of justice in his case. Mr Shortt was jailed for three years in 1995. His conviction was overturned in November 2000 on grounds that newly discovered facts rendered it unsafe. The DPP neither opposed the quashing of the conviction nor sought a retrial.