ALLEGATIONS OF Garda misbehaviour in the investigation of the murder of French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier are unlikely to have an impact on an ongoing French inquiry into the killing, a senior French official said yesterday.
Home office attache at the French embassy in London, Eric Battesti, said it remained to be seen whether the allegations would have any impact on French efforts to extradite Ian Bailey to France, and that was a matter for the Supreme Court in Dublin.
But he did not believe that allegations would have any significant impact on the inquiry being carried out by Judge Patrick Gachon in France.
“We don’t know whether there is any substance to these allegations of police misbehaviour in Ireland but I don’t believe it will have any impact on our investigation – French police have now met with the witnesses in Ireland and carried out interviews with them.
“These witnesses, more than 30 of them, met with the French investigators of their own free will and willingly made statements to the team, which were recorded, so they will now form the part of the French case being prepared by Judge Gachon,” said Mr Battesti.
His comments came after Mr Bailey’s counsel, Martin Giblin, told the Supreme Court on Thursday that new information disclosed by the State had revealed “significant Garda misbehaviour”, which was “breathtaking even by the lowest standards encountered by the courts”.
The Irish Times understands part of the information disclosed to Mr Bailey’s legal team includes a letter from a solicitor in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) that is highly critical of the way the killing was investigated by gardaí, and which questions witnesses’ reliability.
However, Garda sources pointed out that this letter, which was written in late 1999 or early 2000, prompted then Garda commissioner Pat Byrne to appoint a new team under Det Chief Supt Austin McNally to review the original investigation and re-interview witnesses.
Det Chief Supt McNally and his team spent eight months in west Cork in 2000 re-interviewing witnesses and examining procedures from the original investigation, and found that the original investigation had been properly conducted, say Garda sources.
The same sources pointed out that many of these witnesses, whose reliability had been questioned by the solicitor in the DPP’s office, later testified in 2003 on behalf of eight newspapers sued by Mr Bailey and their credibility was not called into question by the trial judge.
Garda sources also pointed out that a subsequent review of the original investigation carried out by assistant commissioner Ray McAndrew in 2005 on foot of a complaint by Mr Bailey’s solicitor, Frank Buttimer, did not lead to any prosecution of gardaí who were involved in the case.