Morris Tribunal: A Donegal man who claims he was assaulted and intimidated by gardaí yesterday called on a detective garda to tell the truth to the Morris tribunal.
Mark McConnell was wrongly arrested a number of times during the course of the botched investigation into the death of cattle dealer Richie Barron.
Gardaí believed Mr McConnell and his cousin Frank McBrearty jnr had killed the cattle dealer. However, it was later ruled that Mr Barron was the victim of a hit- and-run rather than assault.
During his first arrest in December 1996, Mr McConnell alleges he was intimidated, physically assaulted, abused, sworn at, shown a false confession and graphic autopsy photographs.
Det Garda Patrick Tague denied showing Mr McConnell postmortem photographs which included a picture of Mr Barron with a blood-stained pillow in hospital and an unrelated photograph of a blue Vauxhall Cavalier.
He said he could not explain the knowledge Mr McConnell had of what was in the photographs.
As Det Garda Tague gave evidence, Mr McConnell called from the back of the tribunal: "I was shown them photographs. Will you tell the truth?"
He added: "He knows rightly your honour, he showed me the photographs. It's time to start telling the truth. I'm sitting here listening to nothing but lies. I'm going to walk out of this room."
The tribunal was adjourned about 10 minutes early after a clearly upset Mr McConnell spoke out.
Before Mr McConnell intervened, the tribunal heard that in the book of graphic photographs related to the Barron death, there was an unrelated picture of a blue Vauxhall Cavalier due to a mix- up from the photographer's film.
"Can you think of any way Mark McConnell could have knowledge of that blue Vauxhall Cavalier apart from being shown that?" Peter Charleton, tribunal counsel, asked.
"He was never in the incident room?"
Det Garda Tague said: "I don't know, I didn't show him that album of photographs."
Mr Charleton said Mr McConnell was making a very serious allegation towards Det Garda Tague, including that he showed him the photograph, pulled him by the ear and made a poking motion towards his eyes to get him to look at the pictures.
"Nothing like that happened, chairman," Det Garda Tague said.
Det Garda Tague said he did not believe an officer could simply walk into the incident room and remove the photographs. - (PA)