A MAN who was allegedly offered drugs by gardaí in the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder investigation, in return for information, refused to confirm the allegation when interviewed by a Garda review team examining the police handling of the case.
The 50-year-old Englishman agreed to meet a Garda team headed by assistant commissioner Ray McAndrew but refused to say anything regarding the allegation that two named officers had offered him drugs to incriminate English journalist Ian Bailey (54).
The McAndrew review was set up in 2005 after Mr Bailey’s lawyer, Frank Buttimer, wrote to then minister for justice Michael McDowell saying that another witness, Marie Farrell, had alleged that she had been coerced by gardaí into falsely incriminating Mr Bailey.
The English witness agreed to meet members of the McAndrew team in Wales, in the company of his solicitor, but when he met two senior officers from the team in August 2006, he refused to be drawn on the drug allegation.
Instead, the man told the officers that he was willing only to confirm a statement which he made to the original murder investigation team in February 1997 after he contacted gardaí in Skibbereen with information about Mr Bailey.
The man contacted a garda in Skibbereen in mid-February 1997 and later made a statement to two detectives in which he outlined a conversation he had had with Mr Bailey on the night of February 11th, 1997, in Skibbereen.
That original statement to the detectives related to a conversation about the murder of Ms Toscan du Plantier after Mr Bailey was released by gardaí who had arrested him on February 10th, 1997, for questioning about the killing.
The man kept in contact with the two detectives but, according to Garda sources, they became suspicious of him when he began asking them for drugs and money and the detectives became concerned that he was trying to tape their conversations.
According to Garda sources, the detectives alerted their superiors who decided to cut the contact with the man but details of Garda dealings with the witness, including transcripts of tape recordings that gardaí made of him, were included in the file sent to the DPP.
Legal sources have confirmed to The Irish Times that it was gardaí who alerted the DPP’s office to the man’s request for drugs and money in their dealings with him when they expressed a view that he was an unreliable witness.
However, in a November 2001 review of the file, a solicitor in the DPP’s office said “the balance of the evidence suggests he (the witness) is telling the truth” in relation to allegedly being offered drugs by two gardaí and he described “such investigative practices as clearly unsafe to say the least”.
Mr Bailey later made a complaint to the McAndrew review team that the man had contacted him in March 1997 to say gardaí had offered him drugs in return for spying on him (Mr Bailey) to see if he could gather any information on the death of Ms Toscan du Plantier.
Mr Bailey also alleged to the review team that the witness had told him that the two officers had offered him £5,000 if he was prepared to make a statement to them, saying that Mr Bailey had admitted to him (the witness) that he had killed Ms Toscan du Plantier.
Mr Bailey recorded an interview with the witness on May 23rd, 1997, in which the witness alleged that gardaí had offered him drugs and money in exchange for incriminating Mr Bailey and Mr Bailey handed over a copy of this tape to to the McAndrew review team.
But when the McAndrew team met the witness, who had earlier tried unsuccessfully to sell his story to The Sunday World newspaper, he refused to make any statement and would only confirm that his original statement to gardaí regarding the conversation he had with Mr Bailey on February 11th, 1997, was correct.
Mr Bailey, who is fighting his extradition to France where he is wanted in connection with the murder of Ms Toscan du Plantier, has always denied any involvement in the killing and has alleged that he was wrongly targeted by gardaí.