GARDAÍ have been accused in the High Court of deliberately mounting a sinister plot that could lead to the shooting dead of a 33-year-old Dublin man suspected of crime.
Eamon Dunne told Mr Justice Bryan McMahon that gardaí were responsible for a campaign of orchestrated adverse publicity by feeding crime correspondents with fictitious stories that he was a notorious gangland boss.
Barrister Alan Toal, counsel for Dunne, said his client would be pleading not guilty to charges in connection with an alleged conspiracy to rob about €900,000 from a Chubb cash-in-transit van in Celbridge, Co Kildare, in 2007.
Dunne, of Dunsoghly Drive in Finglas, said in a statement that he had been identified, through nicknames, in many newspapers since the murder of Martin "Marlo" Hyland and the Celbridge robbery. He produced articles by crime correspondents Paul Williams ( Sunday World) and Ken Foy ( Star on Sunday) as well as writers for the Sunday Independent, Irish Independentand the Star.
Dunne said the information in the articles could not have been established by the journalists involved without the unlawful assistance of the gardaí.
He said some of the writers had referred to their source as senior Garda personnel and detectives intimately familiar with him and his supposed criminal empire.
He said he denied all the criminal assertions.
He said he had been falsley accused in newspapers of having murdered a number of people. He said he had never been arrested or prosecuted in connection with these offences.
Dunne said he has been repeatedly summoned to court for alleged road traffic offences, all of which had been struck out .
Mr Toal told the court gardaí had twice served his client with warnings that his life was at risk. A Sunday Worldarticle had stated "this brutal godfather . . . will have a short life expectancy" as another would be waiting in the wings to "take him out".
Dunne said these articles were planted by gardaí. He said the “short life expectancy” came closer to reality with each “scurrilous, unfounded” soundbite generated by gardaí interested in “having one less scumbag on the street”.
Mr Toal told the court Mr Dunne had complained to the Garda Ombudsman Commission about Garda collusion with journalists but his complaint had been rejected.
Judge McMahon refused Dunne interim injunctions restraining the Garda Commissioner from passing information to members of the print media as to Dunne’s alleged involvement in up to eight gangland murders.
He also refused injunctions restraining gardaí from colluding with members of the print media.
Judge McMahon said if there was a risk to Mr Dunne’s life there was nothing the court could do by issuing injunctions restraining further dissemination of information to the media or directing Garda inquiries. He said it was a matter for Mr Dunne to continue with his claim for damages for the alleged conscious, deliberate and capricious exposure of the plaintiff to risk and to speed up matters he directed an early hearing of this trial.