Swedish claim over 'dying hare' video

TWO PEOPLE in Sweden have claimed to be the makers of the “dying hare” video which is being investigated by gardaí in Co Tipperary.

The Irish Coursing Club has denounced the video as fake. However, two Swedish students have now asserted that they filmed the footage during a two-week visit to Ireland. It is understood they came to the country to make a film about the greyhound industry, and travelled to Clonmel by train.

They deny breaking into the coursing club’s venue, Powerstown Park, and claim to have shot the film “using a large professional camera”. They rejected as “stupid” the suggestion by the coursing club that the hare had been restrained by a wire around its neck.

Gardaí investigating the matter said they would like to talk to the film-makers.

The coursing club has dismissed the authenticity of the video, and said those responsible were “treacherous people who will stop at nothing to achieve their agenda” and who “must be exposed to the greater public, our elected representatives and the decent people of Ireland”.

The club said the hare in the video was restrained by a wire around its neck and may have been poisoned or partially sedated for effect.

The video, which has been posted on the YouTube website, allegedly shows a hare dying in distressing circumstances during a greyhound coursing event in Clonmel in February.

Meanwhile, the Dublin woman who posted the video on the internet said she had received “threatening phone calls” and was accused of being “a terrorist”. Bernie Wright of the Association of Hunt Saboteurs – and a member of the Green Party’s animal welfare policy group – has lodged a complaint about the calls with gardaí in Finglas.

Ms Wright was among a group of about 20 protesters outside the three-day National Coursing Meeting in Clonmel in February, which was attended by 30,000 people. She described those who attended the festival as “animal abusers”, and compared them to “paedophiles”.