Three jailed over bomb-making find

Three men were jailed by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday after a major Garda operation against the Continuity …

Three men were jailed by the Special Criminal Court in Dublin yesterday after a major Garda operation against the Continuity IRA led to the discovery of a bomb-making operation near the Border last year.

One of those jailed, Seamus McKenna, is among the men being sued in a civil action by relatives of the victims of the Omagh bombings.

Mr Justice Diarmuid O'Donovan, presiding at the non-jury court, said the court was satisfied there was a joint enterprise to manufacture explosives for the purpose "of terrorising the public" and these activities were "well planned and well executed". The judge paid tribute to the Garda National Surveillance Unit and the Emergency Response Unit, and said their work had thwarted those plans.

He said the quantity of explosives found had the capacity to cause destruction to life and property to an enormous degree.

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The court jailed Joe Fee (40), Blackstaff, Inniskeen, Co Monaghan, to 10 years for the possession of an explosive substance - ammonium nitrate and sugar (ANS) - with intent to endanger life at Thornfield, Co Louth, on June 13th, 2003, and gave him credit for three months already spent in custody.

The court sentenced Séamus McKenna (49), of Marian Park, Dundalk, Co Louth, to six years' imprisonment to date from the time he went into custody on June 15th, 2003, for the same offence.

Fee was convicted last month after a long trial and McKenna pleaded guilty to the charge in October. The judge said the court had not taken into account evidence about the Continuity IRA in relation to Fee and McKenna because they had not been convicted of membership.

He said the court could not reconcile Fee's assertion that he was opposed to violence with his activity described in evidence before the court. "Why make a bomb if you are not going to cause harm?" the judge asked.

A third man, Eamonn Matthews (25), of Dublin Road, Killeen, Newry, Co Down, was jailed for three years and nine months after he was convicted on Tuesday of membership of an illegal organisation styling itself the Irish Republic Army, otherwise Óglaigh na hÉireann, otherwise the IRA, on June 13th, 2003.

A fourth man, Gerard Sweeney (51), Louth Hall, Tallanstown, Co Louth, was given a three-year suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to withholding information from gardaí under the Offences Against the State Act.

Det Supt Diarmuid O'Sullivan, of the Special Detective Unit, told the court gardaí found McKenna and another man using a cement mixer to make explosives from ammonium nitrate and sugar at a farmyard at Thornfield.

He said gardaí discovered 1,200 pounds of the explosive mixture in the yard and that those explosives were in the final stages of completion.

Fee was arrested as he drove from the farmyard, and gardaí found 13 pounds of the home- made explosives in his van. Matthews was cleared of the explosives charges at an earlier trial but was convicted of membership on Tuesday.

He said Sweeney had been approached by Fee six months before June 2003 and had allowed Fee to bring a grinder to his farm at Tallanstown, where fertiliser had been ground down.

Det Supt O'Sullivan said the Garda operation in Co Louth was carried out against the Continuity IRA, which arose from a split in Sinn Féin in 1986. Breakaway Republican Sinn Féin had a military organisation now known as the Continuity IRA.