TV producer tells court he feared for his life

A television producer feared he would be shot dead for making a Channel 4 programme about alleged collusion between the security…

A television producer feared he would be shot dead for making a Channel 4 programme about alleged collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries, he told the London High Court yesterday.

Mr Sean McPhilemy said he left his isolated farmhouse home in Oxfordshire in 1991 and stayed with friends in London. He left his wife and four young children there as he thought the threat was primarily against him.

He said the lives of his wife and children had been overshadowed by this. At the time, his son, then 14, kept a hammer under his pillow. "My fear was that I would be shot," he told Mr Justice Eady and a jury.

Mr Andrew Caldecott QC, for the Sunday Times which is being sued by Mr McPhilemy for libel, asked if he was happy to leave his wife and children to face the threat.

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Mr McPhilemy replied that he loved his wife and children very much but he thought the threat was to him. "Of course, I didn't want to leave my wife and children there," he said.

Mr McPhilemy said he received information from his researcher that the main source for the programme, Mr James Sands, alleged in May 1991 that there was a security threat against him.

Mr Caldecott put it to him that if he had believed Mr Sands that there was a grave threat, he would never have left his family.

Mr McPhilemy said he would not visit this on his family. He considered the threat was to him as he was the programme-maker. Mr Caldecott said if an attacker came in the night and knew where the bedrooms were and knocked down the door, he would not be likely to stop and ask names.

"You put your wife and children in appalling danger," Mr Caldecott suggested. Mr McPhilemy countered: "My wife will testify as to whether I'm indifferent to their welfare. That's a terrible allegation and utterly false."

He is suing the newspaper for libel following an article in May 1993 which alleged a programme he made for Channel 4, broadcast on October 2nd, 1991, alleging collusion was a hoax. The Sunday Times is standing over the claim.

Mr Sands claimed the chairman of an alleged Northern Ireland murder committee which conspired to murder Catholics was allegedly Mr Billy Abernethy, who had gone near to Mr McPhilemy's house with a police officer friend from London on a reconnaisance mission.

Mr McPhilemy was asked why he believed Mr Sands. "When I was told that Mr Sands was able to describe the farmhouse in the context of the threat, I assumed he had got a description from Abernethy or one of those people." He believed there had been surveillance with the possibility of an attack on him or his family.

The threat led to great concern at Channel 4. Mr McPhilemy said in August 1991 when he returned from holiday he was told Mr Sands had alleged that the following weekend Mr Abernethy and three others were coming to Heathrow Airport with hostile intent against him. Special Branch at Scotland Yard kept a surveillance on the airport but said the visit had not happened.