A VEHICLE was sighted a number of times travelling in the same direction as the car containing two senior RUC officers later murdered by the IRA, the Smithwick Tribunal heard yesterday.
The tribunal is investigating allegations of collusion between Garda officers in Dundalk and the IRA in the murders of Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan, who were murdered as they returned from a meeting in Dundalk Garda station in March 1989.
This vehicle, which was seen three times in close proximity to the car driven by Supt Buchanan, was driven by a man with a crucial organisational link to the Provisional IRA.
The information came in a document opened to the tribunal detailing information gleaned from British army surveillance, described as “vengefull [sic] incidents”. It was among a number of documents opened to the tribunal yesterday and verified by retired PSNI detective superintendent David McConville.
Justin Dillon SC, for the tribunal, said there had been delays in obtaining the material on which Judge Peter Cory had relied in his report on the allegations. Eventually, with the help of then chief constable Hugh Orde, the matter was resolved and the documents were made available.
A lot of the documentation related to the criminal investigation into the murders and the forensic examination of the scene, and did not relate directly to the collusion allegations, he said. Documentary material relating to intelligence would be put into evidence later as this arose.
Mr Dillon stressed that Supt McConville had had no involvement in the murder inquiry and he was not in a position to deal with the content of the documents.
A forensic report of the scene suggested Supt Buchanan had seen something that alarmed him and he had attempted to reverse the car and drive away. The report also stated the car had been searched.
Witnesses reported seeing two small notebooks and a briefcase or a folder being taken away by the armed men who had attacked the car. Notes for a book Mr Buchanan was writing on the history of his church, to which he was very attached, were never located.