McKevitt 'upset' by Omagh bomb

Michael McKevitt denies all the charges

The alleged leader of the Real IRA was very upset about the Omagh bombing, the main prosecution witness in his trial has said.

Michael McKevitt, 53, is the first person to appear at Dublin's non-jury Special Criminal Court charged with directing terrorism.

The offence was one of a range of measures introduced by the Irish Government in the wake of the Omagh bombing in 1998.

The County Louth businessman is also charged with membership of an illegal organisation. He denies the charges.

Chief prosecution witness David Rupert, an FBI and MI5 agent who is alleged to have spied on the Real IRA, said he "immediately clicked" with Mr McKevitt when they first met in August 1999 over tea at a hotel in County Monaghan.

He said Mr McKevitt had told him he was very upset about the Omagh bombing.

Mr Rupert said he was told the bomb had been a joint operation.

Mr Rupert, 51, said Mr McKevitt told him the Continuity IRA were 80% responsible for the bombing, and that the bomb should have been driven into the country to explode when the bombers could not find a parking spot.

Mr Rupert also said Mr McKevitt had told him about a new organisation that had been formed by the Real IRA, elements of the Continuity IRA and INLA as well as some Provisional IRA members.

He said it was to be called Oglaigh nhEireann.

He said the people he dealt with were Mr McKevitt, Liam Campbell and Bernadette Sands-McKevitt.

Mr Rupert also told the court Mr McKevitt had a poor relationship with Republican Sinn Fein leader Ruairi O Bradaigh.

He said this was because Mr O Bradaigh had overruled a plot to kidnap four lords and their sons and deny them food during the IRA hunger strikes in 1981.

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Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Rupert told the court that his handlers helped him to buy a pub in County Leitrim in June 1996.

By that time, he had become a close associate of Joe O'Neill, described as a senior member of Republican Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Continuity IRA.

Mr Rupert said he was approached by Mr O'Neill about several empty beer kegs.

He said: "In republican circles they often use hand language in lieu of saying bomb or bomb casings or shootings."

He said Mr O'Neill made a hand signal to him, which he understood to mean he wanted to use the kegs for bomb casings.

Mr Rupert said he passed the serial numbers of the kegs to a senior garda officer.

Infiltrated

On the second day of his evidence, Mr Rupert also explained how he came to infiltrate the dissident republican group.

He told the court he made several visits to Ireland after an approach by FBI agent Ed Buckley in Chicago in 1994.

The 6ft 5in tall American weighing more than 20 stone said he had previously worked with the FBI in the 1970s, in an operation targeting the drugs trade in New Jersey.

After this approach, he said he began to focus on Irish republicans like Mr O'Neill and Vincent Murray, accompanying Mr O'Neill on fundraising events around the country.

At one such function in Dublin during Christmas 1994, Mr O'Neill was handed US $10,000 from a contact based in Boston.

"Joe didn't want to be carrying this in case we were stopped at a road block and he would have no reason for carrying $10,000 in cash," he said.

Spying plan

Mr Rupert eventually decided to sell his trucking business in the US and move with his then-wife to run a pub in the Irish Republic.

"It gave a greater access to the republican community and I could be in a casual situation where you could have an exchange of conversation so it didn't appear as though you were interested in certain subjects, being intelligence," he said.

He said that once FBI bosses gave the go-ahead to the spying plan, he returned to Ireland with his wife and, with the help of Mr O'Neill, they found the Drowes Bar in Tullathan.

The court heard that the pub, beside a caravan park, was used mostly by people from Belfast and Dungannon in Northern Ireland who were closely linked to Provisional Sinn Fein.

Mr Rupert said: "I usually make reference to it as my IRA theme park."

The prosecution has previously told the court that Mr Rupert was paid $1.25m dollars by MI5 and the FBI for work as their agent.

The trial is expected to last for up to six weeks.

Mr McKevitt is one of five people the relatives of the victims of the Omagh bombing are taking a separate civil action against in Northern Ireland.

The Real IRA attack on 15 August 1998 killed 29 people, including a woman who was seven months pregnant with twins.

The Real IRA was formed after a split within the mainstream IRA. The dissident group is opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process.