The Morris Tribunal: The Morris tribunal has heard claims that gardaí allowed a Garda informant to carry a bomb into Strabane in order to protect her from the IRA.
Ms Sheenagh McMahon, estranged wife of Det Garda Noel McMahon told the tribunal her husband had told her a bomb had gone off in Strabane "and it was one of theirs". A bomb exploded at Strabane courthouse on July 3rd, 1993, injuring three people.
"I was convinced it was a Garda operation and everyone knew about it," Ms McMahon said, on her second day giving evidence. She said she understood Ms McGlinchey was involved with the IRA and gardaí had to allow her to do certain things so the IRA wouldn't suspect her of being an informant.
Certain officers were told to "back off" from Ms McGlinchey, she said. "She was allowed to do what she wanted to do."
Ms McMahon said she heard the RUC were "very annoyed" about the Strabane bomb and knew it was a set-up. She is a key witness at the tribunal, due to a statement she made to the Carty inquiry alleging that her husband and his superior, Supt Kevin Lennon were involved in hoax explosives finds with Ms McGlinchey in the early-1990s.
Yesterday, she was asked what her motivation was for making these statements. "I don't have any motivation - just to tell the truth," she said. Ms McMahon said she was threatened by Ms McGlinchey in March 1999, when they met in a car park in Buncrana. Ms McGlinchey told her "there was an awful lot of loose talk" and she had better watch herself and the children.
Ms McMahon said she was concerned Ms McGlinchey's associates might come to her house.
She approached her husband's superior, Det Sgt Des Walsh, who had been helpful to her in the past. "He said to me that there was nothing to it." The "carry-on" with bombs was Noel's and Kevin Lennon's idea, she said.
Det Sgt Walsh told her bombs and explosives finds at Strabane, Rossnowlagh and Bridgend were "scams" and were "all about self-gain and promotion". She said this could not have referred to her husband, as he had not sought promotion.
"I was very taken aback by all this. I was absolutely flabbergasted," she said.
"I just felt that my whole life had been a lie," she said. She had believed her husband was a good detective and she was "very proud" of him. She had answered telephone calls in the middle of the night, thinking it was "all about saving lives".
"All of a sudden somebody comes and tells me this isn't the way it was at all."
She believed the whole Garda force knew what was going on in Donegal, yet she didn't. "I was misled as to who Adrienne McGlinchey was, I was just totally misled by them."
Ms McMahon said her husband had brought two steel items into the house in the early 1990s and told her they were "items that the IRA were using". She thought they looked like rocket launchers.
In March 1999 she took them from the house and put them in safekeeping because she knew "it was evidence that something was wrong". She also took two documents, stating that Supt Lennon had never done anything wrong and was highly respected.
She told the tribunal that Sgt Michael Brennan found three detonators in a box in the shed at her family home in Buncrana in 1997.
He took them with him, saying he needed them, she said. Later, when he told her he was involved in an operation at a known-Republican house, she thought he had used the detonators for some purpose.
Ms McMahon also told the tribunal her husband had said he had "perjured himself" when giving evidence in the Point Inn case. The nightclub owner, Mr Frank Shortt was convicted on drugs charges but it was later found that there had been a miscarriage of justice.
The tribunal also heard that claims that explosives were hidden in a covered-in swimming pool at Ms McGlinchey's mother's garden. Ms McMahon said she understood that gardaí had planned to dig up the materials, but the operation never went ahead.
