JONATHAN Dowdall was fleeing to Dubai and had no intention of coming back, the Special Criminal Court was told.
The trial of Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch has previously heard that the former Sinn Fein councillor was first arrested in May, 2016 at Dublin Airport as he was about to get on a flight to the UAE to stay with his sister.
During his seventh day of evidence, Brendan Grehan SC, for Hutch, quizzed him over comments on 10 hours of recorded conversations between himself and the accused on March 7, 2016, in which he appeared to be planning “a hit”.
A reference to six assassins “who had to be got” referred to four people who murdered Gerry Hutch’s brother Neddy days after the Regency and two who attempted to shoot the Monk dead in Lanzarote.
Asked about comments he made about a dissident known as ‘Wee’ “doing someone”, Dowdall said: “I don’t know what that was about.”
Mr Grehan said: “It’s very clear what it was about, it was about Wee carrying out a hit and that he’d come to Dublin to check it out?”
The State witness said: “It’s nonsense, I was going away and Wee said he wouldn’t be around on the Saturday.”
Counsel said: “These are your words and I want you to take ownership of them. It’s very clear you’re talking about Wee doing a hit in Dublin?”
He responded: “Both of us are talking about it. I don’t remember, it was seven years ago.
“None of this has anything to do with the Regency.”
Asked about saying the killers of Neddy Hutch ‘have to go’, the witness said: “There’s two people having a conversation, it’s s*** talk. I couldn’t arrange to have anyone killed and I wouldn’t.”
Mr Grehan said: “You’re making it very clear that you’re coming back up by the end of the week?”
The witness answered: “But I never went back up, I had no intention of going back up. I was just trying to keep him (Hutch) happy.”
Counsel then said: “But he didn’t need to be kept happy.”
Dowdall added: “I was heading to Dubai, I had worked lined up. I wasn’t coming back.”
Probed further about his contacts in Northern Ireland, referred to by Mr Grehan as the ‘Northern Command of the IRA’, he said: “They weren’t involved in the Regency, they weren’t involved in anything.
All they were going to do was stand in the middle.”
He also said he feared he was going to be shot because they suspected him of sourcing Kevin ‘Flat Cap’ Murray to take part in Regency.
He added: “If I was up in the North talking to them and then if they think I got Flat Cap, I would have been in serious trouble.”
Asked by Mr Grehan if he thought the IRA were going to make the Kinahans get on “bended knee”, Dowdall said: “If I had known who the Kinahans really were at that point, that wouldn’t have been the case.”
‘NONSENSE’
In another clip played to the court, Dowdall appeared to praise Hutch’s “balls” and said he was referring to his role in the Regency.
He testified that when he told Gerard Hutch that “I know you’ve more balls than any c*** that I know doin’ that an all”, he is referring to the accused’s role in the murder of David Byrne.
Mr Grehan put it to him that this was “an opportunistic lie” and that he was just “seizing on this today”, which the witness denied.
Dowdall also insisted that references he made on the recordings about bombing a house in Finglas or having the IRA grab two people and shoot one of them were just “nonsense”, “s*** talk” and “none of it ever happened”.
He agreed that the two of them were driving up to Northern Ireland to find some way out of the feud but insisted “all the rest is nonsense”.
The witness said: “I know that tape sounds terrible. I’m saying that stuff, I’m disgusted by it, it never happened.”
He also said that his house was raided for suspected membership of the IRA because gardai suspected there might have been firearms and explosives there, but said they found nothing and he was never in the IRA.
He also accepted he described William ‘Fluff’ Gallagher as the main leader of the INLA but doesn’t know if he is and was asked about an alleged phone call he made to David Byrne’s parents James and Said.
“That’s just what Gerard told me”, he said.
Hutch, 59, last of the Paddocks, Clontarf, Dublin 3, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016.
His co-accused Paul Murphy, 61, of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co Dublin and Jason Bonney, 51, of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin 13 have pleaded not guilty to participating in or contributing to the facilitation of Byrne’s murder by providing motor vehicles for a criminal gang on February 5, 2016.
The trial continues before Ms Justice Tara Burns, Ms Justice Sarah Berkeley and Ms Justice Grainne Malone at the Special Criminal Court.
