THE AUDIO device placed on former Sinn Fein councillor Jonathan Dowdall’s car was “deployed, recovered and preserved” within the State and should be admissible as evidence in Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch’s murder trial, the Special Criminal Court has heard.
The court heard three days of recordings last week of conversations between the two men as they travelled to Northern Ireland to meet members of the IRA on March 7, 2016 – just over one month after David Byrne was shot dead at the Regency Hotel.
The trial has heard that Hutch hoped dissident republicans might be able to mediate in his gang’s feud with the Kinahan Organised Crime Group.
The defence have argued that the 10 hours of recordings should be inadmissible because much of their conversations happened when the vehicle was outside of this jurisdiction and they have also argued that Hutch’s right to privacy had been breached.
Prosecutor Sean Gillane SC has argued that Defence Counsel Brendan Grehan SC has misinterpreted the Criminal Justice Surveillance Act 2009, which regulates surveillance carried out by gardai “within the State”.
He said: “The uncontroverted evidence is that it (the device) was deployed within the State, initiated, retrieved preserved, and downloaded here within the State.
Read more in News
“It would mean such devices are impossible to police using this Act
“It is for safeguarding the State against subversive and terrorist offences, whether they are blind, deaf, oblivious of the existence of the border?
“Are the gardai supposed to stand back as soon as they reach the Carrickdale Hotel and say all bets are off?, that the bug doesn’t work?
“The Act includes aircraft and where do aeroplanes go? Is it simply for drug trafficking or terrorism offences in Knock? Where do sea-going crafts go? These devices can be placed there.
Most read in The Irish Sun
“This would render an Act passed by the Oireachtas as having zero functionality. It is functionally useless.”
Mr Gillane said that it was also central to the Prosecution case that the Toyota Land Cruiser travelled into Northern Ireland and rejected any claims that Hutch’s right to privacy had been breached.
Mr Grehan responded: “The question about a right to privacy is that we should all have it except Mr Hutch. It doesn’t apply when you’re planning a crime, a crime which is alleged to have happened a few weeks beforehand.
“The court should be very careful if going down the route that there is no right to privacy.
“If the end justifies the means then that’s the end of the rule of law.”
Hutch, 59, has pleaded not guilty to the murder of Kinahan cartel thug 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.