Gilligan again denied bail on flight concern
2018 DIG
John Gilligan JOHN Gilligan was refused bail for a second time yesterday.
The 66-year-old was arrested on August 23 when he tried to board a flight from Belfast International Airport to Spain.
He was carrying more than €22,000 in a suitcase.
He was formally charged with attempting to remove criminal property from Northern Ireland.
Mr Gilligan appeared at Coleraine Magistrates Court via video link from Maghaberry Prison as his barrister requested bail.
Objecting, a National Crime Agency investigator said: “We are concerned he is a flight risk. The address being put up for bail has a very tenuous link.”
Mr Gilligan will appear again in mid-october. 2003 DIG REPUBLICANS helped to refine a search area ahead of a fifth attempt to find one of the Disappeared.
Columba Mcveigh, 19, from Donaghmore in Co Tyrone, was abducted, murdered and secretly buried on November 1, 1975.
Excavators started digging in the Bragan bog in Monaghan yesterday.
Jon Hill, senior investigator with the Independent
Commission for the Location of Victims Remains, said: “We have re-evaluated all the information we had and encouraged through the republican movement any people that might have information about this location to revisit.
“The site has been restored to how it was back in 1975 so we encouraged them to come back and, as a result, an area has been designated as worthy for searching.”