A BOMBER FOR THE IRA AND AN INFORMER
The chilling history of the criminal hired by ‘the Paymaster’ to terrorise QIH executives
NOTORIOUS criminal Cyril ‘Dublin Jimmy’ McGuinness – the main suspect in the abduction and torture of Kevin Lunney – is believed to have driven the tow-truck containing the Canary Wharf bomb which ended the IRA ceasefire in February 1996.
Security sources also told the Irish Mail on Sunday that the arch-criminal – who carried out a sinister campaign of intimidation against the management of companies that were once owned by fallen tycoon Seán Quinn – was an informant for a variety of police and security forces, including An Garda Síochána.
The Quinn Industrial Holding directors told the MoS that although they feel safer after the death of ‘Dublin Jimmy’ they want the pursuit of ‘the Paymaster’ to continue – and they fear that McGuinness’s death ends a key evidential link to the person or
persons who have directed the campaign of terror against them over the past four-and-a-half years.
Today we also reveal:
▪ Sources in the DUP confirm that a key European arrest warrant for a previous assault on Kevin Lunney and fellow director Dara O’Reilly was only activated after CEO Liam McCaffrey told First Minister Arlene Foster about the matter. The warrant for a man who had attacked Mr Lunney last February was activated within hours of the phone call.
▪ Mr McCartin has once again questioned why there was inaction for so long on the ground – given the positive results obtained in the raids this week.
▪ Garda sources have told the MoS that some members of the force have been intimidated by having their cars burned out.
▪ The QIH executives believe pressure from this newspaper and other media this week forced the Government’s hand.
▪ McGuinness operated with impunity in the border region and was seen nonchalantly cutting his grass with a lawnmower the day after Mr Lunney was abducted.
Cyril McGuinness, 54, died of a heart attack when British police raided his safe house in Berkshire, England on Friday morning. It was the end of a week of developments in the case.
The decision of John McCartin, a director of QIH to lay bare the full extent of intimidation and death threats in this newspaper led to
Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin confronting Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Dáil last week.
The directors met Garda Commissioner Drew Harris this week.
Then Mr Lunney’s harrowing account of his suffering at the hands of Cyril McGuinness’s gang of criminals on BBC’s Spotlight increased the pressure further.
Speaking about their decision to go to the media, Mr McCartin told the MoS: ‘I know that the Garda commissioner and a few people like that are a bit p ***** off with me. But as I said this is the first time we have managed to get this into your priority list and we’re going to keep it there.’
Adding to this priority will be the confirmation by a security source that McGuinness drove the truck which contained the bomb to Canary Wharf and left it parked there.
‘He drove the bomb in a tow-truck with a false bottom. And left it there, he was the most ruthless character I came across in all my years on the force,’ the source said.
IRA man James McArdle was convicted for his part in the Canary Wharf bomb. He was one of a fourman IRA unit responsible for planting the bomb in February 1996 which killed two men and ended the first IRA ceasefire.
Mr McGuinness was linked to a
‘He was the most ruthless character’
number of bombings in London in the 1990s in a book ‘Martin McGuinness from Guns to Government’ by Liam Clarke and Kathryn Johnston.
Several sources also claimed last night that McGuinness was an informant for An Garda Siochána, the PSNI and MI5.
A garda told the Irish Mail on Sunday that he was involved in the arrest and conviction of McGuinness for theft in the 1980s.
He later noticed that sections of McGuinness’s criminal record had been wiped.
The source said that he was later contacted by another officer who said that he was his informant.
The close association of McGuinness with the security forces will raise fresh questions about the reluctance to prosecute him.
Mr McCartin gave an acute example of such inaction on the ground, in the immediate aftermath of the September attack on Mr Lunney.
‘Liam [McCaffrey] asked them [gardaí] were they tapping Dublin Jimmy’s phone, were they keeping a good eye on Dublin Jimmy and what was going on.
‘And the garda said: “Ah no, Dublin Jimmy is in Belgium.” And Liam said: “What the f*** are you talking about? He was mowing the lawn when I was passing his house.”
‘This was a day after Kevin’s abduction.’
Garda sources have defended the force, arguing that ‘members have been intimidated by having their cars burned out. As well as that, border gangs are extremely forensically aware, they know CCTV blindspots and they intimidate potential witnesses. Gardaí are also fearful that they have only one opportunity at arrest and must obtain a weight of evidence.’
Mr McCartin said: ‘This man is clearly a very important link in the chain but at the end of the day he is only private enterprise. He worked for money, and it’s still as crucial now as ever that ‘The Paymaster’ be found and the prosecuted, the person who ordered and paid for the campaign of intimidation against the company and its directors.
‘The fact that the main evidential link is gone is one thing you’d worry about. Regardless of whether the main evidential link is gone or not we’re all a little bit safer in our beds.
‘We don’t want to see resolve on ‘the Paymaster’ waning. We want to see that resolve continuing and we don’t want to see this as an excuse to lay off the gas.
‘There has been an intense public scrutiny through media of the history of all of this and I think there has been shock at every level of society and at every level of government about how far this got unchecked. I think under the glare of public scrutiny the resolve was found to finally deal with this.
‘Significant action has come about because of direct intervention from the very highest levels of Government and policing.
‘The newspapers and the TV and radio have done this for us and it was the pressure in the media that got us this result.’
In a meeting between QIH executives and the Garda Commissioner, Mr Harris was in ‘no mood to defend the past,’ a source said.
‘Even when another officer tried to defend the force a director scuttled him and gave him a litany of examples of how his force had let him and everybody down. Harris took it all in, he didn’t defend him at all,’ the source said.
‘We are all a little bit safer in our beds’