Continuity IRA members jailed after MI5 surveillance operation
- Published
Seven men caught in a covert MI5 operation against the Continuity IRA (CIRA) have been sentenced to a total of 33 years.
The undercover bugging operation focused on a house in Newry, County Down, in 2014.
The judge said the recordings, which included plots to kill, made for "grim and depressing reading".
Police said it was "one of the most significant terrorism cases in recent times".
The Continuity IRA is a dissident republican group which is opposed to the peace process in Northern Ireland and has carried out a number of bombings and shootings.
The court on Friday heard that the secret recordings made by MI5 revealed:
A plot to target a senior prison governor while out walking in County Down
A plot to target specific police officers
Robbery plots on homes for cash an legally-held firearms
A plot to steal sulphur from a factory in Dublin to make explosives
Training of individuals in the making of pipe bombs and the use of firearms
The men also voiced their frustrations at the lack of weapons, ammunition, low membership numbers and finances to fund their campaign.
Patrick Joseph "Mooch" Blair, 65, of Lissara Heights, Warrenpoint, County Down; Liam Hannaway, 50, of White Rise, Dunmurry; John Sheehy, 36, of Erskine Street, Newry; and Colin Patrick Winters, 49, of Ardcarn Park, Newry, admitted belonging or professing to belong to a proscribed organisation, providing weapons and explosives training, conspiring to possess explosives, firearms and ammunition with intent to endanger life.
They further admitted conspiracy to possess explosives, firearms and ammunition with intent, along with preparing acts of terrorism.
The court previously heard that Winters died in August.
Seamus Morgan, 64, of Barcroft Park, Newry; Kevin John Paul Heaney, 47, of Blackstaff Mews, Springfield Road, Belfast; and Terence Marks, 60, of Parkhead Crescent, Newry, all pleaded guilty to belonging or professing to belong to a proscribed organisation.
The judge said that "all right thinking people and law abiding citizens believe that the days of shootings, killings and explosions are in the past".
While the defendants faced purely conspiracy charges, he said the plots had been "thwarted" when police raided the meeting house in Ardcarn Park in Newry in November 2014.
It was the prosecution case that Blair was the leader of the Continuity IRA, while Hannaway was his number two.
They received five years in jail and were also found to pose a danger to the public in the future because of their previous terrorist convictions.
The judge said neither man had "disavowed their involvement in dissident republican activity", adding that it was evident from the tape recordings that both men played "significant and leading roles" at those meetings of the Continuity IRA.
He said it would be up to the parole commissioners to decide if it was safe to release them back into the community.
'Cut all ties with dissident republican activity'
The third in the pecking order of the Continuity IRA leadership was Joseph "Tiny" Lynch, said the prosecution.
The judge said that like Hannaway and Blair, Lynch had pleaded guilty to "serious and specified" offences but he did not believe he posed a danger to the public in the future and had now cut all ties with dissident republican activity,
Lynch received a six-and-a-half-year sentence, with three years and three months to be spent in custody and the remainder on supervised licence on his release.
Sheehy, who travelled from his home in Listowel, County Kerry, to receive instructions in bomb making, was handed a six-year sentence - half to be spent in custody and half on licence.
Marks, who received instructions in the use of explosives for terrorist purposes, was told he would serve two years in jail followed by two years on licence.
Heaney was handed a three-and-a half-year sentence, divided equally between custody and probation.
Morgan, who was jailed in 1975 for causing an explosion at the Ardmore Hotel in Newry, was told he would serve 18 months in custody followed by 18 months on licence.
All the defendants were made the subject of counter terrorism notifications, ranging from 10 years to 30 years.
The PSNI's head of serious crime, Detective Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray, described the sentences as "another significant milestone in our relentless efforts to protect communities and save lives by disrupting and frustrating the efforts of those involved in terrorist activities".
He said: "Working alongside our partners in MI5 we carried out a detailed and painstaking operation over a prolonged period of time to uncover the multitude of conspiracies that this group were planning."