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A Dublin used car dealer who supplied a used car in a bomb attack on a PSNI officer in Belfast last year was found guilty of membership in the IRA.
Robert O’Leary of Clancy Road in Finglas sold a Skoda Octavia, which was used to plant a bomb under the PSNI officer’s car in June 2019.
The 42-year-old denied being involved, saying he would “never, never, never” participate in an IRA operation.
He said he bought the car for 200 euros and sold it for 750 euros to a “burly” man who came in, paid cash and left his details on a sheet of paper.
The Skoda Octavia that O’Leary sold was found burned with another car in Belfast later that week in the early hours of June 1, 2019.
The Special Criminal Court found that the car was used to search the area around the PSNI officer’s home in Belfast and was stopped nearby for three minutes while the device was placed under his car.
He had not noticed the bomb during previous checks and only discovered it later that day at Shandon Park Golf Club in East Belfast.
The IRA subsequently claimed responsibility for planting the improvised explosive device.
In a statement he said he was “confident that the device would have exploded if not for the terrain it traveled through. We were unlucky this time, but we only need to be lucky once.”
Robert O’Leary told the Gardaí that they were “barking up the wrong tree” and that “never in a million years” would he get a car to use in an IRA operation.
He insisted that all he did was sell a car without a log book. He was, he said, “a little Arthur Daly, he had birdies for sale a few years ago, he had a good name in Finglas.”
He denied the charge of membership in the IRA, but the Special Criminal Court found him guilty this afternoon.
He discovered that he had “presented a false and implausible narrative” and that he had purchased the car for a customer for a specific purpose.
It also found that O’Leary “invented the buyer, a mysterious man, to break the link between him and the car.”
He will be sentenced on October 5.
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