Case collapsed

However, they did so for dramatically different reasons.
The Ulster Unionists, the Democratic Unionist Party and the SDLP accuse London of indulging in a grubby side-deal with the IRA, withdrawing the prosecutions in return for its July statement “dumping arms.”
Sinn Fein, on the other hand, accuses the police of usurping democracy by creating a fictitious case against the men, so providing the then UUP leader, David Trimble, with a convenient excuse to collapse the power-sharing executive.
In October 2002, serried ranks of police Landrovers drew up outside Parliament Buildings at Stormont. Phalanxes of armed police officers barged into Sinn Fein’s offices inside, removing two computer discs.
Although the discs were quickly returned, and the chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde (who was in New York at the time), apologized for the nature of the police raid, four people were arrested and charged with collecting information likely to be of use to terrorists.
The TV pictures of the raid and the subsequent charging of Sinn Fein’s head of administration, Denis Donaldson, and three others led unionists to accuse the party of spying on both its power-sharing partners in the executive and on the British government.
It was, said the then Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, a scandal “worse than Watergate.”
Events moved quickly. The power-sharing executive collapsed, the DUP eclipsed Trimble’s Ulster Unionists at the next election, leading inexorably on to unending political stagnation in Northern Ireland.
Whether the unionists or Sinn Fein are interpreting the collapse of the trial correctly, the lid has at least been partially lifted on the unlovely can of worms that passes for law and order in Northern Ireland.
The Public Prosecution Service in Belfast merely said that proceeding with the trial was not in the “public interest.” It has refused all requests to elaborate.
The police only said that there was a serious crime, which they investigated fully and that no-one is currently being sought, police-speak for “We got our guy, but the evidence didn’t stack up in court.”
The British government, similarly, is giving no explanation for the dramatic move with the Northern Secretary, Peter Hain, criticizing journalists for having the temerity to ask for one.
For those interested enough to dig a little deeper than the police leaks about a “Stormont spy ring,” it was always clear that the evidence against the three was suspiciously thin.
It mainly consisted of police claims that, amongst 1,000 pages of assorted documents found in a rucksack in Denis Donaldson’s home in West Belfast, there was evidence of IRA targeting and spying.
A second accused, Ciaran Kearney, Donaldson’s son-in-law, was at the time of his arrest responsible for Sinn Fein policy on policing. The documents included public statements on policing, such as the Ulster Unionist Party’s published response to the Patten Report.
It was always the defense case that most of the information contained in the papers was innocuous and there were perfectly reasonable explanations why it was found Kearney and Donaldson’s possession.
Other information, however, was capable of a more sinister interpretation. Donaldson’s lawyers had sought to discover who had placed the documents in his home, believing it may have been the work of one, or more, police “agents provocateur.”
Even at the bail stage of the legal process, a police officer under cross-examination accepted that most, if not all, of the documents were political in nature.
The Crown case was swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Ulster Unionists and most of the press corps in Ireland and abroad. But even at that early stage, it was clear there was more to “Stomontgate” than met the eye.
Quoted in “The Armed Peace,” by BBC Northern Ireland security correspondent, Brian Rowan, police sources claimed they had set up a special operation to take “revenge” on the IRA for its previous, alleged, raid on Special Branch security offices at Castlereagh.
Rowan claims that “Operation Torsion,” as it was called, was the instrument of that “revenge” and that its officers had bugged the IRA, read its files and uncovered evidence it was targeting people.
The officer in charge of this operation, Bill Lowry, claimed in a radio interview at the time that his task had been to “take skulls.” The Stormont “spy-ring” allegations were, arguably, the result.
Although Denis Donaldson was said by police in court to be a “leading republican activist,” the police had just granted him authority to hold a gun, hardly conducive to their later interpretation of his character.
The prosecution side fought tooth-and-nail against disclosing their hand, to the extent that, in an unprecedented move, a special lawyer was appointed to referee the arguments over whether a Public Interest Immunity Certificate (known colloquially as a “gagging order”) should be allowed.
When it became clear the courts would resist such an order, the prosecution suddenly and inexplicably withdrew its case.
The taoiseach, who has now declared himself baffled by the decision to drop the case, had as early as the autumn of 2003 indicated his concerns that the police inquiry was “open to suspicion.”
It is devoutly to be hoped that the many unanswered questions arising from this perplexing case are answered speedily. The truth, however, may only emerge after years of thankless hard work by a number of dedicated individuals.