Details of informers handed to murderer
Irish News
**Via Newshound
By Allison Morris
23/04/08
Police have lost a high-ly sensitive file containing personal details of more than 40 informants – but no officers have been disciplined or charged over the blunder.
In the biggest breach of security since the Castlereagh break-in six years ago copies of the ‘sensitive disclosure schedule’ were handed over to a gang charged in connection with the cold-blooded murder of a north Belfast man.
Police attempted to retrieve the top-secret material but one full file of names and addresses remains missing three years on.
The police only became aware of the loss when career criminal Louis ‘Luger’ Maguire handed a page to a senior officer during a court hearing before his trial for the 2003 murder of David ‘Digger’ Barnes.
Maguire, who was later convicted, even made paper aeroplanes from the highly sensitive pages during a court appearance.
At one stage the 42-year-old represented himself after dismissing his legal team and would have had access to the files. There is no suggestion of improper conduct by lawyers in the case.
A Belfast Crown Court judge has ordered an investigation.
No officers have been charged or disciplined over the breach.
“Certain matters are the subject of discussion between police and the Public Prosecution Service, therefore it would be inappropriate to comment at this time,” a police spokesman said last night.
Copies of the disclosure schedule – including personal details of informants, witnesses and covert surveillance relating to the case – were handed out to defence lawyers and defendants during the murder trial.
Police later raided the homes of some of the accused and recovered all but one of the copies.
Reporting restrictions meant that much of the lengthy trial went unrecorded and so the security blunder was not made public.
However, statements seen by The Irish News from a senior police officer reveal how Maguire handed him a page from the “uniquely identifiable sensitive disclosure schedule” in a Belfast courtroom in April 2005.
“I immediately recognised it as material to which Maguire should not have had access or possession,’’ he said.
“Maguire shouted a death threat in respect to a man whose name appeared on the document.
“I later established that an entire sensitive disclosure schedule [and not just the page handed to me by Louis Maguire] was
in the possession of all eight defence counsel and Louis Maguire himself along with the other defendants.
“I later became aware from my enquiries that a copy of the inadvertently disclosed sensitive schedule was in the public domain and remains so to date.”
