I was determined to establish the truth, not solely because the money would have been very useful but also because this revelation seemed to be part of the overall pattern to undermine my credibility. And all because I had escaped a bid to have me murdered, probably organised by that most secretive Crown agency, MI5. But why?
And then silence. I presume the Northern Ireland Office and RUC senior officers hoped the accusations would go away. For more than 12 months I heard nothing whatsoever and as the months passed by I became even more angry and determined. I believed the very fact that no reply was sent to my solicitor meant that the authorities realised they were at fault. Some newspaper friends of mine believed that they saw the hand of official chicanery behind my court case. They argued that if the Crown had been able to convict me on charges of perverting the course of justice I would have been jailed and my good name tarnished to such a degree that no one would believe any accusations I might make against MI5, the RUC, the Home Office or the Command Secretariat.
In may 1998 my solicitor wrote to Ronnie Flanagan, Chief Constable of the RUC, demanding a substantive reply to the questions that had been asked over the previous two years, adding, ‘This matter is beginning to acquire the flavour of a “cover-up”.’
Seven days later a reply was finally received from the Chief Constable stating that, according to their records, I had been paid – surprise, surprise – a total of £82,000 including an amount of £12,500 for the purchase of a ‘milk round’ for me to run as a business following my resettlement. The letter came as a considerable shock because it was the first time ever that I had heard anything about the purchase of a milk round!
My solicitor immediately wrote back asking for full details and the records of monies paid to me and by whom, where and when. He also asked for full details about the alleged milk round, asking particulars about the business, from whom it had been purchased, and where and when. There was no reply to any of those questions. More than six months later the Chief Constable has still not produced any records to me or my solicitor, no details whatsoever have been supplied and nothing has been heard of the mysterious milk round. It seems someone has been economical with the truth.
Unhappy with the extraordinary course of events, I phoned Kevin Ham at the Northern Ireland Compensation Agency, the civil servant responsible for authorising payments to people injured in attacks and beatings by the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries. He knew of my case and produced the answers to my questions. I taped the phone call.
I asked him how much my house had cost.
Kevin Ham; ‘I was told the figure paid for your house was £80,000.’
Me; ‘But I have the letter from the solicitor that the RUC used and it states that the house only cost £52,500.’
Kevin Ham; ‘Well, as I understand it, and what they have told me . . . I have to accept from a fellow Crown servant what they have stated.’
Me; ‘Did they definitely say £80,000, are you sure that they said £80,000?’
Kevin Ham; ‘I can’t depart from that figure of £80,000. I mean, what I am saying is that the total figure was £120,000 including £80,000 for the house.’
It appeared that the Chief Constable himself had been given false information. But after talking to Kevin Ham, an honest civil servant, I was convinced that someone in the system had cheated me, though not for one minute did I believe the Chief Constable was involved in such deception. And yet it seemed unbelievable both to me and my solicitor, that someone, or some organisation, would want to steal from an agent who had risked everything. I wondered how many other agents and informants had been treated in the same way, receiving less money than had been authorised. I knew there would have been dozens of agents who needed to be resettled during the Troubles and I wondered if they too had been ripped off.
Menacingly, however, and more worryingly, I wondered how many other agents who had worked undercover inside the IRA had been betrayed by MI5 or any other British security or intelligence agencies; kidnaps arranged in secret deals between the Provos and MI5 officers, which ended in the most appalling beatings, tortures and deaths. I knew the Provos loved to capture British agents and informants because their torture and killing would be seen as a warning to other Catholics and Republicans who were thinking of working for the RUC, MI5 or any other of the government security services. That was why whenever an informant was captured by the Provos and subsequently shot dead, statements were always issued by the IRA propaganda machine. Every killing of every informant instilled fear in the hearts and minds of any Republican who might have been thinking of working for the British government or the RUC.
I also understood only too well that if agents or informants had been betrayed by the British government’s security services, in the same way that I had been betrayed, there was no possibility that the Provos could make a mistake, accidentally interrogating and killing an innocent person. They were certain the men and women they interrogate and tortured – tape recording their traumatic confessions – were guilty, so, no matter how long it took for the punishment squads to tear a confession from the wretched victim, the squads never gave up demanding the answers they required. One can only wonder how many have been betrayed by the security services during the Troubles. About 50 men and women were executed by the Provos and Loyalists for giving information – ‘betraying the cause’ as they called it. And there were apparently only a couple who were innocent of the accusations made against them by the IRA. It led me to believe that with such an extraordinary success rate – 95 per cent accurate – the Provos must have been either brilliant detectives or they had been receiving impeccable information from the forces of law and order and the intelligence agencies.
Each and every time I thought through what I had been told by my SB friend Mick, that I had been set up by MI5 or some other intelligence agency, I shuddered not only at the thought that I only just managed to escape but more so for those poor bastards who hadn’t managed to elude the Provos; who had taken terrible beatings and torture till their spirit had eventually broken. They knew the consequences. Every informant and agent in Northern Ireland knew the penalty if they were ever caught. What those brave men and women never bargained for, what they never knew, was that when the powers that be decided that an informant had passed his sell-by date, when his usefulness was at an end, he wouldn’t be handed a pension and out to grass but, instead, would be sacrificed, treated like a pawn in a game of chess.
Now that it appears peace has finally come to Northern Ireland, however briefly, I hope those who infiltrated the IRA, risking their lives to save other people, will be handsomely rewarded. They should be honoured by the authorities, not treated like nuisances. Those men and women fully realise that even today, there are those amongst the Provos, including some hard men released from jail, who are hell-bent on seeking revenge, determine to teach the ‘touts’ a lesson. In today’s political climate that penalty might not be death but it would probably be a severe punishment beating that might maim them for life. I only hope that those agents and informants who are now seeking a new life won’t be betrayed as I was. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Autumn 1998
Chapter thirteen
For some months I had come to believe that I was finally a free man – from the constant attentions of Northumbria Police and all the government agencies which had given me shit over the past few years. Unfortunately, I was being too optimistic, for in the autumn of 1998, I ran into trouble with them again. And, more worryingly, the Provisional IRA had once more directly targeted and intimidated my family in West Belfast in their customary cowardly way.
On the morning of Friday, 2 October 1998, I was driving along a main road in Tyne and Wear when I heard the siren of a marked police car behind me, the blue lights flashing. I slowed and stopped. I wondered why they were targeting me.
Constable 5999 walked to my car and told me he had pulled over because one of my brake lights wasn’t working. He asked me for my name and addr
ess and I told him my name, ‘Martin David Ashe’, and, as I always did on such occasions, gave him the address of my solicitor instead of my home address. I had previously given my solicitor’s address, not wishing to give my home address to every police officer who stopped me. In the past the police had always accepted the solicitor’s address. But not this day.
Ironically, on this occasion, the police officer knew me, knew my identity and, I presumed, my background. It made no difference. Constable 5999 accused me of refusing to give my home address and called for assistance. Within minutes I heard another police siren and watched as the car came flying down the main shopping street weaving at speed through the traffic, the siren blaring, the blue lights flashing. People came out of the shops and the bank wondering what all the commotion was about, and a crowd gathered. The police car came to a sudden halt and PC 2630 walked over, leaving the car’s blue lights flashing. He, too, knew me well. He asked his colleague why assistance had been called for and was told that I had refused to give my address.
I showed the two officers an old ‘HORT/1’ form, which motorists are given when requested to produce their driving documents at a police station. That form, written out by another police officer, gave my solicitor’s address instead of my home address. On that occasion, that officer had accepted my solicitor’s address. I knew I was perfectly within my rights giving my solicitor’s address instead of my own.
‘Nick him,’ said PC 2630 to his colleague. ‘Section 25, refusing to give his details.’
I was searched in front of the crowd of more than 50 who had encircled us. Then I was handcuffed before being arrested and led away. The actions of the police that day seemed extraordinary, designed to make me appear to be a dangerous criminal rather than someone who had been stopped for having a defective brake light. I knew that meant I was being arrested for failing to give my home address. As if to embarrass me further in front of so many people PC 2630 then lifted the bonnet of the car and checked chassis and engine numbers suggesting to everyone watching that the car I had been driving was a stolen vehicle. I was put into the back of the police car and taken to the station. I could not believe that all this palaver had taken place simply because I had a defective brake light. I knew that in the great majority of such cases police would simply advise a motorist to replace the bulb and leave it at that. But worse would follow. At the station I was, as is customary, taken before the custody officer and details of the offence were read out.
‘Put him in a cell,’ said the custody officer.
‘What?’ I asked, a note of startled surprise in my voice.
‘Put him in a cell,’ repeated the officer.
I couldn’t believe it, shaking my head in disbelief as I was led away. For one hour I was detained in the cell and yet I had done nothing wrong. In law, I was perfectly entitled to give my solicitor’s address and those two officers had no right to arrest me. Fortunately, someone called a superintendent for advice and I was ordered to be released after receiving a verbal caution. The following morning I returned to the police station and asked Inspector Bray to check and retain the video from the council’s CCTV that monitored the area where the police had stopped me. I told him the video tape would provide full evidence of what occurred at the scene. He readily agreed to do so. What he didn’t know was that I had deliberately stopped my car under the CCTV camera so that it would record the actions of the police officers. My solicitor also wrote to the officer in charge of the station asking him to retain the video tape as evidence. Two weeks later I received a phone call from a police inspector saying that, unfortunately, the video tape had been recycled by accident a week after the incident and, as a result, the recording had been lost.
The following week I had to appear at Newcastle Magistrates Court to answer a charge of ‘using threatening, abusive or insulting words’ under Section 5 (1) during an incident which had taken place six months earlier at 1.55 in the morning in the centre of Newcastle upon Tyne in April 1998. During the day-long court hearing, both police officers gave evidence as well as my friend Usher, who had been driving the vehicle when we were stopped. But in court the police officers gave conflicting evidence; made to look fools or liars as they told stories contradicting each other.
Giving evidence on oath, PC 3586 Milne said the car was stopped because it was being driven ‘erratically’, and yet PC 335 Webster who knew me very well later told the court that the car was being driven ‘normally’ but had been stopped because he thought it was strange for two young men to be driving around the centre of Newcastle at that time in the morning. I had never heard anything so daft. On a Friday night the centre of Newcastle is crowded with young people, the streets busy with traffic. Then PC Webster came to the nub of the charge, claiming I shouted, ‘Don’t get into the car with those fucking pigs.’ As a result of that police allegation I was arrested for using abusive language.
The two officers were made to look rather foolish once more when they were asked how I was taken to the police station. PC Webster said that I was taken away in the back of a police van; PC Milne said I had been taken back to the station handcuffed to him and sitting in the back of the police car while PC Webster drove the car.
In evidence, I told the court that I would never use the words ‘pigs’ in relation to the police for one very good reason. In Northern Ireland we always called the police ‘peelers’; a ‘pig’ in Belfast is a vehicle called an APC – an armoured personnel carrier. I knew that on that occasion I had been arrested for no good reason whatsoever and yet I was taken to Pilgrim Street police station and left in the cells for three hours. But, I won the day. After retiring for 30 minutes the magistrates found me ‘not guilty’. I was in no doubt that the two officers had committed perjury that day.
But more disturbing was the action taken by the Crown Prosecution Service one week before that case came to court. In late September 1998, the CPS wrote to my solicitors advising them that they were laying a further charge against me which they would raise at the start of the hearing. No such suggestion had been made to my solicitor at any time during those previous five months. The CPS had suddenly decided to accuse me of ‘violent behaviour in a police station’ contrary to Section 29 of the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847. My solicitor was taken aback by this extraordinary news for hardly anyone has been prosecuted under that particular Act for decades!
By throwing that charge at me, however, the CPS were being both devious and shameless for it is a charge which a defendant finds almost impossible to win. A single police officer has only to state what he saw or believes and his evidence will automatically be accepted against the defendant’s word. No witness or corroborative evidence are required to support the police officer’s evidence. It was obvious the CPS believed they had found a way of winning a conviction against me and, thereby, blackening my name. But once again the magistrates proved their honesty and independence, refusing to give permission for the case to go ahead at such short notice. But what seemed extraordinary and disturbing was the very fact that the Crown Prosecution Service, or whoever advises them, should go to such lengths, using an outdated law in a desperate effort to win a conviction against me. I knew that I had used no violent language or behaviour in the police station. But always at the back of my mind was the question that I could not answer for sure; who were the guilty men prepared to go to such lengths to get me? I had my suspicions but no proof. But whoever was ultimately responsible, I knew those men needed to have extraordinary power if they could tamper so outrageously with the justice system, persuading, or perhaps ordering, the Crown Prosecution Service to take whatever action they requested or demanded. Sometimes I would lie awake at night believing I had become paranoid though my solicitor reassured me I had not.
But my stream of legal problems was as nothing compared to those that unintentionally I had inflicted on my family back in Belfast. Of course I had been riven by guilt when I heard how my courageous brother Joseph had been taken from his home by a PIRA puni
shment team, tied up and bundled in the back of a van; taken to a lonely spot; tied to a fence and mercilessly beaten with iron bars and baseball bats. The reason; he was my brother. Apparently, according to the twisted thinking of the PIRA discipline bosses, that was sufficient reason for these sick people to vent their anger on Joseph, simply because they couldn’t find me and kill me. The night I heard what happened to Joseph I cried like a small boy, feeling so helpless and so very, very guilty.
On the night of Wednesday, 7 October 1998, my sister, Elizabeth, was at her home in Moyard Crescent, West Belfast, with three of her six children asleep upstairs when a noise began outside her house. She heard the chant ‘Drug Dealers Out’, and went to investigate. Outside her home she found a group of about 200 men and women, some holding placards demanding ‘Drug Dealers Out’, and she asked them what they were doing chanting outside her home, waking her children. The crowd also chanted ‘McGartland Out’, using her maiden name, my name.
Dead Man Running: A True Story of a Secret Agent's Escape from the IRA and MI5 Page 25
