Updated 8.40pm
A WOMAN WHO alleges that gardaí put pressure on her to wrongly identify Ian Bailey as as a suspect in the murder of Sophie Toscan Du Plantier had a number of warrants against her name that weren’t executed by gardaí.
RTÉ’s This Week programme says that they have seen memos from a sergeant in Schull Garda Station which say that he was told not to pursue outstanding warrants against Marie Farrell.
The documents were gathered by an inquiry that was undertaken into Farrell’s claims of garda interference and have now been seen by the programme.
They set out how, over the course of four years from 1999, garda seargant Ger Prendiville from Schull Garda Station wrote regularly to gardaí in Bantry citing concerns about how the warrants against Farrell were being handled.
Prendiville states in the documents that the reason the warrants weren’t executed was because he had received instructions by senior officers not to do so.
It was stressed as part of the programme’s report that no impropriety was suspected on Prendiville’s behalf.
The documents show that, in 1999, five warrants were left unexecuted and were being returned to Bantry Garda Station. They were concerned mainly with minor motor vehicle offences.
Further letters from Schull Garda Station to Bantry Garda station show that these warrants had increased to 11 a number of years later.
Witness
Farrell had given a statement to gardaí that she had seen Bailey near the Du Plantier murder scene but in 2006 said that she had been pressurised by gardai to implicate him.
She also claimed that, in return for this, she was promised by gardaí that they would ‘take care’ of a number of warrants and summonses against her.
Another memo from a garda alleges that, when efforts were made to secure payment for an outstanding warrant from Farrell, he received a phonecall from her within an hour threatening to “blow the Bailey case out of the water” if any attempt was made to arrest her.
Bailey says that he was wrongfully arrested by gardaí over the 1996 murder of the French film maker and is currently involved in a civil action against the state.
Originally published 2.06pm
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