Detective accused of aiding killers
RUC Superintendent Bob Buchanan was murdered on the Irish border in 1989
A former British agent has accused a retired Garda of being involved in the murder of two senior RUC officers.
Peter Keeley told a tribunal into alleged Garda-IRA collusion the detective's friendship with the terror group was the worst kept secret in the unit.
The agent, who infiltrated the IRA in the 1980s, claimed Dundalk-based Detective Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan also told volunteers that a farmer was an informer.
The man, Tom Oliver from Co Louth, was later abducted and murdered.
The Smithwick Tribunal is investigating allegations of Garda collusion over the IRA murders of senior RUC officers Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan on the Irish border in 1989, minutes after a Garda meeting.
Giving evidence in Dublin behind a screen to protect his identity, 51-year-old Mr Keeley said another IRA activist who told him about the murders mentioned the words "our friend".
"There was only one friend I knew in the gardai and that was Owen Corrigan," said Keeley, who is also known as Kevin Fulton.
"The reference that day to 'our friend', I took it that it was Owen Corrigan.
"I didn't know of anyone else in the gardai."
Mr Corrigan has strenuously denied the allegations of collusion, which he has called a monstrous lie.
Press Association
