DUBLIN, Ireland — The Irish Republican Army’s reputed commander emerged from his life in the shadows Thursday, appearing in court for the first time to be charged with massive tax evasion.
Irish police and prosecutors — stymied for decades in their efforts to put the alleged terror mastermind and fuel smuggler Thomas “Slab” Murphy behind bars — are now using the same approach that U.S. authorities took to nail Al Capone: following the money trail.
The rarely photographed Murphy, 58, had been lying low since British and Irish authorities raided his border-straddling farm in March 2006 and found a vast fuel-smuggling operation that included several tanker trucks, an underground pipeline, cash and checks in bags, and laptops hidden in hay bales. They suspected he escaped using a tunnel underneath the property.
On Wednesday, detectives from the police’s anti-racketeering squad caught Murphy as he was being driven away from a Gaelic football game. Police and doctors said he feigned illness to go to a hospital and stall for time. But early Thursday he was charged with nine counts of failing to make tax returns.
As police escorted Murphy into Ardee District Court, he tried to shield his face, exposing only his bald pate.
But when he walked free hours later — courtesy of Ireland’s unusually liberal bail laws — the stocky, short bachelor managed a smile as photographers and camera crews captured the puffy, uncovered face of one of the country’s most feared militants.
Murphy lost two libel suits against Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper after it published a 1985 investigation describing him as the IRA’s chief of staff, as well as a smuggler of arms and fuel. Two Dublin juries — which heard testimony from ex-IRA men identifying him as the commander in the IRA’s major rural power base, the borderland of South Armagh — ruled that the Sunday Times report was truthful.
Murphy has been arrested many times since the early 1970s, but before Thursday was always released without charge.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
