A retired detective superintendent has said that he authorised the destruction of tracker device data records related to the murder of David Byrne at the Regency Hotel as he was required by law to do so and they hadn't been requested for the prosecution
Ciaran Hoey, the former head of the National Surveillance Unit, said he signed an order on 7 February of this year to have all data connected to a tracker, that had been placed on Jonathan Dowdall’s Toyota Land Cruiser during trips he took to Northern Ireland with Hutch, destroyed.However he insisted that it was his decision and he stands over it.
He said according to the Act, records should be destroyed after three years unless they were required for a prosecution or an appeal. He said he didn’t believe the information would be used in or required for a prosecution. He also said he didn’t believe it would be of any benefit evidentially considering they had the evidence of the NSU staff.
"You’ve copies in front of you," he said to Mr Hoey,"So that part of the authorisation wasn’t complied with?""I was informed they were destroyed," Mr Hoey replied,"I gave an order as part of a review of all the data. Was it ever used in a prosecution, was it ever likely to be used and the decision was made on that basis."
"If I thought it was pertinent and I thought it would have been used in the prosecution I wouldn’t have done it and we wouldn’t be here," he said."As far as I was concerned I was obliged under the Act to destroy the data after three years, it was six-and-a-half years and nobody had come looking for it."He also said he witnessed the Assistant Commissioner in charge of crime and security sign off on the destruction of the records on 23 March.
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