Ex Sinn Féin councillor asked if he and his family could ‘get into the Witness Protection Programme’
When Dowdall was under cross-examination for seven days by Mr Hutch’s defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC before the Christmas break, the ex-politician said he had gone through security in the airport in May 2016 and was about to board a plane to go to see his sister in Dubai when he was arrested for the murder of Mr Byrne.
When Dowdall was returned to Clontarf Garda station, Mr Mulligan said that two of the prisoner’s children came to visit him. “While in that room, he said ‘is there any way out’,” said the witness. “He was there with his wife and three children. I allowed him to process himself through security, I wasn’t going to do it in front of his family. I approached him as he was removing items from the tray,” he said.
Mr Mulligan agreed that Dowdall could have been under no misapprehension at the time that he was being arrested for the murder of Mr Byrne at the Regency Hotel and was going to be detained for up to seven days. The conversations between Mr Hutch and Dowdall took place when they were allegedly travelling north to a meeting in Strabane in Co Tyrone on March 7th, 2016 in Dowdall’s Toyota Land Cruiser jeep, that had been bugged by garda detectives. The prosecution’s case is that Mr Hutch had asked Dowdall to arrange a meeting his provisional republican contacts to mediate or resolve the Hutch-Kinahan feud due to the threats against the accused’s family and friends.
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