Hyde Park bomb conviction `flawed'

A MAN jailed for the IRA Hyde Park bombing in which four soldiers died in 1982 was wrongly convicted on misleading fingerprint evidence, the Court of Appeal was told yesterday.

Counsel for Danny McNamee, 38, argued that a convicted IRA terrorist was the likely source of many of the prints found on bomb-making equipment. They said that McNamee had served 11 years of a 25-year sentence for a crime he did not commit.

He was jailed in 1987 for conspiracy to cause explosions, which included the car bomb that killed four soldiers and seven horses of the Household Cavalry and seriously injured 17 civilians.

Michael Mansfield QC, counsel for McNamee, said that a false picture had been presented of his client at his trial as a "master bomb-maker".

Earlier this month, McNamee became the first person convicted of a terrorist offence in England to be freed early under the Good Friday Agreement when he was released from the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. His case was the first to be referred to the Court of Apeal by the newly formed Criminal Cases Review Commission, set up to examine potential miscarriages of justice.

Mr Mansfield told the court yesterday that fresh evidence concerning a convicted bomb maker, Desmond Ellis, was now available, which substantially undermined the prosecution case against McNamee and supported his defence.

He said that Ellis was the source of a "significant proportion" of the fingerprints found on devices with "explosive significance in the case against the appellant".

McNamee's conviction turned on the discovery of his fingerprints on tape found in two IRA arms dumps and on a battery that survived the explosion in Hyde Park.

But Mr Mansfield argued that his client's work at an electronics factory where he would have been handling tape and repairing radios that contained similar batteries offers an innocent and more likely explanation for how his prints came to be found.

During the appeal, expert evidence will also be used to argue the fingerprint recovered from the battery cannot be shown to be that of McNamee.

Counsel said it was also the prosecution's case that McNamee had manufactured the Hyde Park bomb. This submission was based on the similarity between the "art work" on the recovered fragments of the circuit board from the receiver used in the Hyde Park bomb and that on part of the receiver recovered from an IRA arms dump.

But Mr Mansfield revealed that circuit boards with identical "art work" had been found in the possession of Ellis in 1981.

Mr Mansfield said the non-disclosure of the Ellis information to the defence was a "serious irregularity".

McNamee, 38, listened intently in the packed London courtroom yesterday as Mr Mansfield launched an attempt to clear his name at the start of a hearing expected to last about two weeks.

Earlier Mr Mansfield argued that the prosecution at the trial of McNamee painted a false picture of him as the "master bomb-maker".

"We say it was known to be a false picture by the prosecuting authorities at the time," he said.

Counsel said the "basis of this appeal is that the picture painted by the Crown during the trial was a false picture".

McNamee, from Crossmaglen, South Armagh, has eight grounds of appeal before the court. Mr Mansfield said the prosecution case against McNamee was "deeply flawed from the beginning".

There has been a long- running campaign to clear McNamee, who has consistently denied any involvement with the IRA.

Unusually, the IRA has issued a statement denying McNamee was a member of its terrorist organisation.

The appeal continues.