Gilligan My Side of The Story

Crime boss John Gilliagn denies ordering the execution of Martin Cahill, and offers his opinion on the recent explosion of gun crime in Dublin.

Jason O'Toole, 12 Aug 2008

What really did happen that day, when crime reporter Veronica Guerin called to the stud farm that John Gilligan owned with his wife Geraldine?

Gilligan says he’d forgotten all about the Guerin “incident” until the Gardai called out to Jessbrook looking for him. At the time, Gilligan was in Amsterdam, on one of his frequent ‘business’ excursions to the city – from where he was operating his lucrative operation, smuggling cigarettes and cannabis. After his wife Geraldine contacted him with the detective’s phone number, Gilligan contacted him to discover that he was wanted for questioning about an alleged assault on the reporter. He says he was dumfounded – that he couldn’t believe that the reporter was trying to have him charged with assault.

According to Gilligan, the phone conversation took a bizarre twist. The detective was surprised he was in Amsterdam because he’d only just then received a complaint that – almost as they spoke – Gilligan was in the act of following Guerin on a motorbike. This accusation has irked Gilligan ever since. He brought it up in the opening of the murder trial. Gilligan is adamant that the complaint was made to compound the assault charges. But surely the Sunday Independent journalist – in an understandably heightened sense of paranoia – might have been convinced that she was being followed by him?

“Wait till I tell you,” he says. “I was in Holland. I heard the police wanted to serve summonses on me and I came home from Holland to put my hand out to take the summonses. If I’d never come home from Holland to take the summonses – and I know the law – it would have been out of time if they served them on me in another few months. But I did come home. That’s a fact. That’s in the transcripts of my case. The truth is, I was set up big time. I’m either stone mad or the biggest fool on the planet to try and tell you that. But I’m not being thick. It doesn’t really matter to me. I know what was done on me.”

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