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Loyalist monitoring saw 70 warned
Nearly 70 people were warned to step up security after loyalists used a PSNI database to monitor nationalists, the Court of Appeal has heard.
Lawyers for the Attorney General urged judges to increase sentences imposed on two Randalstown flute band members.
Aaron Hill, 24, Mainebank, and Darren Richardson, Moneynick Road, were convicted of collecting information likely to be useful to terrorists.
Hill received a 12-month suspended sentence and Richardson a year’s jail.
Hill, who was a civilian working as a data inputter with the Police Service of Northern Ireland at the time of the offences, also admitted misconduct on public office.
Richardson, a manager at Wrightbus coach building firm in Ballymena, was also found guilty of possessing 40 rounds of live ammunition found in a drawer in his office. He was freed after sentencing in February because of time served on remand.
The case was referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney General on the basis that the punishments were felt to be unduly lenient.
Richardson had gathered car registrations on Catholics living in the Randalstown and Toome areas and passed them on to Hill to run through the police database.
He was able to supply names and addresses which were discovered in Richardson’s possession when their scheme was discovered in April 2007.
A lawyer for the Attorney General, said both men were members of the Randalstown Sons of Ulster Flute Band.
The barrister told the court up to 100 vehicles may have been checked, along with details on people believed to be Catholic members of staff at a local firm.
‘Active loyalist’
He said that 67 people were contacted and “told their details had been put in a position where they would need to take measures for their own security”.
“All of these people will be likely to have suffered as a result,” he said.
He disputed the trial judge’s description of the information gathering as being an “act of folly rather than a sinister plot”.
He claimed the reason why Richardson wanted the details remained a matter of speculation.
“It’s quite clear when one reads the interview notes that Mr Rirchardson was an active loyalist,” he said.
“It’s also quite clear a lot of this information related to members of the Roman Catholic or nationalist community.”
But Richardson’s barrister said he had developed a paranoia after his home and that of his parents was attacked.
“The kernel of his motivation was to keep one step ahead. They say information is power,” the lawyer said.
Richardson was also said to have retained work in difficult economic circumstances, and was set to oversee a new £600,000 contract for 400 buses.
Hill’s counsel described him as a naive young man who had turned to Richardson after his brother took his own life.
“Going to join a local loyalist band was prompted by the desire to have other male company he didn’t have when he lost his brother,” the court was told.
“He wanted to ingratiate himself to a significant person within a group he had joined and he did that by giving over the information.”
The appeal was adjourned to allow further legal submissions.
