Arms smuggler was MI5 grass

4 July 2010
The Sunday Life
Ciaran Barnes

A man convicted of involvement in the Real IRA arms smuggling plot is a suspected MI5 informant.

Dermot Gregory was fingered by dissident godfather Colm Murphy as being a paid army spy involved in setting up republicans along the border.

Gregory, 41, will be sentenced later this year for helping Lurgan Real IRA leader Paul McCaugherty try to smuggle guns and explosives into Northern Ireland.

Last week a court found him guilty of buying a restaurant in Portugal with the intention of selling it on to held fund the Real IRA to purchase arms.

Car dealer Gregory is currently being held in protective custody at Maghaberry Prison because his name tops a Real IRA death list.

Colm Murphy -- convicted in a civil court of being liable for the Omagh bomb but cleared in a criminal case retrial -- said Gregory gave him a full account of his MI5 spying activities.

"In the run up to my retrial (for the Omagh bomb) Gregory was actively trying to implicate me in some sort of activity to scupper the case," said Murphy.

"He has admitted this. He was ready to go public before he was pulled back into Maghaberry."

Murphy said Gregory gave him a signed confession in which he admitted more than £500,000 was paid to him and a 43-year-old Garda informant.

The letter claimed Gregory and the Garda spy were acting as a team and were involved in setting up dissident republicans in south Armagh and Co Louth.

Murphy alleged that Gregory agreed to do a press conference revealing his role, but had his bail revoked in May and was jailed before he could go in front of the cameras.

The Garda informer fled Ireland after the Real IRA murdered Kieran Doherty in Derry last February.

The Dublin career criminal is now believed to be in living in protective custody in Wales.

Murphy claimed Gregory also told him that they both provided their handlers with false information to try to get extra cash.