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THE ingredients used to make the dangerous poison ricin were listed out in court by Essam Eid’s partner.

Teresa Engle told the trial last Thursday that she and Mr Eid man- ufactured the poison using castor beans, acetone and another ingredi- ent. They then put it into a contact lens case and brought it to Ireland in September 2006.

‘“He’d got a recipe from the inter- net,” she said.

She said they made it with “castor beans, acetone and something else. I can’t remember.”

She told the court she did not know where they had acquired the castor beans.

Mr O’Connell put it to her, “You were involved in the manufacture of ricin,’ to which she replied, “Yes.”

Asked who did it with her, she said, id Bhshcy-0 00

““T think we oiled the beans, took the Skins off, blended it with acetone and something else, put it through a filter, dried it out, to become a powder.”

She said they then put it into a con- tact lens case and there was none leftover.

She said the two had put masks and gloves on, while they were making i

She said that Essam carried the contact lens case in his bag, with his own prescription medicines. She said she was not sure how the ricin was going to be used.

She told the court that “Essam had a website, ‘hitmanforhire’. He got an email from Sharon to kill PJ and his two sons, Robert and Niall. They corresponded. She sent a down pay- ment of, like, €15,000. That would have been in August 2006,” she said.

She said the ‘hitman’ website was set up in February or March 2006. Asked by Prosecutor Tom O’Connell did she see any of the emails, she re- plied, “Yes.”

Asked did Mr Eid use any other name, she replied, “Yes, Tony Lu- ciano. That was the name he used with the website.”

“She had called him several times and he had called her back several times,’ she added.

Asked did she hear this woman speak, she replied, “I heard her voice. It was a very strong Irish accent. She spoke very fast. He kept telling her Slow down, so he could understand her accent.”

Asked what was this woman’s email address, the witness replied, “It was ‘lyingeyes’.”

She said that after the money ar- rived at their home in Las Vegas, the

next stage was “Essam getting hold of Ash and going through with it, getting it done.”

Asked how this was to be done, she replied, “Ash was supposed to be poisoning the sons.”

Asked by Mr O’Connell did any- body else contact the hitman website during this time, she said, “Yes, there was another woman. There were sev- eral people who contacted it to look for work.”

Ms Engle told the trial that she and Mr Eid stayed at the Two Mile Inn hotel in Limerick, when they trav- elled to Ireland in September 2006.

‘He had instructions from Sharon that he had to get the hard drive of the computer in the office. The keys (to the office) were under a brick be- hind a house 1n Ennis,” she said.

She said they picked up the keys and then went into the office to get the computer.

“There was an alarm, but we did have the code from Sharon to turn off the alarm,” she said.

She said they got the main compu- ter hard drive, laptop and a bunch of cords from the office and they took those items back to the hotel.

She said that Essam was trying to reach Sharon but “I don’t think he was able to. He was quite furious. Then he decided instead to go to Robert and sell him the contract.”

She said she travelled with him to Robert’s house and she stayed in the car while he went to the door.

NORTH Clare man David Mee is this week making final preparations for an eight week long aid trip to Jed abi byoyeynetere

Later this month David will travel with international aid organisation SERVE to the Filipino capital Ma- nilla before undertaking a number a number of aid missions on different parts of the island.

His work will include working with and teaching poor children, visit- ing hospitals and even working with children who have been imprisoned.

He is one of 14 Irish people who will be travelling to the Philippines this year. The groups leaves on June

29 and will spend a total of eight weeks working on the islands before returning home on August 20.

“We will be spending the first week in the capital Manilla where we will get some introduction into the way of life in the Philippines and a briefing on some of the work in which we will be doing,” said David.

‘Then we will be put in pairs and sent of to different regions to engage in all kinds of projects with the locals. We will spend about three weeks in out first area, then three more weeks in another area before we head back to Manilla for the final week.”

Over the last few months David has undertaken a number of fundraising activities raising more than €2,500

for the poor children in the Philip- obey

“I would really like to make a huge thanks to all those who sponsored me and helped me out when I was getting ready for this, the students in Mary Immaculate College, everyone who helped with the ceili, all those who helped with the raffle and all my NONE As

“The fundraising started with a raffle in Lisdoonvarna which raised €400 but we also had a legwaxing night in Charlie Malone’s Pub in Limerick which raised €500 and we raised €600 from external events. The most money raised came from the ceili in Kilfenora which raised more than €1,500.

“When I get over there I will be teaching children between the ages of 3 and 7, working in disadvan- taged communities, visiting prisons and working as advocates on behalf of the children in those prisons and we will also be visiting hospitals and leporsoriums.”

SERVE is a voluntary group which is a partnership between the Re- demptorists, young Irish adults and communities and agencies in the de- veloping world.

One of the main aims is to fund supports for sustainable development projects and global citizenship pro- grammes. For more check out www. To Mien (e

CLARE County Manager Alec Fleming was told last night to sort out the planning mess in Clare.

Councillor PJ Kelly (FF) made the call as the majority of councillors continued to delay important coun- cil business as part of their stand-off with Mr Fleming.

At the council’s adjourned June meeting, 12 items, including the council’s annual financial statement, the draft annual report, the review of Development Contribution Scheme,

a discussion on the upgrade of the \Eoso rT ele mm (OMe Tele Mm Ike) peKmBus) EIB UETSamLe the Ennis and Environs Plan and County Development Plan, were all deferred.

Mr Fleming told councillors that items relating to the annual financial statement and the draft annual report must be passed by law by councillors before the end of the month.

In a bid to overcome the impasse, Mr Fleming confirmed to councillors that he would hold a special meeting behind closed doors with councillor representatives after last night’s June

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“T don’t know what is going on with these shenanigans, but there are far more important things at stake such as the safety on a road like the N67, which the EU has classified as one of the most dangerous roads in Europe,” said Cllr Brian Meaney (GP), express- ing his frustration at the “go-slow”’.

However, councillors opted to defer a discussion on advancing the case for upgrading the routes and a suc- cession of votes were taken on the deferral of items.

In the votes, councillors voted 19 to

three and 20 to two against the items being heard. Clare’s mayor, Cllr Pa- tricia McCarthy (Ind) found herself isolated along with Cllr Meaney.

Cllr Kelly said that a planning ap- plication before the meeting was symptomatic of the malaise in plan- ning in Clare. He accused the mayor of trying to break the councillors protest by putting the various items before the meeting.

Cllr McCarthy said she would like to intervene to help resolve the row but over the past couple of weeks had felt her intervention was not wanted.

AS KERRY manager Pat O’Shea emerged from the dressing rooms to greet the waiting media, his demean- our was not typical of a manager whose side had just won by twelve points in their opening game of the championship. His acute frown ex- hibited all the signs of a manager who was expecting a barrage of criti- cism for his side’s performance and who could blame him for such obvi- ous disappointment?

His Kerry side are ret hot favour- ites to complete a three-in-a-row of All-Irelands, not seen since the days of Pat Spillane, Jack O’Shea and the ‘Bomber’ Liston. The county expects and it is up to Pat O’Shea and his team to deliver and facing Clare in the first round was simply a distrac- tion he could have done without. A

hammering would have given them little preparation for their annual Munster final outing while if Clare had run them close, the purveyors of doom would have descended on O’Shea and his side.

As it was, this game produced a mixture of both scenarios with Ker- ry unable to get into their normal rhythm in the opening period but flexing their muscles significantly in the second half to brush off Clare’s flagging challenge.

There were also the added dis- turbances of captain Paul Galvin’s sending off and his histrionics in it’s aftermath as well as a serious injury to key forward Declan O’Sullivan. Therefore the frown was understand- able as O’Shea dealt with the per- formance first.

“It was probably not a great per- formance by us to be fair. It’s our first

championship match of the year and obviously there was a little bit of a settling-in period in the first half and it took us time to get into the game.

“It was a stop start first half, there were a lot of stoppages in play, there was a lot of time wasting in certain things and there was no fluency in the game. But you have to play every way and thankfully we were in the lead and thankfully we got off to a good start in the second half and closed out the game. Right now we want to try and progress but we also want to work on our performance and after today, we are going to have a lot to work on.”

Assessing O’Sullivan’s knee injury as a ‘worry’, the questions inevitably switched to the major talking point of the game, the sending off of Paul Galvin and understandably, O’Shea was coy with his opinions on the

subject.

“To be fair, I think from our point of view, we will have to look at the incidents that led up to the sending off. Obviously Paul was very frus- trated and I think he felt himself that maybe he was sinned against in that situation. Obviously, I haven’t seen the video so I’m not sure until we have a look at it. I mean the game of football is all about emotion and Paul probably showed a little bit too much emotion there but he obviously felt that he was sinned against in that incident.”

Evaluating the game as a two fold test, O’Shea went on to explain that what he looked for on Sunday was firstly the result but also the perform- ance and in that regard, his side still have a lot to do before the Munster final. But he is in no doubt that the Clare game will benefit his side go-

ing forward.

““T think when you play a first round game against Clare, people will talk about no win situations. You win the game by too much ‘Was it really a test?’, you win the game by a little bit “Will it really stand to you?’. Look, that was a physical game, that was a championship match, there were a lot of big hits going in there and it was a tough game. I’m sure it will stand to us. It’s our first game in the cham- pionship this year and I hope we will come on from it but you know, we will obviously have to learn from what we did today and there is im- provement to be done.”

Improvement seemed to be the re- sounding theme to emerge from both camps on Sunday but with Clare and Kerry at varying ends of the cham- pionship divide, the degrees of that improvement are still worlds apart.

ONE method of killing that was con- sidered was to put medications which could cause a heart attack into liquor, the trial has been told.

However, this was_ eventually deemed not possible, prosecution witness Teresa Engle told the court.

Ms Engle, partner of Essam Eid, confirmed that she has been given immunity from prosecution in this case, by the DPP.

Asked had she ever visited Ireland, she said she had, at the end of August or beginning of September 2006. She said she was due to meet Ashraf Gharbeiah, a friend of Essam’s, and

she stayed at the Queen’s Hotel in En- ny

“T was here to meet Ash. He was supposed to kill, PJ and Robert, no, Robert and Niall, the two sons,” she Said.

She said that she walked to Westgate Business Park, to see the Howards’ business.

“When Ash arrived, I had the previ- ous day before walked around to the business park to see where it was. Me and Ash walked there,’ she said.

Asked how she knew how to find it, She said, “From directions from Sha- ron.”

She said that Ash had “his own plan. He had several medications that

was supposed to cause a heart attack or for somebody to die.”

She said he was going to put these in liquor. “We’d been to a grocery store and looked at the liquors there. We walked to the business park and he decided the plan was not do-able. I think he left the next day.”

She said that she remained in Ire- land for a few days and then travelled to Spain. She was in Fuengirola for a day or two.

‘I was picking up a key to the apart- ment in Spain. I was to look around and find info for Essam . . the loca- tion . . go see the boat.”

Mr O’Connell asked her which apartment was she referring to and

she replied, “Mr Howard’s apartment in Spain.”

She said the keys to the apartment were left in an envelope for her at the hotel. She said she had directions to the apartment “on an email, from Sharon”’.

She said she sat outside a restaurant, down from the apartment “just to look and see if I’d see PJ or Sharon”.

“At that point I was starting to get sick. I just couldn’t bring myself to go in either. I went back to the room and I went back to Ireland for a day or two,” she said.

She said that when she returned to the US, Mr Eid was “furious, because the plan hadn’t been done. He started

working on a visa to come to Ireland to do it himself.”

Asked where the keys to the apart- ment in Spain ended up, she said that after she was arrested, she went to Ennis courthouse. “I wrapped them in tissue paper and put them in gar- bage in the women’s restroom at the courthouse,’ she said.

The witness said that she met Es- sam Eid in 2003 or 2004 at a time she was separated. They met at a casino in Detroit, Michigan. The two devel- oped a relationship and she moved in with him in Las Vegas. She said they married in Las Vegas. She had pre- viously married another man, Todd Engle, three times.

TWO men from north Clare will next month take on the world’s most challenging road race in an effort to raise money for charity. Andy Bash- er and Sean Walshe will tackle the Mongol Rally, which takes drivers cross country through thousands of miles from London to Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia.

The rally leaves Hyde Park in Lon- don on July 19, after which drivers are allowed to choose their own route to Mongolia. Only 200 cars are tak- ing part in this year’s event – chosen from the 40,000 plus who applied to make the journey.

The race is limited to | litre cars and the lads will be using a 1991 Nis-

san Micra on their fundraising trip.

‘Every team that takes part has to raise at least 1,000 pounds sterling for charity but obviously we want to raise a lot more than that,” said aUKOWe

“Different teams have different ways that they manage it but we de- cided right from the very start that we would be paying for the trip 100 per cent ourselves so that everything we raise will go to our charity cho- sen charity which is Christina Nobel Children’s Charity.”

The Christina Nobel Charity is an Irish charity which works with the thousands of children who live in poverty on the streets in Mongolia.

‘Ulaanbaatar is actually the coldest city in the world. It is constantly mi-

nus 40 during the winter and the con- ditions are terrible for the children. Most of them have to live down the Sewers,’ said Sean.

“Christina Nobel works out there providing first aid and medical at- tention for the street children. The government won’t let charities give out food because they think it will encourage the kids to come out onto the street. She has set up an orphan- age and a charitable hospital for the people there.

“Christina Nobel has one of the lowest administration percentages of any charity so almost all the money donated goes straight to the people who need it.”

This Friday the latest installment of North Clare’s regular clubnight, the

Funkion Room, will take place with all money made on the night going to Andy and Sean’s journey.

Pet Tong (London) and Tokin White Boy (Limerick) will be in residence for the night in Cliffs of Moher Hotel in Liscannor.

For more details or to sponsor the lads contact Sean at 085 7201494 or donate money to a specially set up account at the Ennistymon AIB, sort code 93-51-58, account number One Tes OOP

ONE Clareman got planning per- mission to build a house in his native Corofin while his brother was re- fused on the grounds that he is not a local rural person, a meeting of Clare County Council was told last night.

The council members were being asked to approve a Material Contra- vention of the County Development Plan to allow a planning applicant build a home at Ballycullinan hav- ing been previously refused planning permission.

County Manager Alex Fleming,

cautioned the members that they needed to be “guided solely by the proper planning and development and sustainability of the proposal’.

Cur Tommy Brennan (Ind) told the meeting that when the applicant originally began the planning proc- ess, he was approached. The council- lor said he had originally been told there shouldn’t be a problem, but an official from the planning depart- ment subsequently contacted him and said there were difficulties.

The applicant, who had spent some time working in Dublin was subse- quently refused. Issues which had

needed resolution had been resolved “but he was refused on the grounds that he is not a local, rural person. His brother bought land from a pal and got permission to build a house across the road. Born and brought up in the same house and one 1s a local rural person and the other is told he’s not”.

Cllr Brennan said that he was pro- posing the Material Contravention on the grounds that he had supplied enough new information in the mat- ter. Cllr Richard Nagle(FF) said that the situation on the local rural people “needs a serious reality check. We

are presiding over rural depopula- tion. That is a fact. All that people are asking for is the permissions they Uomo B10 (orem kOe

Cllr Joe Arkins (FG) said dealing with the issue through a material contravention “is using a sledgeham- mer to crack a nut… and while there are genuine cases, if we start doing that then it will eventually come down to which applicants are the most popular.”

The meeting put the proposal to a vote and voted in favour of by a majority of 27 in favour to three against.

CLARE manager Frank Doherty was left to ponder the usefulness of the Tommy Murphy cup after his side bowed out of the championship with defeat to Kerry.

Clare must now try and get their kicks in Gaelic’s football’s Inter-toto Cup instead of the more exacting theatre of the All-Ireland champion- ship.

Doherty didn’t quite match the lev- els of frustration conveyed by Mick O’Dywer after his Wicklow team were condemned to the Tommy Mur- phy Cup after losing to Laois, but, still, you could tell that it rankled.

‘“That’s something we’ll sit down and talk about. It’s hard when you win a championship game for a min- now county like ourselves,” said Doherty outside the Clare dressing

room in Fitzgerald Stadium.

“It’s a competition and you have to play it. You look at the likes of Wick- low. They beat Kildare in Croker and then they’re thrown into the Tommy Murphy and we beat Waterford and we hadn’t much of a chance coming down here and you’re going into the Tommy Murphy. With the qualifiers, at least if we could have got some- thing at home, we might have been of the same standard and who knows where it might have led us. We’ll have to sit down and talk about it later,’ he added.

Clare, in fairness, made a game of it in the first half, snapping at Kerry and denying them time and space on the ball.

The dismissals of Conor Whelan and John Hayes made a hard task 1m- possible against a side blessed with enormous talent, said Doherty.

“I thought, to a degree, that we could have put up a better show in the second half. We were there or therea- bouts in the first half, playing to the best of our ability I believe. But that’s an awesome Kerry team out there. What came off the bench, it’s scary. And that’s not to mind what’s on the field. I have to give credit to the lads. We probably played for about 45 minutes, something like that. The sending off of Conor Whelan was a big minus to us, but there again, Kerry can kick on when they want and they upped it a gear and we just didn’t have the answers”.

Still, despite the odds, Doherty was disappointed Clare didn’t make a better impression on the scoreboard in the second half and singled out the performance of goalkeeper Joe Hayes.

‘Joe was awesome. There were at

least two goal opportunities where he pulled off great saves. We had two or three other opportunities at least in the second half to make it a bit more respectable. There again, fair play to Joe – that’s what he’s capable of and that’s why he’s number one for Oem

Doherty revealed that he encour- aged his team to play without fear against the best team in the land in one of the finest arenas in the GAA.

‘Ennis for us was a must win game because we had lost the year before and I felt that if we lost to Waterford again it would have put Clare foot- ball back maybe x amount of years and we couldn’t afford that. We were nervous against Waterford, but today, I said look, lets have a go in front of a big crowd against the best team in the country and see what we can do in relation to going forward”.

Doherty didn’t see the incident leading up to Connor Whelan’s red- card and had no complaints over the late dismissal of John Hayes.

“T didn’t see what Connor Whelan was sent off for because it was down the other end of the field and I didn’t see it. Connor told me that he shoul- dered him. So I can’t really comment any more on that. John Hayes, obvi- ously it was late in the game, he was on a yellow card. I suppose he had to go and what can you do. As re- gards the Kerry sending off, I have no comment”’.

And off he went to the dressing room. Encouragement and work to take away from Killarney.

LARGE tracts of land that run along the River Fergus have been rezoned from limited residential to open space in the new Ennis Development Plan in response to fears over flooding.

In what will render the price of land banks located close to Ennis town centre to agricultural prices, the new draft Ennis Development Plan re- zoned land mainly to the south of the Quin Road business park from ‘other settlement land’ to ‘open space’.

The draft plan — which will be pub-

lished next month — also rezones land bordering Lake Girroga on the north outskirts of Ennis from ‘other settle- ment land’ to ‘open space’.

The lands rezoned ‘open space’ to the south of Ennis now form part of a “development exclusion zone”. This ‘development exclusion zone’ also includes the former Doora landfill. Part of these lands have also been re- zoned from ‘other settlement land’ to “open space”.

The move to create development ex- clusion zones follows the completion of a consultant’s report earlier this

year on flooding in the greater Ennis area which recommended the freez- ing of development on 210 acres of land in the town and its surrounds.

The consultants’ report also rec- ommends the spend of €15 million to carry out works on barrage, river channel and N18 bridge upgrade.

Apart from creating new develop- ment exclusion zones, senior plan- ning officials have resisted the cla- mour for rezoning.

As part of the drawing up of a new development plan for Ennis, devel- opers seeking to profit from rezon-

ings were seeking to rezone a total of 1,720 acres of land around Ennis to residential, mixed use, commercial and industrial.

In the 168 submissions received by the council, the developers were seeking to rezone 1,247 acres of land for housing, 150 acres for mixed-use development, 115 acres for commer- cial development, 57 acres for in- dustrial and 97 acres for low density residential zoning.

However, in a planner’s report ap- proved by County Manager Alec Fleming, the vast majority of the

rezoning applications have been rec- ommended for refusal and the current Zonings are to remain as they are.

Planners held workshops’ with councillors and, after much heated debate, have recommended that only 100 acres be rezoned for housing — well short of the 1,247 demanded by developers.

The planners have also recom- mended that 63 acres be rezoned for industrial and commercial develop- ment.

The draft plan is to go on public display next month.

OANA Seems Rehm GcusaITMAYcapnt Ennistymon’s Mol an Oige Steiner School on Friday to officiate over one of the last events ever to take place at its current location.

After years of campaigning, the school finally received Department of Education status this year and will move into a new premises on the grounds of the Falls Hotel from September.

Griffin warmed up for Clare’s clash against Limerick by putting the chil- dren of Mol an Oige threw their pac- es on the school’s annual sports day.

“We are delighted at how things have turned out. A lot of us have

been in the school since the very start. When we started off first with eleven students and one teacher we would have been very happy to thing that after three years we would have almost 80 students, department rec- ognition, four full-time teachers and a full-time learning support teacher,” said teacher Una Ni Ghairbhith.

“We didn’t know that this would happen. We are very happy that the school has taken root in the com- munity and is fulfilling a need that is there in the community for this type of education.”

This Wednesday the school will have it’s final day of classes in Data Display before they move to their new school next September.

“There is a lot of work to be done over the summer in getting the new school ready. We will be spending a lot of time making the whole place homely for the students,’ continued Una.

“We will have four classroom and a staff/resource room down in the Falls. We will be starting the moving work in the next coupe of weeks.

“At the moment we have 78 stu- dents pre-enrolled in the school for next year.

“It’s great to move on but it will be sad too to leave our home here be- hind. We really would like to thank all the people who have helped us over the last three years. We have been here in Data Display the whole

time and they have been wonderful. We have had a great space and have been able to decorate and use it ex- actly to our own needs.

“The school that is opening up in September will be a continuation of this school but it will be at a new premises and things will be that bit different. We probably wont have to do as much fundraising, but of course the fundraising was a great social occasion for the locals here. I’ve already had a few people saying please don’t stop the concerts.”