KIDNAPPER BROUGHT TO DUTCH DRUG TRIAL

A Dublin gangland figure and kidnapper of Mrs Jennifer Guinness, John
Cunningham, was brought to a Dutch court as a witness in a drugs and
weapons smuggling trial yesterday.

If convicted of charges he himself faces of smuggling drugs and weapons,
Cunningham faces between 10 and 15 years in jail, Dutch legal sources said.

Cunningham and his alleged accomplices were arrested in Amsterdam on March
10th, when ecstasy and amphetamine ("speed") worth pounds 2 million and a
large quantity of arms were seized.

Cunningham had escaped from Shelton Abbey open prison in Co Wicklow in 1996
while serving a 17-year sentence for the kidnapping of Mrs Guinness. He
told judges yesterday he did not want to say anything in the trial of one
of several accomplices. Two Britons and a number of Dutch men are charged
in connection with the pounds 8 million drugs and gun racket the Irishman
allegedly ran from his Amsterdam hideout for up to three years before his
arrest in March.

Warned by judges that anything he might say as a witness in the case could
incriminate him at his own trial, due to start on October 5th, the alleged
drugs millionaire refused to answer questions about his relationship and
meetings with alleged British drugs dealers and smugglers.

Judges ordered the media not to publish the full names of the Englishmen
and a Dutch national accused yesterday, in line with Dutch anonymity rules.
The trial of two of his British accomplices, T.W., a 72-year-old man from
Cronkil in the north of England, and a 48-year-old salesman, C.W., heard
that Cunningham and his gang members had been under constant surveillance
for many months.

But only Cunningham had suspected that a major undercover surveillance
operation might be afoot in the Netherlands, it has emerged.

Phone taps, photographs and videos as well as other high-tech surveillance
methods observed every movement of the gang and Dutch police enlisted help
from the Garda and police in Britain and Belgium. The long-running
investigation was codenamed Klaver (Dutch for clover).

Gang members were recorded meeting secretly at hotel and restaurant
car-parks near the Netherlands- Belgium border and loading boxes (later
found to contain large amounts of ecstasy tablets and cannabis resin) at a
lockup store.