DRUG SMUGGLER TELLS OF GUN SHIPMENTS FOR IRA

A CONVICTED drug dealer and arms smuggler has revealed how he transported
guns for the IRA from Holland, Belgium, Italy and Yugoslavia and arranged a
deal he claims was sanctioned by the Iranian government in which cocaine
was to be exchanged for money to buy weapons.

Robert Flint, 55, from San Diego, California, was granted immunity from
prosecution by Janet Reno, the US Attorney- General, in return for
testifying against three IRA suspects in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Testifying before a Grand Jury in December, he said he had been a smuggler
for more than 30 years and had been prepared to help the IRA once again
last year.

The US government decided not to call Flint to testify against Conor
Claxton, 27, Anthony Smyth, 43, and Martin Mullan, 30, because he remained
an avowed IRA supporter and had been reluctant to testify. Defence sources
said he had also failed to disclose details of shipping explosives to England.

The three defendants, all born in Northern Ireland, face up to life in jail
if convicted of charges of taking part in a terrorist conspiracy involving
the shipping of at least 122 guns from America to the Irish Republic last year.

Flint was arrested in Galway last July and questioned for three days. In a
statement he has since withdrawn, he said he had been about to help the
Provisional IRA transport containers of weapons from Colombia and Venezuela
to Ireland. A pilot and former California police officer, Flint's sports
memorabilia company was closed down by drug investigators in 1990.

Flint told the Grand Jury he had agreed to help the IRA at the request of
Seamus Moley, an IRA gunrunner he had met in an Arizona jail. He said his
last contact with the IRA had been three years earlier when he had arranged
a cocaine deal, later abandoned, with an Iranian woman in California. He
said: "She was going to trade us weapons for the cocaine." He claimed the
woman, whom he named, was "really big in the Iranian government".

He had been involved in IRA shipments on "five or six" occasions but had
never known the full route. He said: "That way if something happens, it
dies right there." After being told on Thursday that he would not be
required to testify again, Flint said: "I didn't want to hurt them [the
defendants]. I didn't want to say anything."