A man appeared in court in Northern Ireland on Saturday charged with five offences including attempted murder over a car bomb attack outside a police station near Belfast.
BELFAST: A man appeared in court in Northern Ireland on Saturday charged with five offences including attempted murder over a car bomb attack outside a police station near Belfast.
The attack late on April 25, which caused an explosion but no casualties, was claimed by the dissident New Irish Republican Army organisation.
Kieran Smyth, a 66-year-old from Belfast, was charged late Friday with offences including attempted murder and possessing explosives and articles for use in an act of terrorism over the attack.
READ MORE: Car bomb explodes outside Belfast police station
Smyth, who was arrested Tuesday, appeared over video link at a magistrates’ court in Lisburn, south of Belfast.
A police investigator told the court those behind the attack ordered Chinese takeaway and then commanded the driver at gunpoint to drive to the police station with a gas-canister-type bomb in his car, saying he had 30 minutes until it went off.
The driver raised the alarm on arrival and police had begun evacuating nearby homes when the device went off.
Hours before the attack, the phone number used for the call was topped up in a supermarket in Belfast, followed immediately by a top-up to an online bank account linked to Smyth, police said.
They identified Smyth on CCTV images apparently carrying out both transactions.
So-called dissident republicans are in favour of a united Ireland and do not accept a landmark 1998 peace deal that largely ended the three decades of sectarian conflict known as the “Troubles”.
