Irish Voice April 8, 2004 New Commission to Probe 1974 Bombs  By Mairead Carey  WHY the Special Branch allowed an armed British soldier driving a van  with false registration plates to leave Dublin only hours after a series  of bombs brought havoc to the city is one of the questions a new  commission of inquiry into the Dublin-Monaghan bombings will be asked to  investigate.  The bizarre events at Dublin port on the day of the atrocity when 33  people were killed in May 17, 1974 is to be examined by the new  commission which is to be set following recommendations by a Dail  committee.  Post and telegraphs worker Roger Keane had seen a van driver acting  suspiciously on that fateful day. There had been a number of bomb scares  at the time, so he called the gardai to report on the man’s activities.  After he heard the bombs go off he again contacted the Gardai (police).  Two police officers from Howth came to interview him. He showed them the  van which by then was lined up to take the ferry to Liverpool.  A search of the van revealed weapons and a British army uniform. The  Gardai called in the Special Branch and the soldier was briefly detained.  But within hours the driver was allowed to board the ship and leave  Ireland. Even though the Gardai knew that the van had false registration  plates, no further investigation was carried out. When Keane went back to  the Gardai to ask what had happened to the information he was told to  forget about it.  Bizarrely no record of Keane’s complaint to the Gardai was ever kept.  Neither was there any record on police files of the soldier’s detention.  It was only when Judge Henry Barron, who has been investigating the case  for the last two years, found a reference to the incident in army  intelligence files that Keane’s story was corroborated.  Now a Dail committee which held hearings on the Barron report, has called  for a commission to be set up to inquire into the strange incident and  report on the failure of the Gardai to investigate the bombings properly.  They will also investigate the Four Courts hotel affair. One of the  leading suspects in the bombings stayed at the hotel in the center of  Dublin in the days before the attack, but left on the day of the bombings  without paying his bill.  The man, who still lives in Monaghan, had links to well-known Loyalist  paramilitaries. He had been under surveillance by the Gardai and had made  calls and sent telegrams to the North and to Britain.  Despite operating a business and living openly in the south, the Gardai  never interviewed him about the atrocity, claiming they could not find  him. In recent years he surfaced as a prosecution witness in a notorious  murder trial in Dublin.  The commission will also look at why the police investigation was wound  down in 1974, and investigate the incredible loss of files relating to  the investigation which had been held by the Department of Justice and  the Gardai.  The Dail committee has also called on the government to ask the British  Prime Minister Tony Blair to initiate a public inquiry into the bombings.  If he refuses to do so, the committee has recommended that the Irish  government take the British government to the European Court of Human  Rights.  Committee chairman Sean Ardagh said there was an “exceptionally high”  probability of collusion between the British security forces and the  Ulster Volunteer Force bombers. The committee wants the British government to set up a two-stage inquiry.  They want a preliminary examination to be carried out by a judge of  international standing, similar to the work on Northern Ireland collusion  cases by the retired Canadian judge Peter Cory.