This article is from page 16 of the 2008-06-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
AN Irish soldier has told the trial that he contacted a website advertising contract killings because he thought it was a joke.
Private Brian Buckley told prose- cuting counsel, Una Ni Raifeartaigh he had found the site Hireahitman.us while searching for cheat codes for the Hitman computer game.
Pvt Buckley said he was using the computer at his mother’s house in Ennis when he came across the web- site. It was top of the list of Google
search results so he assumed it was the site he was looking for.
He said the homepage of the site made him think is was an internet prank. “I saw a cartoon animation of a man with a gun. He was wearing a hat, sunglasses and had a pistol. It was a cartoon drawing.”
Pvt Buckley said he looked further into the website until he came to a kind of application form. “Out of my own curiosity or my own stupidity I decided to fill out the form.”
Using the email address Judas69@gmail.com he filled out
the form, giving a false telephone number and a false name, Will Buckimer.
He said there was no significance in either name and the number 69 meant nothing.
Using the application form on the website he filled in fictitious skills. He listed handgun, rifle, sub machine gun, shot gun, sniper, heavy gun, heavy machine gun, grenades, basic booby traps and limited poisons.
He said this was not a true answer, with the exception of rifle and gre- nades.
He said he made first contact with the website on July 29, 2006 and re- ceived a reply from a Tony Luciano on August 10.
The reply read, “I have a job for you if you are interested. Two males in Ireland and one in Spain. ASAP. Let us know. We will try and call you. Thanks. Tony Luciano.”
Pvt Buckley agreed that he had provided his mobile number, but had never at any stage thought the website was serious. He said he “just wanted to see where it would go”.
On August 28 he received another
email from Tony Luciano. “Please help us out for this. I need some strong poison. One of us will be in Shannon. We cannot shift this stuff for security reasons – you know that – so please help us out. Will pay and I will owe you favourite. Thanks brother. Tony.”
Pvt Buckley said that this email made him feel uneasy and he decided to distance himself. He received sev- eral communications from the man calling himself Tony Luciano but would not talk to him and kept tell- ing him he had the wrong number.