The day a deadly plot was foiled

The mortar which the gang planned to use was found in a field

On Thursday, three dissident republicans pleaded guilty to plotting to use a mortar bomb to kill police officers.

BBC News Online looks at how the case sheds light on the resources the security forces are using to combat the dissident threat.

The Continuity IRA is an organisation which is opposed to the peace process and believes its aim of uniting Ireland can come through the barrel of a gun.

Or less metaphorically, in the case of three of its members, through the tube of a mortar.

Just over two years ago, Damien McKenna, Gary Toman and Sean McConville plotted to use such a device to kill police officers.

The trio were all in their early 20s when they hatched the plan.

Nevertheless, they demonstrated an expertise that belies the fact they were young children when similar attacks were relatively commonplace.

Following their arrest and guilty plea, details have emerged of the resources used by the security forces to counter their plans.

Surveillance

Their first building block was the meat and drink of counter-terrorism - surveillance.

Darkness was falling on 29 March 2007 when a soldier, referred to as Soldier B, saw McKenna on the Levin Road outside Lurgan in County Armagh.

Tellingly, the soldier told a court he had known McKenna by name and sight for more than six months.

He had now "clocked" him.

He observed that McKenna was alone but that a Nissan Primera car with its lights off was parked nearby.

Another soldier, soldier E, was positioned not far from his colleague.

It was his job to spy on a field using night-vision equipment.

It wasn't long before his patience was rewarded. Half-an-hour after McKenna had first been spotted, a group of men were seen in the field acting suspiciously.

One ran across the field to a hedge, looked left and right, and then ran back to his company and crouched.

The Army team hadn't forgotten about the Nissan Primera either.

It was now parked in a nearby car park.

The mortar was intended for a passing police patrol

Four men were observed getting inside and the soldier watching it said its lights then flashed five or six times.

The whole scene was also being filmed from what is euphemistically described as "an aerial platform".

Shortly afterwards, the car was stopped.

McKenna, Toman and McConville were inside, along with McKenna's brother, Ryan.

"Wet and dirty"

Damien McKenna's jeans and hands were described as wet and dirty, the sort of wet and dirt that a man would pick up if he had recently been in a field.

McConville, who was driving, was not clean either.

More pertinent though, was what was in their pockets.

In McKenna's, a circuit tester, a number of small cables and wire-cutters, not items normally associated with his job as a plasterer.

In McConville's, another pair of gloves.

Forensic tests on items in the car also revealed traces of an explosive, the kind suitable for squeezing inside a mortar tube.

The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place and the four inside the car were arrested.

"General area sweep"

It was now a case of searching a single green field for the most important piece of evidence.

Army bomb experts moved in to examine the mortar

During the next two days, security forces carried out what is known as a "general area sweep".

If they were expecting to uncover the mortar, they did not.

The defendants were questioned and released.

But, with all the evidence pointing to suspicious activity in that same field, what is known as "a high assurance area search" was carried out.

This time, more than a week since the shadowy group was spied through the night-vision goggles, the trump piece of evidence was discovered.

A home-made launch tube and mortar, hidden in dead grass and vegetation.

The mortar was made of the same explosives which were later traced to the defendants or on items to which they were inextricably linked.

Damien McKenna, Toman and McConville were re-arrested and charged, charges which they all later pleaded guilty to.

The PSNI believed the mortar was meant to have been fired at a passing police patrol.

Similar types of weapons were regularly aimed at the security forces in the 1970s and 1980s.

The fact that the defendants hadn't been born when many of those attacks took place, doesn't mean they were unaware of its deadly capability.

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