David Rupert (born July 27, 1951) is an American former FBI/British intelligence agent whose testimony led to the arrest and prosecution of Michael McKevitt, the reputed leader of the Real IRA, for the Omagh Bombing. [1] [2]
David Rupert was awarded the FBI's Lou Peters Award in 2013. [3]
Rupert's testimony was crucial in McKevitt being convicted of directing terrorism. In 2006, McKevitt's legal team appealed the conviction based on the defense team not having access to information concerning the tax affairs of Rupert during the original trial. All appeals were denied. [4]
The Real Irish Republican Army, or Real IRA (RIRA), is a dissident Irish republican paramilitary group that aims to bring about a United Ireland. It formed in 1997 following a split in the Provisional IRA by dissident members, who rejected the IRA's ceasefire that year. Like the Provisional IRA before it, the Real IRA sees itself as the only rightful successor to the original Irish Republican Army and styles itself as simply "the Irish Republican Army" in English or Óglaigh na hÉireann in Irish. It is an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland and designated as a proscribed terrorist organisation in the United Kingdom and the United States.
Police perjury is the act of a police officer knowingly giving false testimony. It is typically used in a criminal trial to "make the case" against defendants believed by the police to be guilty when irregularities during the suspects' arrest or search threaten to result in their acquittal. It also can be extended to encompass substantive misstatements of fact to convict those whom the police believe to be guilty, procedural misstatements to "justify" a search and seizure, or even the inclusion of statements to frame an innocent citizen. More generically, it has been said to be "[l]ying under oath, especially by a police officer, to help get a conviction."
The Omagh bombing was a car bombing on 15 August 1998 in the town of Omagh in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, It was carried out by a group calling themselves the Real Irish Republican Army, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group who opposed the IRA's ceasefire and the Good Friday Agreement, signed earlier in the year. The bombing killed 29 people and injured about 220 others, making it the deadliest single incident of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Telephoned warnings which did not specify the actual location had been sent almost forty minutes beforehand but police inadvertently moved people toward the bomb.
Mississippi Burning is a 1988 American historical crime thriller film directed by Alan Parker that is loosely based on the 1964 murder investigation of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. It stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as two FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi, who are met with hostility by the town's residents, local police, and the Ku Klux Klan.
Michael McKevitt was an Irish republican and paramilitary leader. He was the Provisional Irish Republican Army's Quartermaster General. Due to the Provisional IRA's involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process, he formed the Real IRA in protest. His role in the Real IRA led to him being convicted of directing terrorism as the leader of the paramilitary organisation.
The Birmingham Six were six Irishmen who were each sentenced to life imprisonment in 1975 following their false convictions for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Their convictions were declared unsafe and unsatisfactory and quashed by the Court of Appeal on 14 March 1991. The six men were later awarded financial compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million.
The 32 County Sovereignty Movement, often abbreviated to 32CSM or 32csm, is an Irish republican group that was founded by Bernadette Sands McKevitt. It does not contest elections but acts as a pressure group, with branches or cumainn organised throughout the traditional counties of Ireland.
Joan Marilyn Humphrey Lefkow is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.
The Special Criminal Court is a juryless criminal court in Ireland which tries terrorism and serious organised crime cases.
Annie Mae Aquash was a First Nations activist and Mi'kmaq tribal member from Nova Scotia, Canada. Aquash moved to Boston in the 1960s and joined other First Nations and Indigenous Americans focused on education and resistance, and police brutality against urban Indigenous peoples. She was part of the American Indian Movement, participated in several occupations, and participated in the 1973 Wounded Knee incident at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, United States.
Anthony Pellicano is a former high-profile Los Angeles private investigator and convicted criminal known as a Hollywood fixer. He served a term of thirty months in a federal prison for illegal possession of explosives, firearms, and homemade grenades. In 2008, he began serving an additional sentence for subsequent convictions for other crimes, including racketeering and wiretapping. Several other people were also convicted of crimes associated with their involvement with his illegal activities, including his actress girlfriend Sandra Will Carradine, film director John McTiernan, Beverly Hills police officer Craig Stevens, Los Angeles police sergeant Mark Arneson, and attorney Terry Christensen.
Liam Campbell is an Irish republican from Dundalk, County Louth. He was found liable under civil proceedings for the 1998 Omagh bombing, which killed 29 people.
Bernadette Sands McKevitt is an Irish republican, and a founding member of the 32 County Sovereignty Movement.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is an American lawyer, and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
Colm Murphy is an Irish republican who was the first person to be convicted in connection with the Omagh bombing, but whose conviction was overturned on appeal. While awaiting a retrial on criminal charges, Murphy was found liable for the bombing in a civil trial, along with Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell and Seamus Daly. He was subsequently cleared of criminal charges in February 2010.
Louis Joseph Freeh is an American attorney and former judge who served as the fifth Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 1993 to June 2001.
Andrew Alan Escher Auernheimer, best known by his pseudonym weev, is an American computer hacker and self-avowed Internet troll. Affiliated with the alt-right, the Southern Poverty Law Center has described him as being a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, and antisemitic conspiracy theorist. He has used many aliases in contacting the media, although most sources indicate his real first name as Andrew.
Masterminds is a 2016 American crime comedy film based on the October 1997 Loomis Fargo robbery in North Carolina. Directed by Jared Hess and written by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer and Emily Spivey, the film stars Zach Galifianakis, Owen Wilson, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones and Jason Sudeikis.
The Slovak Three were Irishmen Michael Christopher McDonald, Declan John Rafferty and Fintan Paul O'Farrell, who were members of the Real IRA. They were arrested in a sting operation in Slovakia conducted by British security agency MI5 in 2001 after they were caught attempting to buy arms for their campaign. They believed they were purchasing weapons from Iraqi intelligence agents and that Saddam Hussein was to play a role in the Real IRA similar to the one Colonel Gadaffi had in its predecessors the Provisional IRA. The three men met in Piešťany, a spa town in Western Slovakia, after months of meetings and telephone calls—all of which were intercepted and overheard by MI6. Believing its case to be now fireproof, MI5 had passed details of the men and their intentions to the Slovak authorities, who ambushed the men on the evening of 5 July 2001 after their meeting. They were arrested and imprisoned in the expectation Slovakia would receive a formal extradition request from the UK.
This is a timeline of events in 2020 and 2021 related to investigations into links between associates of Donald Trump and Russian officials that are suspected of being inappropriate, relating to the Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It follows the timeline of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, both before and after July 2016, until November 8, 2016 election day, the transition, the first and second halves of 2017, the first and second halves of 2018, and the first and second halves of 2019.