Retired Garda Sergeant William Hughes is pictured at Dublin Castle where he gave evidence to the Disclosures Tribunal on Tuesday. Photograph: Gareth Chaney/Collins
A Garda whistleblower has denied developing a “persecution complex” over his treatment by the force’s management after he complained about the handling of a murder case.
Retired Sgt William Hughes is being cross-examined at the Disclosures Tribunal in Dublin Castle about his allegations of a systems failure before the 2006 murder of Baiba Saulite.
A week before she was shot dead, the mother-of-two gave Sgt Hughes a draft victim impact statement saying she feared for her life. He had not read the statement in full before the murder.
Mícheál O’Higgins SC, for An Garda Síochána, suggested on Tuesday that Mr Hughes’ “original sense of guilt morphed into anger and then into vengefulness”.
“You were developing something of a persecution complex…you believed that you had seriously messed up and felt if you had read the draft victim impact statement, somehow things would have been different and you were way too hard on yourself,” counsel said.
Mr Hughes said he was never vengeful towards Garda authorities, but agreed he was angry and felt more could have been done to prevent Ms Saulite’s murder. He said he was also “extremely unhappy” with the disciplinary process taken against him which made him feel “bullied, harassed and...
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