AN alleged former IRA commander arrested in Spain as part of a child abuse investigation previously had a warrant in connection with the killing of Garda Jerry McCabe withdrawn shortly after handing over information about the Disappeared.
The man in his 60s was arrested on Tuesday after the Director of Public Prosecutions in the Republic ordered that he face four charges in relation to the alleged abuse of a young girl in the 1990s.
Detectives are said to have interviewed the man in Alicante last year before a decision was made to prosecute.
Originally from the lower Falls area of west Belfast, he was brought to Madrid this week where he appeared in court on Wednesday.
It is believed the man, who holds a British passport, had been in negotiations through a solicitor and had agreed to hand himself over to Spanish authorities to be extradited back to the Republic.
The complainant is believed to have been a secondary school pupil when the alleged abuse took place in Dublin.
A spokesman for Spain’s National Police confirmed yesterday that officers detained a man on a warrant for four sexual assaults on a minor.
The suspect lived for many years in south Dublin and is alleged to have been head of the IRA's 'Southern Command' at a time when it was in direct conflict with Dublin criminals and ordered the killing of gangland boss Martin 'The General' Cahill in 1994.
He is said to have fled Ireland for the Costa Blanca after being implicated by a republican informer in the 1996 shooting of Garda McCabe during a botched robbery in Adare, Co Limerick.
IRA members Michael O'Neill, Jeremiah Sheehy and Kevin Walsh and Pearce McAuley were found guilty of the detective's manslaughter
Sources suggest he cut all ties with the organisation after senior republicans claimed, following a political backlash, that the robbery was not sanctioned.
A European arrest warrant on a charge of membership of an unlawful organisation was issued in 1998 and renewed every year until 2006, when prosecutors filed an application without explanation to cancel it at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin.
Sources have told the Irish News that republicans negotiated with authorities to have it withdrawn.
The man, who had allegedly refused to cooperate with an internal investigation to gather information about the disappearance of IRA victims in the 1970 and 80s, is said to have later cooperated and passed information to his former associates.
