A man falsely accused of the notorious Sallins Train Robbery says he can’t find closure until he gets a full apology.
Osgur Breatnach was wrongly jailed for 12 years for the 1976 heist of the Dublin-bound train after special branch agents beat a confession out of him.
He told how he was “tortured, beaten and intimidated” by gardai until he signed a statement admitting to the crime which the IRA later claimed responsibility for.
Osgur, who was 26 when he was arrested, said: “A miscarriage of justice suggested it was an error, it was deliberate.
“For me it’s not about a train robbery, it’s about a conspiracy to frame people and the people who did that, to date, have gotten away with it.”
Osgur revisits the ordeal he suffered on an RTE Radio One documentary this weekend, describing how he was beaten in a tunnel under Dublin’s Bridewell Garda station.
He added: “I was taken out of my cell in the middle of the night and brought down to a tunnel where they started to beat me.
“[I was] brought back into the main prison and tortured in a locker room up there.
“Eventually I said, ‘OK, I’ll give you a statement’.
“There has been no apology, no investigation. That is the campaign I have been on since that day, trying to ensure justice is done in this case.”
