A 50-year-old man has been accused this Monday of possessing material that “could be useful” for terrorists, linked to the recent leak of data of thousands of officers of the Police of Northern Ireland (PSNI, its acronym in English).
The suspect, Christopher Paul O’Kane, appeared today before a court in the town of Coleraine, in the north of the region, after being arrested last Friday at his home in Dungiven, in Derry County (west), and will remain in police custody for the next four weeksaccording to legal sources.
The PSNI has filed two charges relating to “possession of two mobile phones in order to prepare terrorist acts” and information (spreadsheets) that also “could be useful” for terrorists.
The BBC noted that a mobile device contains screenshots of sections of the filtered documents with names of police officers, including an agent who was the target of an attack of a dissident group of the already inactive IRA (Irish Republican Army).
The PSNI acknowledged on August 10 that a “human error” allowed the publication of the personal data of all the agents and workers of the body (about 10,000), detailing, for example, their names and surnames, their rank or grade and the location of their departments.