Key NCA bombing witness Allan ‘Gadget’ Chamberlain tells Domenic Perre’s trial of ‘considerable pressure’ to answer questions for almost 30 years
The NCA bombing trial’s key witness says his statements about Domenic Perre don’t always match because of “considerable pressure” from police questioning over 30 years.
Police & Courts
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The NCA bombing trial’s key witness has blamed differences in his statements over 27 years on “considerable pressure to answer questions” from “a great number of police officers”.
Allan “Gadget” Chamberlain has also denied potentially lethal devices, including detonators, found at his property in the wake of the bombing belonged to him.
On Wednesday, lawyers for alleged bomber Domenic Perre began their cross-examination of Mr Chamberlain, who has been giving evidence for the past six days.
Gilbert Aitken, for Perre, suggested there were inconsistencies in the statements Mr Chamberlain had given since SA Police first spoke to him on March 6, 1994.
Mr Chamberlain said he did not remember every one of his statements.
“I have signed, over the years, very many statements,” he said.
“I was under considerable pressure to answer questions and was doing the best I could from my memory.
“Over the years I have been interviewed by a great number of police officers.”
Perre, 64, has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder over the parcel bomb that killed Detective Sergeant Geoffrey Bowen and blinded lawyer Peter Wallis on March 2, 1994.
Mr Chamberlain – who once shot himself in the chest to demonstrate a bulletproof vest – is key to the case, and claims he had agreed to store Perre’s guns to hide them from police.
Perre’s counsel, however, insist that “Pandora’s box” of weapons and dangerous items belonged to Mr Chamberlain, not their client.
They also claim he once threatened to “blow away” one of his neighbours, warning that person he could do so “without being anywhere in sight”.
Mr Chamberlain took the stand only after receiving assurances his late mother’s diaries, which detailed his movements in 1994, would not be widely disseminated.
On Wednesday, Mr Aitken questioned Mr Chamberlain about the events that allegedly occurred 24 hours before the bombing.
He suggested Mr Chamberlain had told police that Perre gave him a plastic bag when they were both at Central Firearms, a Prospect gun shop they frequented.
That bag, the court has previously heard, contained detonators, detonator cord, three books and a device used to check for phone surveillance devices.
Mr Aitken took Mr Chamberlain through several of his statements in which his description of the plastic bag varied from “generic” to one bearing a “Rabbit Photography” logo.
“In 1996 you couldn’t remember the bag, now in 2021 you can?” he said.
Mr Aitken said that three people had been prepared to give evidence that Mr Chamberlain was not at Central Firearms when he claimed to have received the bag.
“I put to you he (Perre) never gave you the detonators and that they were yours,” he said.
Mr Chamberlain denied that the detonators were his.
The trial, before Justice Kevin Nicholson, continues.
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