SAOIRSE32

Sinn Féin

Sinn Féin challenge Murphy over sanctions

Published: 1 March, 2005

Sinn Féin National Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin has revealed that the party have written to the British Secretary of State Paul Murphy challenging him on his decision to impose sanctions on the Sinn Féin electorate in the wake of the latest report from the IMC.

Mr McLaughlin said:

” Last week in the British House of Commons Paul Murphy a man with no votes or no mandate in Ireland chose to impose sanctions on democratically elected Irish politicians. He invited Sinn Féin to make representations to him regarding this matter.

” Sinn Féin have now written to Mr Murphy challenging him to produce a shred of evidence backing the claim that Sinn Féin have been in breach of the Good Friday Agreement. We have also taken this opportunity to make it very clear to Mr Murphy the reality that the IMC operates entirely outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and should have no role whatsoever in the political process.

” The actions of the British government in imposing sanctions against Irish political representatives is a denial of the democratic rights of the electorate and at a time when our collective focus should be on putting the political process back on track only serves to deepen the crisis further.” ENDS

IRA2

**Brian finds things I can’t even find after he’s found them. He’s amazing!

The enemy within

The former IRA man Danny Morrison has written a challenging and
darkly comic play about informers. So, why will no one in Ireland
stage it?

01 March 2005
The Independent

There is a great line in John Berger’s novel, Once In Europa, where a
character expresses metaphorically the devastation a close-knit
community experiences when it has been betrayed from within. “Do you
know what the trees say when the axe comes into the forest? Look! The
handle is one of us!”

From time immemorial informers have been reviled, not least in
Ireland, where their actions have subverted attempted national
uprisings and revivals. James Carey was an informer in the 1880s who
was tracked down and assassinated by Irish republicans in South
Africa. My Uncle Harry, an IRA leader in the 1940s, was in hiding but
was betrayed by an informer. He escaped but his comrade was arrested
and executed by firing squad in Dublin. Harry was betrayed a second
time, and sentenced to death, but had his sentence commuted. Most
recently, when Tony Blair said that he believed that the IRA carried
out the huge heist on Belfast’s Northern Bank before Christmas, he
based his belief on a dossier substantially compiled from the
statements of informers.

I have also been jailed, accused of IRA involvement, on a number of
occasions as a result of the work of informers. The first time was in
1972, when I was interned for 13 months. The last was not long before
the ceasefire.

The informer’s story is rich with intrigue and antagonism, which is
why I have used my experience of informers as the basis for the play,
The Wrong Man.

My story concerns a bitterly cold evening in January 1990 when I went
to meet an IRA informer who, I had been told, was prepared to go to a
press conference and name and expose the Special Branch handlers who
had been pressing him to set up two senior republicans for
assassination. I was Sinn Fein’s director of publicity at the time,
and it was a good story. At the time, we were trying to show that the
RUC was operating an illegal shoot-to-kill policy.

Two days earlier, the IRA had lured Sandy Lynch to a house in West
Belfast, overpowered him and, according to his testimony, threatened
to torture and execute him. Lynch confessed to being an informer and
then entered into a deal to attend a press conference, at which stage
I was called. But I never got to meet Lynch. The house was raided
within seconds of my arriving and I was charged with conspiring to
kidnap and murder him. From the witness box, Lynch admitted being an
informer and that he had even informed on his own brother. He gave no
evidence against me, but I was sentenced to eight years. According to
a Sunday newspaper, he received £100,000 after I and my co-accused
were convicted.

It was in the 1980s that the public and media were, for the first
time, really able to scrutinise the reliability of informers who gave
evidence against former comrades. Through the extremely
controversial “supergrass” system, the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(RUC) had recruited about 30 informers from the IRA, the republican
INLA and the loyalist UVF. The RUC then used their statements as the
evidence for charging more than 300 people with terrorist offences.
Half the supergrasses later retracted statements, and many of the
convicted were cleared on appeal.

One typical supergrass was Raymond Gilmour, from Derry, who was being
questioned about a burglary when he was asked by the RUC to join the
Irish National Liberation Army. He was 16 at the time. He said that
his mother had a history of mental illness, and that his father was a
boozer. Two of his brothers, he said, “beat up my sisters and me and
tried to make us drink their piss”. One also “forced me to keep my
school dinner and bring it home after school so he could eat it”.

As an informer, he was paid £200 a week, plus bonuses. Gilmore’s
best
friend was the INLA man Colm McNutt. Gilmour tipped off his RUC
handler about an INLA robbery during which McNutt was shot dead. He
eventually gave evidence against his comrades in open court, but the
Lord Chief Justice described him as being “entirely unworthy of
belief”. He was “a selfish and self-regarding man to whose lips a lie
invariably comes more naturally than the truth”. Yet the Chief
Constable of the RUC swore by Gilmour’s credibility, as he swore by
the credibility of the 30 others.

Is it any wonder, then, that republican communities in the North
reserve their greatest hatred, not for the enemy, but for those of
their own? During the conflict, the IRA killed at least 60 people
whom it accused of secretly working for the British Army or the RUC,
and banished from Ireland up to 100 others.

Of course, one side’s informer is another side’s hero, allegedly
risking his or her life to save other lives, particularly among the
police and Army. Despite my experiences, I am fascinated by the
concepts of temptation and weakness; acts of minor betrayal,
disloyalty, infidelity and hypocrisy are, after all, common in life.

Before I went to jail, I had already written two novels and, in
prison, I began writing a third, The Wrong Man, which I have now
adapted for the stage. I decided to write an almost sympathetic
portrayal of an IRA informer. It was a challenge, given that I was
normally recognised for my television and radio apologias on behalf
of Sinn Fein and, often, the IRA.

While the play deals with themes of treachery, infidelity, guilt, and
the potential that violence has for corrupting the individual, it
also has a blackly comic tone. The Wrong Man is not an apology for
the IRA or its armed struggle, but is a sympathetic portrayal of
human beings, especially the two women characters, who are victims of
history and politics and of decisions their menfolk take. I like to
think the audience will ponder how they would have reacted under
similar circumstances - either barefoot, as in the case of the
suspect, or in the shoes of his IRA accusers.

However, no Irish company or theatre has been interested in producing
it. It’s not the first time I have experienced this type of
prejudice. Often my books, including my novels, have been the subject
of ad hominem attacks in reviews by people hostile to Irish
republicanism. I was about to give up on the play when I was
contacted by a London-based actor, Chris Simpson, from West Belfast,
who was convinced of its potential. He, Sarah Tipple - a young
English director - and several other Irish and English actors formed
the New Strung Theatre Company to stage it at the Pleasance Theatre
in London.

It is ironic that a play about the IRA, written by a former IRA
member who was banned from entering England for 13 years, will have
its first home in England and not Ireland. Despite difficulties in
the peace process, and renewed disagreements, there is no doubt that
an atmosphere now prevails that allows us to examine the past more
honestly and dispassionately than before.

‘The Wrong Man’, The Pleasance Theatre, London N7, 12 March to 3
April (020-7609 1800)

Irish Independent

Family want son’s killer to be expelled

THE family of a man stabbed to death in Derry in October 2003 last night demanded that the republican movement expel the man convicted of the killing from its ranks.

The Crown Court in Derry convicted Bart Fisher (43) on December 22 last year of the manslaughter of James Joseph McGinley (23).

Last Friday, he was jailed for three years for stabbing Mr McGinley in the heart with a dagger at Sackville Court in Derry on October 11, 2003.

But in January this year, Mr Fisher was filmed acting as a steward at the Sinn Fein-organised annual Bloody Sunday commemoration march in Derry. He is clearly seen wearing an earpiece and walking directly behind party president Gerry Adams.

Yesterday, Eileen McGinley called for his immediate expulsion, saying: “He (Fisher) was acquitted of my son’s murder but found guilty of his manslaughter. That by any standards is a crime.”

Last night, Sinn Fein officer worker Colm Barton, a co-ordinator for the January 30 march, apologised to the McGinley family, admitting Fisher’s inclusion in proceedings had been “inappropriate”.

George Jackson

IRA2

PSNI alleged to have escorted banned loyalist parade

Daily Ireland
1 Mar 2005

The PSNI yesterday refused to comment on allegations that they helped lead a banned loyalist parade through a nationalist area in Belfast at the weekend.

The Whitewell Defenders Flute Band applied to march on Saturday in aid of the Tsunami disaster.

However, the Northern Ireland Parades Commission only sanctioned
their application with the stipulation the marchers did not parade
through nationalist residential streets in the Whitewell Road area of
Belfast.

However, on Saturday the band and a small number of followers, including members of the right wing Combat 18 group, marched the banned route down the nationalist Whitewell Road despite protests from residents.

The Commission prohibited the parade from walking “on that section of the route between the junction of Graymount Park and Gray’s Lane and the junction of Thorburn and Serpentine Roads”.

However, the flute band and its followers proceeded along the Antrim Road, passed St Gerard’s Catholic Chapel and onto White City via the Serpentine Road. They were flying a black UDA flag.

Observers say PSNI officers failed to prevent the parade from going down the banned route and actually assisted the band through the nationalist streets. Chief Superintendent Mike Little of the PSNI said: “Police intervened after a suspected breach of a parades commission determination during a parade in North Belfast on Saturday.

“Organisers of the parade,” he said “have been spoken to by police
and evidence collected. Actions of the parade participants will be reported to the DPP with a view to prosecution.”

Nationalist residents and observers accuse the police of helping the
band to continue on their chosen route. Local Sinn Féin councillor, David Kennedy claims the band were helped by police.

“One band member told me the police told him “we’ll get you up there” and a police officer at the scene told me they didn’t have enough resources to prevent the marchers walking past their jeeps.”

“The situation is a complete farce,” Mr Kennedy said. “Here we had a march that was banned and the PSNI completey ignoring the people breaking the law. They even helped them to move away from the approved route and marched them through nationalist areas.”
The PSNI refused to comment on allegations that they assisted the
loyalist band and would not elaborate on how the band managed to
proceed on an unlawful route with police looking on.

Mr Kennedy said he and Sinn Féin will be meeting with the Parades
Commission as soon as possible. Yesterday around 100 local residents and Sinn Féin representatives staged a roadblock on the junction of the Whitewell and Shore Roads to protest over the PSNI’s actions.

Speaking from the blockade, local Sinn Féin councillor, Carol ní
Chuilan, said, “This simply is not good enough.

“Our party is proactive in trying to defuse tensions in this
community but then you have marches like this which only raise
tensions, especially when something goes wrong like it did here.”

Derry Journal

Living In The Ghetto

Tuesday 1st March 2005

From a community viewpoint, most of our cities, towns, and villages resemble ghettoes, or, at the very least, consist of ghettoes in which our communities live apart.

Some of this ‘ghettoisation’ has been the product of earlier troubles; some of it has been an understandable congregating by newcomers close to existing inhabitants of a similar background.

In times of peace and more relaxed community relations, the reverse tendency emerged and a degree of ‘inter-mixing’ of our communities occurred. This was most apparent in the period between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1960s.

However, the most recent period of communal conflict - stretching from the late 1960s to the mid-1990s –reversed any tendencies to create mixed communities.

With the ceasefires, the Good Friday Agreement and other recent attempts to reach a political settlement, it was not expected that communities would continue to drift apart. Unfortunately, however, this is what continues to happen.

Some recent examples across the North - including Derry - are the direct result of intimidation and harassment by people in one community against those in the other.

Those responsible seem intent on creating a situation in which the whole of Northern Ireland consists of communities living apart, geographically and socially.

Attacks on homes, on halls, on schools and churches have contributed to this ghettoisation. So, too, has the flying of flags, behaviour at parades and protests by one group or another.

People in a community whose homes, halls and other property come under attack no longer feel welcome to stay in an area. They move out as soon as possible to where they feel safest: amongst their “own” - be these Catholic or Protestant, unionist or nationalist.

In moving out, they not only lose their neighbours but they also take their business with them. For example, if Catholics are not welcome in an area they will withdraw and, as they go, they take with them their business with local traders, shops, etc. Likewise, if Protestants are unwelcome, they, too, will withdraw support from local businesses.

Separated Communities

Is this what we want to see happening everywhere? Do we want to live separately under separate flags only occasionally mixing with each other in ordinary every day events?

If so, all of our cities, towns, villages and townlands will soon be islands of separated communities.

The results are not only children being educated separately, and churches attended separately, but we will not even meet people from the other community in the street. We will cease to know each other as neighbours across the community divide.

No wonder then if we see each other as strangers and, in some cases, as enemies.

Marking out territory as ‘nationalist’ and using the Irish tricolour to taunt and provoke unionists - just as unionists do in marking out territory with the Union flag - will never create the conditions for Irish unity.

Nor will conditions for unity be created by showing a lack of respect for traditions associated with the unionist community. If there is to be place in a united Ireland for unionists, there must be respect for their traditions. Otherwise the idea of unity is a sham and will never be achieved.

The same is true for any agreement in the immediate future. Just as nationalists rightly demand respect for our traditions, so, too, unionists have the right to expect respect for theirs.

These simple lessons must be learned by us all. Otherwise there will be no reconciliation and no real peace. At best, an uneasy peace will exist in which we grow more and more apart rather then come together.

Of course, there are many people from both communities and from our different churches who are involved in building bridges and doing their best to break down the barriers that exist between us. Many community organisations also deliberately set out to create opportunities for such contacts and do so in ways that are very successful in bringing people together.

But bringing people of different traditions together is now something which has to be organised, not something that happens naturally. This is a sad reflection on a modern, 21st century society.

A future where we live in peace and at ease beside and among each other, whatever our community background, whatever our religion, our colour or our political affiliation, should be our common goal.

Otherwise we perpetuate division and sow the seeds for future conflict. Let’s hope our community, church and political leaders will rise to the challenge.

Derry Journal

CRJ Boycott Restorative Justice Conference

Tuesday 1st March 2005

The Derry-based Community Rrestorative Justice group have said they are not attending a conference on restorative justice held in Belfast this week because it was organised by the PSNI.

The conference, entitled ‘Restorative justice: From the mechanics to the dynamics’ is being held in the Ramada Hotel in Belfast yesterday and today.

It is the latest in a series of events organised by the PSNI with the aim of emphasising their commitment “to put human rights at the centre of everything it does.”

Delegates at the conference wil look at advances in restorative justice in the North and draw comparisons with England and Wales.

It is believed that none of the groups operating schemes in republican and nationalist areas have agreed to attend.

Yesterday Noel McCartney of the CRJ in Derry said his group was not attending because the event was organised by the PSNI.

He added: “The CRJ believe the PSNI are still not acceptable to the nationalist and republican people of this city and for that reason we decided not to attend this conference.”

Mr. McCartney continued: “We also firmly believe that even if Sinn Fein were to join the Policing Board overnight there is still a long process of debate and negotiation that would have to be gone through before the PSNI would be accepted within republican and nationalist areas.”

Speaking before the conference Assistant Chief Constable Judith Gillespie, head of the PSNI Criminal Justice department said: “Restorative Justice has the potential to offer a dynamic solution to the delivery of justice for certain types of crime because it involves the victim, the perpetrator and the community.

“The Police Service of Northern Ireland recognises the value of restorative justice projects.”

BreakingNews.ie

Anger at degree for Patten

01/03/2005 - 14:15:34

The University of Ulster was fiercely criticised today for its decision to confer an honorary degree on Chris Patten, one of the architects of police reform in Northern Ireland.

Jimmy Spratt, former chairman of the Police Federation, said it was a disgrace that the university made the announcement on the day relatives and colleagues were remembering nine RUC officers murdered in an IRA mortar bomb attack in Newry 20 years ago.

Patten, who chaired the Independent Commission on Policing which made 175 recommendations for reform of the RUC, will be given an honorary Doctor of Letters degree.

When he presented the commission’s report, he said they had tried to “ensure that any past mistakes are not repeated and to minimise any prospect of abuses such as those alleged to have taken place in the past”.

But Mr Spratt, who accused him of wrecking policing in Northern Ireland, said he would be writing to the university to express his opposition to its decision.

He said: “I find it disgraceful that the University of Ulster should confer a degree on someone like Chris Patten who destroyed the finest police force in the world.”

Mr Spratt, who retired from the police service three years ago, claimed the Patten Report created a system of recruitment which discriminated against young Protestants and destroyed the North’s intelligence system.

“I think it was very insensitive to announce it on the day that families were remembering their dead loved ones.”

A University of Ulster spokesman stressed that Patten was being honoured for his contribution to public life and education.

PSNI Website

**There are live links and an enlargeable map on site

MURDER OF ROBERT MCCARTNEY

Police are investigating the murder of Robert McCartney aged 33, at Cromac Street / East Bridge Street, Belfast.

In this incident another man was stabbed and seriously injured.

This attack took place at approximately 10.45 pm on Sunday 30th January 2005.

The murder followed a disturbance in Magennis’s Bar, May Street, Belfast.

Were you in Magennis’s Bar, May Street or the Markets area between 10 pm and 11 pm on Sunday 30th January 2005 or were you driving in East Bridge Street, Cromac Square, Cromac Street or Lower May Street, Belfast, between these times?

In order to assist the investigation we have produced a map showing the route believed to have been taken by Robert McCartney. This route is shown in red on the attached map (click map to view).
CLICK HERE

See Also:

View of Market Street from May street CLICK HERE

Any information you have may assist, please contact police on the following numbers:

Enquiry Team 0044 (0) 28 9070 0311 or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or info@psni.police.uk

Daily Ireland

Warning was issued before massacres

It’s exactly 17 years since a handful of civil rights and community activists from the North travelled to Dublin for a private meeting with Dr Martin Mansergh, Special Advisor to then Taoiseach Charles Haughey.
As revealed by Daily Ireland yesterday, a previously undisclosed document now provides a fascinating archive of the Northern delegation’s concerns at the meeting on March 1 1988.
The three-page record of the meeting - which involved members of the Community for Justice, the Civil Rights Congress, Springhill Community House and the Fair Employment Trust - provides an insight into a string of serious issues which were raised directly with the Irish government by informed grassroots Northern nationalists.
Although it provides details of the issues raised by the Northern delegation, the document does not recount the response of Dr Mansergh on behalf of the Taoiseach.
Marked ‘Private and Confidential’, the document provides chilling evidence that the Irish government was warned “a Bloody Sunday-type incident was imminent” just days before the Gibraltar and Milltown massacres.
“The Northern community groups expressed the deep conviction that a ‘Bloody Sunday’ - type incident was imminent, and formally requested that the Irish government appoint Official Observers to attend all nationalist and republican commemorations and demonstrations during the coming months,” the document states.
“It was stressed that the community groups had not had any discussions with either of the main nationalist political parties in the six counties before submitting this request and were motivated only by the desire to avoid loss of life.
“Nevertheless, deep foreboding existed about the motivation and intentions of the RUC and other British forces in the coming weeks”.
Five days after those comments were written, three unarmed IRA volunteers, Dan McCann, Mairéad Farrell and Seán Savage, were assassinated by the SAS in Gibraltar.
Ten days later, on March 16, during their funeral at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast, loyalist killer Michael Stone used the unprecedented withdrawal of British forces to mount a murderous gun and grenade attack - prompting widespread suspicions of collusion.
On March 19, at the funeral of Caoimhghín Mac Bradaigh who was killed while pursuing Michael Stone, two armed undercover British soldiers drove directly at the funeral procession.
They were obstructed by black taxis protecting the front of the funeral.
After discharging a single shot, both men were captured by the IRA, before being stripped, beaten and shot on nearby waste ground. Dozens of republicans were subsequently arrested and charged with “common purpose” involvement in the killings.
The document explains the context in which the Northern delegation was fearful of the impending actions “of the RUC and other British forces”.
These included the “disquiet of the nationalist community at large at the killing of Aidan McAnespie in Aughnacloy” and the “policing of a legal commemoration service in Dunloy on the same date - 21 February 1988”.
This latter incident was compared by the delegation with the RUC presence preceding the 1984 killing of Belfastman Seán Downes by a plastic bullet at a republican rally in west Belfast.
The document also details a range of other concerns which were raised by the delegation.
With the MacBride Principles campaign waging an international battle across North America against job discrimination in the North, the delegation highlighted that the British government had harnessed a range of prominent individuals - including Bob Cooper, then Chairman of the Fair Employment Agency - to attack the Principles.
The document also recalls: “Irish Consular staff continue to remain aloof … It would be valuable if they were to attend Legislative Hearings in a passive supportive role”.
Noting the impending British government proposals on new fair employment legislation, the document records that these “cannot be fully effective without effective independent monitoring related to defined goals and timetables”.
It is significant that such robust measures have never been put in place by the British government.
The document also reports on the case of two senior public servants in the North who were, at that stage, being threatened with redundancy for privately supporting the MacBride Principles.
That case was being pursued - without any apparent success - through the Anglo-Irish Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
On the issue of political vetting against community organisations, the document recounts the “continuing exercise of Economic Sanctions against community groups in West Belfast by the Department of Economic Development”.
“This involved the witholding of government ACE Grants available through the EEC Social Fund from Conway Enterprises, Springhill Community, MacAirt pre-School Playgroup and Twinbrook Community Centre.
“The Northern Community Groups considered that the exercise of Economic Sanctions was designed to prevent the survival of independent groups which did not earn express governmental approval, and as a general punishment to the west Belfast community at large for electing representatives unacceptable to government agencies,” the document states.
As well as voicing deep concern about the specific harrassment by British forces experienced by relatives of shoot-to-kill victims, the delegation also raised the treatment of prisoners in Long Kesh and Maghaberry.
These included the physical and psychological damage being inflicted on political prisoners, for example through strip-searching.
The Northern delegation agreed that they would provide more detailed information to the Irish government on specific concerns.
Dr Mansergh - now a Senator in the Oireachtas - has confirmed to Daily Ireland that he would have passed all the concerns “directly to the Taoiseach and a number of other senior officials”.

IRA2

Maze inmate insists IRA blocked hunger strike deal

By Alan Erwin
Irish Examiner
01/03/05

A FORMER IRA jail chief attacked for claiming the
organisation blocked a life-saving deal to end the
1981 hunger strike last night declared: “The truth’s
on my side.”

Richard O’Rawe, the Provisionals’ spokesman inside the
Maze Prison, revealed he has been ostracised for
alleging the leadership refused a package of British
concessions.

Margaret Thatcher’s administration was prepared to
meet nearly all of the demands in a move that would
have halted the protest just before the fifth prisoner
died, he insisted.

But the IRA’s Army Council refused to call off the
fasts until 10 of their men were dead.

Mr O’Rawe’s claims that the ruling body wanted to use
public sympathy to win a by-election have provoked a
republican backlash.

Brendan “Bik” McFarlane, leader of the H-Block
prisoners during the hunger strikes of 1981, denied a
deal was rejected before the death of Joe McDonnell,
the fifth prisoner to die.

“As the officer commanding in the prison at the time,
I can say categorically that there was no outside
intervention to prevent a deal,” he said.

“Once the strike was under way, the only people in a
position to agree a deal or call off the hunger strike
were the prisoners, and particularly the hunger
strikers themselves.”

Danny Morrison, former head of Sinn Féin publicity,
also hit out at Mr O’Rawe’s claims, insisting they
would only cause further distress for the families of
those who died. “He should hang his head in shame,” Mr
Morrison said.

But Mr O’Rawe, 51, stood by his account, contained in
a new book, Blanketmen: An Untold Story of the H-Block
Hunger Strike, published yesterday by New Island.

According to the west Belfast man four key demands
were conceded by the British Government: prisoners’
right to wear their own clothes, segregation from
loyalists, more visits and education as part of their
work regime.

“This hasn’t been said for 24 years because it would
be a massive embarrassment if they accepted the Army
Council of the IRA refused to acquiesce with the
prisoners’ acceptance of the deal,” he said. “The
consequence of that would be that responsibility for
the deaths would shift from the Brits to the IRA.”

Mr O’Rawe, who was freed in 1983 after serving six
years of a sentence for armed robbery, said he was
devastated when the compromise broke down.

Although many of his friends are still in the
republican movement, he severed ties in a bid to spend
more time with his family.

The outrage at his version came as no surprise, he
said. “They are rallying the troops and it won’t stop
here,” he said.

“But this is a battle they can’t win because I have
the truth on my side.”

BBC

Man held over McCartney killing

A 29-year-old man has been arrested over the murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney.

Mr McCartney, a 33-year-old father-of-two, died after being stabbed near Belfast city centre on 30 January.

Another man questioned about the murder was released without charge at the weekend.

Meanwhile, the police have said they are no longer looking for people outside Northern Ireland in connection with the killing.

Earlier, Chief Constable Hugh Orde said a number of people wanted for questioning had left the jurisdiction.

Mr Orde said he is “not impressed” by the IRA’s decision to expel three members suspected of involvement in the murder.

“I’m not that impressed by illegal organisations ejecting people who have committed illegal acts.

Evidence

“This was not committed just by three people. We are looking to gather evidence against anyone that was involved in the actual offence, or in a conspiracy to commit the offence or in the affray around the offence,” he added.

Mr Orde was speaking at a news conference a short time after Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy also said the expulsions did not go far enough.

Mr Murphy said Sinn Fein should follow Mr McCartney’s family’s example and ask witnesses to go to the police.

He also paid tribute to the family and said he was impressed by the number of people who had shown support for them.

“It (the IRA) doesn’t go far enough,” he said.

“I hope they follow the lead of the McCartney family by telling people, if they know anything about this crime, they should go to the police.

“That should be the plea of every political party here in Northern Ireland, including Sinn Fein.”

Mr McCartney’s family has said expulsion of IRA members did not go far enough.

Motion

Meanwhile, a motion demanding justice for the McCartney family is to be debated at Belfast City Council.

SDLP councillor Pat McCarthy said the motion condemned the killing and commended the family’s courage.

Mr McCartney’s family has said those responsible must be forced to admit their role in the murder.

The motion, due to be debated on Tuesday night, calls upon the entire community to show “the same courage and dignity displayed by Mr McCartney’s family”.

Mr McCarthy represents the Markets area where the murder took place.

His motion also demands “an end to the intimidation of witnesses and calls upon the community to co-operate with the due process of the law to apprehend the organisers and perpetrators of this crime”.

Mr McCarthy said he hoped the Sinn Fein members on Belfast City Council would support the motion.

Irish Examiner

McCartney killing suspects ‘go missing’

01/03/2005 - 12:17:19 PM

People wanted for questioning about the murder of Belfast man Robert McCartney have quit Northern Ireland, Chief Constable Hugh Orde confirmed today.

As Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy demanded more from the IRA than the expulsion of three members over the pub brawl killing, it emerged that detectives would be liaising with gardaí in a bid to speak to those they believe could help the inquiry.

Mr Orde disclosed: “Unsurprisingly, a number of people go missing after that sort of crime.

“That’s nothing new to Northern Ireland and we are currently pursuing a number of people who are outside jurisdiction.”

Irish Examiner

Finucane’s murderer expects freedom by May

1 March 2005

The killer of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane expects to be freed by May, it emerged tonight.

Life Sentence Review Commissioners in Northern Ireland are due to issue a ruling on loyalist paramilitary assassin Ken Barrett’s case within days.

The Ulster Defence Association gunman feared he may not qualify for the Good Friday Agreement’s early release clause because he was serving his 22-year jail sentence outside Northern Ireland.

But following his return to solitary confinement at Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn, Co Antrim last week, Barrett’s lawyer tonight insisted no further legal barriers remained.

Joe Rice said: “We will be getting a preliminary indication as to his early release date from the Sentence Review Commissioners by the end of the week.

“We can’t see any legal impediment to Mr Barrett’s case failing when the terms of the criteria was set out under the legislation.

“We would expect a release date by the end of May.”

Mr Finucane was hit with bullets in front of his wife and children when a gunman burst into their north Belfast home in February 1989.

Barrett was jailed last September after pleading guilty to the murder that has been plagued by allegations of police and military collaboration.

Former Scotland Yard chief Sir John Steven’s exhaustive probe into the claims established levels of security force collusion.

It had been thought Barrett, 42, may have scuppered his chances of a swift return to freedom when he was switched to Belmarsh Prison near London amid fears his life was in danger from former associates who regarded him as an informer.

The three commissioners have also consulted Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy before they deliver their verdict.

The Finucane family refused to comment on the case, although it is believed they will not contest Barrett’s eligibility under the Good Friday arrangements.

Larkspirit

Bobby Sands kept a secret diary of the first 17 days of his hungerstrike. This is his first entry from March 1981

Sunday 1st

I am standing on the threshold of another trembling world. May God have mercy on my soul.

My heart is very sore because I know that I have broken my poor mother’s heart, and my home is struck with unbearable anxiety. But I have considered all the arguments and tried every means to avoid what has become the unavoidable: it has been forced upon me and my comrades by four-and-a-half years of stark inhumanity.

I am a political prisoner. I am a political prisoner because I am a casualty of a perennial war that is being fought between the oppressed Irish people and an alien, oppressive, unwanted regime that refuses to withdraw from our land.

I believe and stand by the God-given right of the Irish nation to sovereign independence, and the right of any Irishman or woman to assert this right in armed revolution. That is why I am incarcerated, naked and tortured.

Foremost in my tortured mind is the thought that there can never be peace in Ireland until the foreign, oppressive British presence is removed, leaving all the Irish people as a unit to control their own affairs and determine their own destinies as a sovereign people, free in mind and body, separate and distinct physically, culturally and economically.

I believe I am but another of those wretched Irishmen born of a risen generation with a deeply rooted and unquenchable desire for freedom. I am dying not just to attempt to end the barbarity of H-Block, or to gain the rightful recognition of a political prisoner, but primarily because what is lost in here is lost for the Republic and those wretched oppressed whom I am deeply proud to know as the ‘risen people’.

There is no sensation today, no novelty that October 27th brought. (The starting date of the original seven man hunger-strike) The usual Screws were not working. The slobbers and would-be despots no doubt will be back again tomorrow, bright and early.

I wrote some more notes to the girls in Armagh today. There is so much I would like to say about them, about their courage, determination and unquenchable spirit of resistance. They are to be what Countess Markievicz, Anne Devlin, Mary Ann McCracken, Marie MacSwiney, Betsy Gray, and those other Irish heroines are to us all. And, of course, I think of Ann Parker, Laura Crawford, Rosemary Bleakeley, and I’m ashamed to say I cannot remember all their sacred names.

Mass was solemn, the lads as ever brilliant. I ate the statutory weekly bit of fruit last night. As fate had it, it was an orange, and the final irony, it was bitter. The food is being left at the door. My portions, as expected, are quite larger than usual, or those which my cell-mate Malachy is getting.

Random Ramblings from a Republican

Please read Brian’s post today marking the 24th anniversary of the start of Bobby Sands’ hungerstrike

Stars of Freedom