SAOIRSE32

IOL

Police to quiz McCartney murder suspect

14/03/2005 - 21:10:01

One of the chief suspects in the Robert McCartney murder inquiry is to be questioned by detectives, it emerged tonight.

A solicitor for the man, one of three expelled by the IRA over the Belfast pub brawl killing, contacted police today.

It is believed investigating officers plan to interview him at a later date over allegations that he was heavily involved in the attack in Magennis’s Bar.

So far police have questioned 11 people over the horrific stabbing, including another senior Provisional dismissed from the organisation because of his suspected involvement.

With the victim’s family claiming witnesses have been intimidated out of testifying, no one has been charged.

But it has also emerged that Brendan Devine, an associate of Mr McCartney who survived the attack, has given a video-taped statement to police.

Sources close to the investigation revealed he has offered to provide a signed account of what happened on the night.

It was felt, however, that this did not advance his earlier assistance.

Meanwhile, statements made by two Sinn Féin election candidates and a former party councillor who were all in the bar on the night have been sent to the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan.

Cora Groogan, who stood in the last Assembly poll, and Deirdre Hargey, who is due to contest May’s local government election, both gave details to their solicitors.

Sean Hayes, a former south Belfast councillor, also contacted his lawyer about being in the pub.

With republicans refusing to co-operate with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, these details will be passed on through Mrs O’Loan’s office today.

A PSNI spokeswoman said tonight: “It’s not usually our policy to discuss any specific issues concerning witnesses in a live investigation.

“However, we can confirm that any individuals whose name and contact details were taken on the night have subsequently been contacted by members of the investigation team.

“Whether or not they chose to engage with police at that time is a matter for them.”

Times Online

US calls halt to Sinn Fein fundraising in IRA backlash

By Michael Evans, Defence Editor and Helen Rumbelow
March 14, 2005

THE US Government has banned Sinn Fein from fundraising following White House anger over the IRA’s continuing involvement in crime.

Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, and other members of the party have been ordered not to take part in any fundraising during their traditional St Patrick’s Day visit to America this week.

In a further blow to Sinn Fein, The Times has learnt that the British Government has set a deadline of the end of this month for a plan to stop the party from benefiting from millions of pounds of foreign donations.

Underlining the diplomatic shift against Sinn Fein and the IRA, The Times has learnt that the threat level for Irish republican terrorism in the UK has been raised for the first time since the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998.

This response follows the near-terminal blow to the peace process caused by the accusation from the head of the Northern Ireland Police Service that the IRA was responsible for a £26 million bank raid and the murder of Robert McCartney in a Belfast bar. The threat level is now “substantial”, one below “severe general” which is the current status for international terrorist threats to the UK.

The ban on fundraising was delivered privately to Mr Adams through US State Department channels. Diplomatic sources said it was made clear that such activities, normally a crucial part of Sinn Fein’s links with Irish Americans, would be unacceptable.

It is the latest in a series of hostilities from President Bush, who has frozen Mr Adams out of all official engagements during his visit to Washington and kept the doors of the White House firmly closed in his face.

US Senator Edward Kennedy has also called off talks with Mr Adams, it emerged last night as Peter King, Sinn Fein’s leading backer in the US Congress, called for the IRA to disband, saying their recent actions had fuelled growing hostility within Irish-American circles.

Paul Murphy, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, last month extended the special exemption that allows Sinn Fein and other parties in the province to raise money in the US for another two years.

But he said that this would be the last time that he wanted to give special favours to Northern Ireland parties, demanding the results of a formal consultation with all parties concerned by the end of March, The Times has learnt.

In 2000 the British Government made it illegal for parties to raise funds outside the UK. However, Northern Ireland was exempted because both the SDLP and Sinn Fein depended on fundraising in the Republic of Ireland. They were also allowed to keep donations anonymous, because of the threat of intimidation to donors.

This allowed Sinn Fein to continue to raise funds in America, which security sources said had netted them between £15 million and £20 million since the ban on such activities had been lifted by President Clinton in March 1995.

Mr Murphy said last May that he had lost patience with the loophole and wanted it done away with by the beginning of this year.

“The Government recognise that the current funding arrangements lack transparency and that they are open to abuse,” said Mr Murphy.

But after an intense summer of negotiations on the future of the Northern Ireland peace process, he backed down.

Daily Ireland

Who was the real St Patrick?

click to enlarge

St Patrick’s Day, a traditional day for spiritual renewal, is also linked with everything Irish. While the first St Patrick’s Day parade took place in the US and not in Ireland, the ‘wearing of the green’ remains an important part of this festive day.
Our patron saint is one of Christianity’s most widely known figures. For all his celebrity however, very little is known about the man associated with banishing the snakes from Ireland and the reason why you can break your Lenten promise before Easter.
It’s known St Patrick was born in Britain to wealthy parents towards the end of the fourth century. He’s believed to have died on March 17, in approximately 460AD.
Patrick is often confused with Palladius, a cleric sent by Pope Celestine in 431 to become the first bishop to Irish Christians.
There is no evidence he came from a religious family. Most of what is known about him derives from his two published works; The Confession, a spiritual autobiography, and his Epistola, a denunciation of the British mistreatment of Irish Christians.
His early life reads more like an adventure story. At 16, he was kidnapped by Irish raiders who attacked his family’s estate. He was taken to Ireland and spent six years in captivity before escaping. According to his writings, a voice which he believed to be God spoke to him in a dream, telling him to leave Ireland.
When he returned to Britain, he had another revelation in which he was told to go back to Ireland as a missionary. Patrick began religious training, which lasted 15 years. After ordination, he was sent to Ireland with a dual purpose - to minister to Christians and to convert the Irish. This contradicts the notion that Patrick introduced Christianity to Ireland.
Familiar with the Irish language and culture, he began to incorporate traditional rituals, instead of eradicating native Irish beliefs altogether, into his lessons, including using a the Celtic cross.

Daily Ireland

Letters

Hunger strike offer controversy rumbles on

Once again, I find myself having to respond to another attack from Danny Morrison (Daily Ireland, March 9).
I was wrong when I said that Danny was at the meeting in the Sinn Féin centre in Belfast on July 28.
I wasn’t there and I assumed when I should have demonstrated. Tá brón orm, Danny.
We now know that it was other republicans who omitted to tell the relatives about the Mountain Climber initiative.
As I say, the basic fact remains — the 1981 IRA external leadership had been in contact with the Mountain Climber on July 4 and again on July 19, and the families were not told about these contacts on July 28 or of the offer that he had made on both occasions.
In fact, had David Beresford not accidentally found out about the Mountain Climber when he was researching his book Ten Men Dead in 1985, I have no doubt whatsoever that neither the relatives nor the Irish people would have heard of his intervention from the republican movement.
Ask yourself why a leading republican asked me to remove all comms that had any mention of the Mountain Climber in case Beresford found out about him.
I am well aware that the republican movement is harnessing all its power to discredit me and minimise my role in the hunger strike.
Lorny McKeown was the latest in a formidable list that has launched vicious personal attacks against me in Daily Ireland [March 4].
Danny asked why I didn’t reply to Lorny’s attack. I didn’t because I didn’t know about it until Danny drew it to my attention in Daily Ireland.
I immediately went to Teach Basil to purchase that day’s newspaper.
I was aware that Lorny had made a remark because Danny had alluded to it in another attack on me in The Irish Times on March 5 but I did not attribute it to a newspaper article.
Now, whereas Danny at least presents a case against me which people can examine, Lorny’s concern was with downgrading my role in the hunger strike and gutting me personally.
Lorny can stand in the muck if he wants to. I’m not going to join him.
Danny says that I have quickly “run out of argument”. Okay, let’s look at the argument. On Monday, February 28, Bik was asked by a UTV reporter, “Who took the decision to reject that [Mountain Climber’s] offer?”
“There was no offer of that description.”
“At all?”
“Whatsoever. No offer existed.”
Bik repeated this in a full-page spread in a newspaper.
In Padraig O’Malley’s book, Biting at the Grave, the author gives an account of the exchanges between Gerry Adams and the Irish Commission for Justice and Peace that took place at a house in Andersonstown on July 6, 1981.
O’Malley says that ICJP members Father Oliver Crilly and Hugh Logue were sent for by Adams.
According to O’Malley’s sources, Adams told them that “the prisoners actually had on offer a better deal than the one the ICJP thought they were putting together”.
Again, according to O’Malley, Father Crilly remembers Adams telling him that there was “contact from someone in England working on behalf of the British government and that he [Adams] spelled out ‘what this gentleman was offering them [the prisoners]’”.
Hugh Logue is on record as saying that Adams, “had in minute detail all the concessions we [in the ICJP] were being offered”.
So, Gerry Adams seems to be confirming that there was an offer.
Danny, writing in his Daily Ireland column this week, said, “The [Mountain Climber] offer was, of course, less than the prisoners were demanding”.
So Danny contradicts Bik and concedes there was an offer.
David Beresford in his book Ten Men Dead gives an account of the exchanges between the external leadership and the Mountain Climber.
Beresford heard of the Mountain Climber from senior republicans, so his account cannot be disputed. Beresford then goes on to outline a series of concessions that the republican leadership told him was on offer.
Despite all this, Bik is still insisting that there was no offer “whatsoever”.
His entire position has been undermined, not only by me but by his allies and the evidence.
No amount of clever footwork or spin by Danny or anyone else will detract from the fact that Bik’s version of events has been holed below the waterline.
Bik says that, when he returned to our wing after meeting Danny in the camp hospital on July 5, 1981, he sent me down a comm which said that contact had been made with the Mountain Climber but, according to Bik, “There was no concrete proposals whatsoever in relation to a deal”.
After almost two weeks of having to endure a vicious and unprecedented campaign to vilify me, we finally arrive at the point where I’m sitting in my cell reading Bik’s comm about the Mountain Climber.
I have said all along that Bik sent me down the offer from the Mountain Climber and that, after considering it for a couple of hours, I called him up to the window and told him in Irish that I believed there was enough there.
He agreed with me.
But Bik says there was no offer “whatsoever”.
Adams, Danny Morrison, Beresford, O’Malley, Father Crilly, Hugh Logue and I say differently.
No doubt Danny will be racking his brain in order to counter what I’m saying to rescue Bik.
I don’t relish his task.

Richard O’Rawe

Daily Ireland

A living nightmare

Jim Clinton is convinced that RUC collusion with loyalist paramilitaries led to the brutal murder of his wife Theresa.

The 34-year-old mother of two was shot 23 times when a UDA/UFF gunman sprayed bullets through the living-room window of her Belfast home on Balfour Avenue shortly before 11.30pm on April 14, 1994.
The couple had been preparing to go to bed, and Jim was upstairs when Theresa was murdered.
“I suddenly heard a large thud, which I thought was someone trying to smash the door down but it was a large concrete block being thrown through the window,” he recalled. “Theresa began squealing and I called for her to come upstairs. Then the shooting started.”
Jim immediately ran towards an upstairs window and saw the getaway car driving off. Almost simultaneously, another car containing RUC officers stopped outside his home.
“I went downstairs and found Theresa sitting on the sofa. It was obvious she was dead. When I opened the front door, the RUC were outside and the first sight to greet me was a policeman who had harassed myself and Theresa on many occasions.
“This policeman didn’t even think of driving back down the street to try and catch the people who had just shot up the house.”
The Clintons had been constantly harassed by the RUC. Jim had been a Sinn Féin election candidate five years before the shooting. The RUC had warned him on numerous occasions that his personal details were in the hands of loyalist paramilitaries. The RUC also threatened to set Jim up for a loyalist attack by giving loyalist paramilitaries the details of his car and a taxi that he drove.
Jim said, “It’s been 11 years since Theresa was killed and, in that time, I have only spoken to the police about it once. I wanted to know why they didn’t go after the getaway car despite arriving as it was driving off. But they have never explained anything that would help me and my family come to terms with Theresa’s murder.”
Nobody has ever been charged in connection with the murder of Theresa Clinton.
The leading loyalist Joe Bratty was identified as the driver of the getaway car and arrested. Bratty was a UDA/UFF commander in the Ormeau Road area of Belfast. He was also believed to have been behind the murders of five Catholics who died during a gun attack on the Sean Graham bookmaker’s shop in 1992.
However, Bratty was freed by the RUC after irregularities at an identification parade led to the loyalist hearing the names and addresses of witnesses. The four eyewitnesses involved then refused to give evidence.
“Understandably, the witnesses refused to go any further,” said Jim. “That was a deliberate ploy to keep Joe Bratty out of jail because it is my belief that he was an RUC operative who they could have directed at any time to kill Catholics.”
The IRA executed Bratty in July 1994, just over three months after Theresa Clinton had been murdered. The man who is believed to have shot Theresa, Thomas “Tucker” Annett, was beaten to death by fellow loyalists in July 1996.
Jim said he has no regrets that both men never faced justice before a court of law.
He said, “I was quite happy with the outcome in July 1994. I am nowhere near the stage of forgiving or forgetting what happened to Theresa and I am still angry to this day.”
Jim said he also believed that Theresa was just one of many people to have died as a result of RUC collusion with loyalist paramilitaries in south and east Belfast.
“In my view, all these cases — some of whom were teenagers and friends of mine — are proof of collusion either by direct involvement of the RUC or the involvement of loyalists being switched on and off to suit their handlers in British intelligence. And in most cases, British intelligence supplied the weapons,” he said.
Siobhán, Jim’s three-year-old daughter, slept through the gun attack that claimed the life of her mother. His other daughter, Roseanne, then aged 13, heard the shooting but Jim managed to prevent her from seeing Theresa’s body.
Jim said life had been a “living nightmare” for himself and his two daughters since Theresa’s murder. Jim has since remarried. His second wife, Rose-Anne, lost her previous husband, Michael Gilbride, to a UDA/UFF gun attack in the lower Ormeau area of Belfast in November 1992.
Jim said he felt that families who had lost loved ones through attacks involving security force collusion were “forgotten about”. However, he said he was extremely grateful for the support from victims’ groups such as Relatives for Justice and An Fhírinne.
“Since getting together, myself and Rose-Anne have struggled every day of the week to ensure that our children can have some sort of normal life. But we are lucky to have each other to bounce things off,” he said.
“No one from the British government, the Irish government, the RUC/PSNI or from America has offered to meet me since Theresa was killed.
“We realised a long time ago that, when the dust settles, it’s only yourself or your close family who are really there for you.”

Daily Ireland

End of the road for tower block

14 March 2005

**See New Ballymun - Regeneration and Demolition

A landmark building in Dublin was demolished yesterday to make way for a massive regeneration project.

A 100-metre exclusion zone was placed around the McDermott Tower on Ballymun’s main street – which was once home to 90 families – before it was demolished with a controlled implosion.
Housing Minister Noel Ahern, who carried out the countdown to the demolition, said: “When the dust settles, the skyline will have changed forever and another stage in the regeneration of Ballymun will have commenced.”
It took just a second for the 1,700 detonators to go off as part of 30 separate blasts - which brought the 42-metre high tower and 8,500 tonnes of rubble crumbling to the ground.
Gardai policed the 100-metre security zone for an hour before the company Tinnelly Demolition razed the building.
The Sean McDermott Tower was the only building suitable for a controlled implosion as there was a large amount of space around it. One of the other high-rise 15-storey towers, all named after the signatories of the 1916 proclamation of independence, has been taken down floor by floor with special equipment.
Ciaran Murray, managing director of Ballymun Regeneration, said: “It was an extremely exciting moment for the new Ballymun.
“It was demolished by implosion within seconds and Minister Ahern and locals did the countdown.
“Everything went as planned, which shows that the three months planning this was well spent.”
The demolition of the tower was overshadowed by the death of a worker, Billy Helm, who died last month as he prepared the McDermott Tower for its demolition.
Mr Murray said another two of the seven towers would be taken down by special equipment by the end of the year.
A hotel and offices will eventually be built on the site of the 15-storey high tower – part of a one-kilometre long retail street at the heart of the 2.5 billion euro regeneration project to re-develop the notorious estate which has been hit by crime and drugs problems since the towers went up in the 1960s.
Ballymun Regeneration has organised an international artist, Jochen Gertz, to head a project to commemorate the signatories of the 1916 proclamation of independence, after which the towers had been named.
Mr Ahern said the residents of the 90 flats have already been provided with new homes in the area as part of the redevelopment.
More than 600 homes have been built and another 600 are still being constructed.
“It is a vote of confidence in the new Ballymun, which is forming before our eyes, that so many residents decided to stay and become part of the new community and the new town,” he said.
Mr Ahern said the new facilities opening shortly include a swimming pool and two neighbourhood centres.

Daily Ireland

Possible LVF link to missing woman

Reports that loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the murder of a missing Co Down woman could frustrate the police investigation into her disappearance, a politician warned yesterday.
Lisa Dorrian, from Bangor, Co Down, has not been seen since she left a party at a caravan park in the nearby village of Ballyhalbert two weeks ago.
Graffiti implicating the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in the disappearance of the 25-year-old shop assistant has been painted on walls in the village where Lisa went missing.
Messages painted on the entrance of Ballyhalbert’s Moatlands Estate say ‘PSNI: ask the LVF where Lisa is’ and ‘LVF drug-dealing scum’.
However, the PSNI said speculation over the case was not helpful and it was concentrating on solid lines of inquiry.
Kieran McCarthy, an Alliance MLA in North Down, also expressed fears that linking Lisa’s disappearance to loyalist paramilitaries could create a climate of intimidation similar to that which prevented witnesses to the Robert McCartney killing from coming forward.
He said, “Speculation tying Lisa’s disappearance to the LVF is very worrying because it might put people off from coming forward to the police. We have seen what happened with the Robert McCartney case and my fear is that something similar could happen here.
“I would urge anyone with information to do their duty and contact the police. We have to remember Lisa’s family. They should not have to suffer any longer than they already have done.”
No one has heard from Lisa since she went missing on Monday, February 28 and police have said they are treating her disappearance as murder.
Air and land searches have been carried out along the Co Down coast, with police divers also brought in to strengthen the effort.
Two men arrested and questioned about Lisa’s murder were released without charge during the weekend.
Detectives investigating the case returned to the caravan park where Lisa was last seen on Saturday to talk to caravan owners and local residents.
The detective in charge of the inquiry, Chief Inspector Mark Dornan, said, “It has been necessary for police conducting the investigation to open some caravans with the permission of site wardens. However, as far as possible we want to work with caravan owners.”
Commenting on the graffiti linking the LVF to Lisa’s appearance, Insp Dornan said “It wasn’t helpful.”
“Speculation isn’t helpful for the family or for the police inquiry,” he said.
“What we want to deal with is facts and evidence.”

Daily Ireland

Ex-IRA man to be priest

A former IRA bomb-maker yesterday stood up in a church and spoke about his plans to become a priest.
Shane Paul O’Doherty received 30 life sentences in the 1970s for his part in an IRA letter-bombing campaign in Ireland and Britain.
Among his targets during the campaign was Bishop Gerard Tickle, who was then a religious representative with the British army.
The bomb sent to the bishop is believed to have been hidden inside a Bible but it failed to explode.
Mr O’Doherty left the IRA while in prison and was released in 1989.
He began a theology course at St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, Co Kildare, last year as part of his preparations for the priesthood.
The Derry man yesterday spoke publicly for the first time about his new career.
Speaking to parishioners at Holy Family Church in the city, Mr O’Doherty said he had joined the IRA when he was 15 years old. He said he later became the organisation’s chief bomb-maker in Derry and admitted that he had helped blow up “half of the city”.
Mr O’Doherty said the IRA had chosen him to lead a major letter-bomb campaign against a variety of public and military figures.
However, he said that, after he had been imprisoned, he wrote to a number of his targets and apologised for sending the devices to them.
He said he became interested in religion after reading the Bible while incarcerated in Wormwood Scrubs in London.
Mr O’Doherty said that, because he had turned his back on the IRA, he was placed on a wing with sex offenders when he was repatriated to Long Kesh jail in the North.
After being released from prison, he took part in a television documentary during which he returned to Derry to talk about life as an IRA man.
Mr O’Doherty yesterday said he also worked in Sweden for a time before eventually returning to Ireland to work with homeless people in Dublin.
He told Massgoers yesterday that he later decided to become a priest and entered St Patrick’s College last August.
The former IRA man said he had been invited to speak at the church services yesterday by Holy Family parish priest Fr Paddy O’Kane, who had visited him in prison. Mr O’Doherty said he hoped that his talk would offer encouragement to the families of anyone who was dealing with extremes in their lives, such as politics or alcohol.
Fr O’Kane was also in the news last year after he invited the mother of a gay man to speak to his parishioners following a series of homophobic attacks in the city.
The Derry priest was praised by many people for his approach towards helping people understand more about the problems faced by members of the gay community and their families.

BreakingNews.ie

Three arrested in dissident republican crackdown

14/03/2005 - 17:04:46

Three people were arrested and bomb-making material recovered today in searches across Ireland as part of a crackdown on dissident republicans.

A garda spokesman said officers searched premises in Dublin, Louth, Cork and Limerick as part of an ongoing operation against the organisation responsible for the Omagh bombing.

“During the course of these searches a number of items including bomb making equipment and a firearm were located,” he said.

“Three people were arrested and detained under Section 30 of the Offences against The State Act.

“The operation is ongoing.”

IOL

Second SF candidate denies seeing McCartney brawl

14/03/2005 - 17:06:50

A second Sinn Féin election candidate was in the Belfast pub where IRA murder victim Robert McCartney was attacked, it emerged tonight.

As Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams braced himself for a fierce US backlash over the murder, the party disclosed that Deirdre Hargey was still inside Magennis’s Bar when police first arrived.

But she denied seeing the brawl leading to the horrific knife attack which left Mr McCartney, aged 33, dying on the street outside.

Ms Hargey, aged 23, is a community development worker who is due to stand in May’s local government elections.

Ms Hargey, who has given a statement to her lawyer, insisted: “I did not witness the fracas in the bar, or the incident outside the bar.”

Cora Groogan, another Sinn Féin candidate, confirmed this weekend that she was in the bar.

With Sinn Féin facing unprecedented pressure over the murder, the link to two of the party’s new generation of political representatives will cause a beleaguered and isolated Mr Adams huge embarrassment in Washington and New York later this week.

He has already been snubbed three times for St Patrick’s Day events on Thursday and faces tough questioning from the Irish-American lobby, including some of his closest supporters.

Senator Ted Kennedy called off planned talks amid alarming allegations of Provisional crime operations.

The Sinn Féin leader has also been refused a meeting with President Bush at the White House.

And he will not be attending the St Patrick’s Day lunch hosted by the Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert.

To compound the crisis engulfing the republican leadership, Mr McCartney’s five sisters and fiancee Bridgeen Hagans are also heading to America this week on the next stage of their campaign to force the father-of-two’s killers into court.

Alongside meetings with President Bush and Senator Kennedy, private talks have been set up with Senator Hillary Clinton.

The family believe witnesses to the merciless murder have been frightened into silence by IRA men involved.

Even though the Provos have expelled three volunteers and Sinn Féin has suspended seven members over the January 30 attack, frustrated detectives have yet to charge anyone because no-one has agreed to testify.

Nuala O’Loan, the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, has offered to take statements from those refusing to deal with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Her staff, who expect to receive accounts from those in Magennis’s on the night Mr McCartney was battered and stabbed to death, were still waiting for the first to arrive tonight.

ON THIS DAY

14 March 1984

Sinn Fein leader shot in street attack

Gunmen have shot and wounded the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, in an attack in central Belfast.

He was hit in the neck, shoulder and arm as several gunmen riddled his car with about 20 bullets.

Three people travelling with Mr Adams were also wounded in the shooting, which took place in front of terrified shoppers.

None was seriously hurt and a fourth man escaped injury.

After the shooting, under-cover plain clothes police officers seized three suspects.

‘Legitimate target’

Mr Adams, 35, was on a lunch break during a trial in which he is facing obstruction charges.

He was taken to Belfast hospital and had surgery to remove three bullets. He is said to be in a stable condition.

The outlawed Loyalist group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, has admitted carrying out the attack.

In a statement issued hours after the shooting, the UFF claimed Mr Adams was “responsible for the continuing murder campaign being waged against Ulster protestants and is therefore regarded as a legitimate target of war”.

A Sinn Fein spokesman confirmed the three other people hurt were also members of its organisation. They were among Mr Adam’s co-defendants in the dock.

The charges stem from an incident during the run-up to last June’s general election, when the men were accused of trying to stop police from tearing down an Irish tricolour in Belfast.

Six weeks ago, Mr Adams said he believed he had a 90% chance of being assassinated.

In Context

Gerry Adams became MP for Belfast West and was elected Sinn Fein president in 1983, making him a pivotal figure in the republican movement.

From his hospital bed, Gerry Adams, accused the British army of having prior knowledge of the attack and allowing it to go ahead.

Mr Adams left hospital five days after the attack, but reportedly still suffers pain from the injuries.

He has denied ever being a member of the IRA.

Two Loyalist gunmen, John Gregg, 27, and Gerard Welsh, 34, were jailed for 18 years in March 1985 for the attempted murder of Mr Adams. A third man, getaway driver Colin Gray, 28, was sentenced to 12 years.

ON THIS DAY

14 March 1991

Birmingham Six freed after 16 years

The Birmingham Six have walked free from jail after their convictions for the murder of 21 people in two pubs were quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Paddy Joe Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Richard McIlkenny, Gerry Hunter, Billy Power and Johnny Walker, who between them have served 96 years for a crime they did not commit, were released onto the streets outside the Old Bailey in London at 1605 GMT.

They were greeted by cheering crowds, as they punched their fists in the air and waved celebrating their first taste of freedom.

Richard McIlkenny was first to speak. “It’s good to see you all,” he said. “We’ve waited a long time for this - 16 years because of hypocrisy and brutality. But every dog has its day and we’re going to have ours.”

Paddy Hill was next to step up to the microphone. “For 16 and a half years we have been used as political scapegoats,” he said. “The police told us from the start they knew we hadn’t done it. They didn’t care who had done it.”

The six were arrested in 1974. They had left Birmingham shortly before the bombs exploded in two city centre pubs in the bloodiest ever IRA attack.

The Mulberry Bush pub and the Tavern were both destroyed in the blasts. Twenty-one people were killed, more than 160 injured.

The men claimed in court they had confessed only after being beaten by police.

But the court did not believe them and so began their long battle for justice. In January 1987, their first appeal was rejected.

But the campaign for their release gathered pace headed by the Labour MP Chris Mullin.

A new inquiry by Devon and Cornwall Police into the original inquiry uncovered irregularities in the police case against the Six. It paved the way for today’s appeal.

New scientific tests show statements made by the Birmingham Six were altered at a later date.

Scientists also admitted in court that forensic tests which were originally said to confirm two of the six had been handling explosives could have produced the same results from handling cigarettes.

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, has been one of the men’s supporters. He said: “It was a moment so many of us have waited so long for and I think generated in all of us a tremendous sense of excitement, relief and joy.”

A Royal Commission has been set up to investigate this and other recent miscarriages of justice. It is expected to report within two years.

IOL

Antiwar protestors’ trial collapses in Dublin

14/03/2005 - 11:57:33

The trial of five antiwar protestors charged with damaging a US aircraft at Shannon Airport has collapsed at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court following legal arguments in the absence of the jury.

“Your function in this trial is at an end. As a result of submissions made to me, I am going to discharge you,” Judge Frank O’Donnell told the jury on what was to be day six of the trial, which was heard in a courtroom constantly packed with antiwar protestors.

Judge O’Donnell told the jury he was not going into the reasons for its dismissal “because there will be another trial”. He also made it known he did not want the reasons for the trial’s ending to be published as it might be prejudicial to any future trial.

“We are here to ensure that the accused get a fair trial; that all fair proceedings are followed; and that justice is not only done but seen to be done,” he said. If there was the remotest possibility that all such conditions were not being satisfied, he said, he had to call a halt to the proceedings.

The five accused were Mr Damien Moran a student priest with the Holy Ghost Fathers in Dublin and Mr Ciaran O’Reilly an Australian, both working with homeless people and living at the same address on South Circular Road, Rialto; Ms Karen Fallon a Scottish marine biologist, also living on South Circular Road; Ms Nuin Dunlop, from the United States of America, a trained counsellor who lives in Dublin city centre; and copy editor Ms Deirdre Clancy, of The Spinnaker, Alverno, Clontarf.

They all pleaded not guilty to one count of damaging a US naval plane and to causing similar damage to two glass door panels at Aer Rianta at Shannon Airport on February 3, 2003.

The case will be mentioned before Judge O’Donnell tomorrow with regard to changing the bail conditions of some of the accused. It will then be put back on the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court list to fix the date for a new trial.

Sunday Life

Collusion’ case judge appointed

By Chris Anderson
14 March 2005

THE Dublin government has appointed the President of the District Court, Justice Peter Smithwick, to investigate allegations of Garda/IRA collusion in the murders of two senior RUC officers.

Informed sources confirmed yesterday that Justice Smithwick had “agreed in principal” to chair the tribunal of inquiry into the deaths of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in March 1989.

The two officers were returning from a meeting at Dundalk garda station when IRA gunmen ambushed their unmarked car near Jonesboro in south Armagh.

A garda officer is alleged to have tipped off the IRA about the meeting.

A 2003 report by retired Canadian judge Peter Cory into allegations of collusion recommended an inquiry into the Breen and Buchanan murders.

The report referred to a statement from ‘Kevin Fulton’, a former Force Research Unit (FRU) agent, who infiltrated the IRA in Co Louth.

Fulton identified a garda officer and claimed he witnessed him passing information to a senior IRA man in Dundalk.

Fulton, a former RIR soldier, is expected to be a prime witness at the Breen and Buchanan Inquiry.

Meanwhile, the father of Billy Wright says he has yet to receive any information about the public inquiry into the death of the LVF leader, chaired by Scots judge Lord Randal MacLean.

Said David Wright: “Neither I, nor my legal team, can get any information from the inquiry team.

“They didn’t even have an office until last Monday.

“I don’t know where or when the Inquiry will take place or what legal representation I am entitled to.”

Sunday Life

Stone seeks ‘Mad dog’ meeting

By Stephen Breen
14 March 2005

GRAVEYARD killer Michael Stone last night vowed to confront Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair over his shock recent visit to Ulster.

Stone - who fell out with Adair after labelling him a homosexual in 2003 - urged Sunday Life to arrange an “open” meeting between the pair.

The former UFF hitman hit out at Adair, who has denied being gay, after we told how he had stood outside the home of his bitter enemy - suspected UDA double-agent Jim Spence.

But the killer-turned-artist said Adair still has questions to answer about the murder of former UDA leader John ‘Grug’ Gregg.

Adair - now back in his Bolton bolt-hole - told us he has no interest in a debate with his former comrade.

Stone accused the ousted terror chief of “running scared” over his request for a meeting.

Said Stone: “I am willing to meet ‘Daft Dog’ anytime - just me and him, and in a public place, if it makes him happier.

“I would even go to Bolton to meet him, because there are certain things I want to ask him.

“He turned up in the Shankill as an act of bravado, so he shouldn’t be afraid of meeting me. I won’t be armed or won’t threaten violence.”

But Adair branded Stone’s request for a meeting as “a publicity stunt”.

He said: “Nobody takes this man serious anymore so why should I?

“I don’t have to answer to him about anything.”