SAOIRSE32

BreakingNews.ie

McDonald denies Short Strand ‘culture of fear’

25/03/2005 - 15:56:50

Sinn Féin’s National Chairman Mary Lou McDonald has denied the existence of a “culture of fear” in Belfast’s Short Strand which is preventing witnesses to Robert McCartney’s murder from coming forward with evidence.

Dublin MEP McDonald said today the McCartney family is meeting with Gerry Adams today and claimed they have the continued support of Sinn Féin in their fight for justice.

The McCartneys claim that the IRA has taken back one of the members it expelled over the killing, and they are questioning the group’s commitment to their campaign for truth.

Ms McDonald denied that there was any pressure on people to keep quiet about what they saw on the night: “I think there is a myth amongst certain sections of the media, perhaps a deliberately constructed one, around this business of fear in the community.

“It is certainly not a fear of republicans in terms of bringing this information forward. We couldn’t be more crystal clear, the IRA, Sinn Féin, republicans everywhere have called for people to bring the information forward,” she claimed.

BreakingNews.ie

‘Border Fox’ given temporary release

25/03/2005 - 17:41:12

Republican prisoner Dessie O’Hare is out on temporary release from Castlerea Prison, it was confirmed today.

O’Hare, the former leader of the INLA who was known as the “Border Fox”, is serving a 40-year sentence for the ransom kidnapping of a Dublin dentist, Dr John O’Grady, during which the tops of two of the man’s fingers were cut off.

A spokesman for the Irish Prison Service said: “He is out for a couple of days from prison on a programme that has been put in place. It is standard prison practice.

“He has had a couple of outings in the past few years, they passed without any incident.”

O’Hare, from Co Armagh, has served over 17-years in prison for the attack and kidnapping during 1987. He was transferred from Portlaoise Prison to Co Roscommon prison in late 2002.

The spokesman for the Prison Service said that O’Hare was only one of around 200 prisoners currently out on temporary release. “He is due back in this weekend,” he said.

O’Hare, who was also released for four-days last Christmas, would be required to report daily to a designated garda station during his release and Castlerea Prison may also have put other restrictions in place.

Daily Ireland

Hunger strike revisited

Think you know the story of the 1981 hunger strikes? Think again. We’ve all seen Bobby Sands’ emaciated body, the footage of people honking car horns in glee at his election, that priest comparing conditions to an open sewer in Calcutta. You might even say that Richard O’Rawe’s Blanketmen (New Island), is – whisper it – old news.
All this is playing in the shallow end of a powerful tale. O’Rawe pulls the reader into the deep water till they’re gulping for air.
Rather than the ‘skin and bones’ Bobby Sands, the 2-D icon for a thousand murals, you meet a “man for all seasons”; softly spoken with a flair for sing-songs.
We are told that some prisoners weren’t so happy about the downside of the “dirty protests”, and were more than happy to face the wrath of the prison leadership rather than share their cells with maggots.
Such earthy images bring O’Rawe’s time in Crumlin Road to life. The mounting brutality of the ‘screws’ is ever-present. One tale tells of a prisoner who begged for salt to gargle away the mouth ulcers that tormented him. The guards pinned him down and force fed him two massive handfuls of salt.
The touch isn’t always so heavy. O’Rawe describes with great affection the prisoners smuggling in tobacco (brought in by a priest – hidden where no tobacco should go), and blowing the forbidden smoke under the doors to infuriate the guards. In one hilarious anecdote, O’Rawe describes the false sacrament of confession that experienced prisoners would trick rookies into, with the old hand posing as a priest.
Once the venial sins had been dealt with, they would probe into intimate details about the young prisoner’s love life. The joke was on the veteran: O’Rawe’s partner in sin was none other than the his companion’s daughter.
However it is the hunger strikes that dominate the book. O’Rawe steers clear of the traditional Irish, us versus them perspective.
Instead, he paints the story as a three way struggle between the “bosses” of the British, the “shop stewards” of the IRA army council, and the “workers” of the prisoners. To quote O’Rawe’s socialist father, “the workers always get shafted”.
He portrays the army council as intransigent as the British – insisting the prisoners stick to their demands, even when it was clear that the British wouldn’t move an inch.
As O’Rawe puts it, this policy of “no compromise” meant “no strategy”. He describes a decline in prison morale, the frustration of the situation and the overwhelming guilt in harrowingly matter-of-fact prose.
Even if I had wanted to put the book down, there wasn’t a chance.
O’Rawe was, and is, a committed republican. Yet he pulls no punches, saying the strategies of both hunger strikes was “fatally flawed”, and he is unrelenting in his criticism of the Army Council and the outdated elements of IRA ideology.
Even Gerry Adams, a “messianic figure” and a tireless negotiator, is seen to be covering his own back at times.
Any who think of the IRA as an inherently criminal organisation should read this book. So should people who think they can do no wrong.

Daily Ireland

The legacy of Easter Week 1916 is still resonating throughout Irish politics

BY Tom McGurk

**Click thumbnail to view close-up of mural from the collection of CRAZYFENIAN’S Pics of Republican Murals - Belfast

No matter how much lip service they pay to the ideal, Irish national politics has for generations had problems with the various political legacies of 1916.
Political parties North and South have competed to inherit the mantle but it was always a mixed blessing.
Until 1916, nationalist ambitions were grounded in the British political tradition; election to Westminster and the pursuit of Ireland’s political aspirations as part of British politics.
1916 challenged that consensus in two fundamental ways. First, it rejected the notion that Irish separatism - that is, Home Rule - was within the gift of the British political establishment.
Second and more critically, it asserted, in the face of colonisation, the right of the Irish to bear arms in their own country.
Where Home Rule was a demand for a more equitable share in colonisation - a native part-ownership of the whole process - 1916 asserted the unalienable right of the Irish people to the sole charge of their own destiny.
Even more critically in terms of the politics of Ireland for the next century, it insisted on the moral right to bear arms in pursuit of Irish separatism, whether or not such an approach had a popular mandate.
Like all revolutionaries everywhere, 1916 laid down that the revolution - usually armed - comes first and then the people will follow.
Ever since, the Irish political establishments, North and South, have had endless trouble in paying lip service to the 1916 legacy and at the same time keeping it at a safe distance. This Easter weekend, for example, the Irish state’s commemoration of 1916 will be perfunctory, if at all.
So complex is the Irish political discourse that the competing traditions of armed resistance and constitutional politics are never to be taken too lightly. Add partition to the equation and the historic argument has gone on for nearly a century.
In truth, the Irish people very quickly abandoned the 1916 revolutionary ethos. Despite later protestations, neither the first nor second Dáil affirmed the right of the IRA to fight the war of independence on its behalf. In fact, it was the volunteers who asserted themselves to be the Irish Republican Army and who ever afterwards enjoyed a complex and difficult relationship with the members of the Dáil.
For example, at one stage after the Treaty was signed and the first Cumann Na Gael Government came to the IRA seeking that they swear an oath of allegiance to the Dáil, the IRA refused.
As Ernie O’Malley pointed out in his memoirs: “After all, why did they need that? We had already sworn an oath of allegiance to the Republic. And suppose the Dáil settled for less than a Republic?”
O’Malley’s memoir vividly illustrated the distinction between revolutionary politics and parliamentary consensus. Even the current consensus that asserts that the Civil War erupted because of the oath of allegiance to the British monarchy contained in the Treaty is disingenuous.
In fact, the crisis arose in the first place because of the dispute between parliamentary authority and revolutionary authority.
To the IRA, by the time the first shots were fired in the Civil War, the Treaty government led by Michael Collins had abandoned the republic. To them Collins was now imposing post-Treaty British policy on Ireland.
Equipped with British artillery, and having recruited a new national army largely composed of ex-World War I Irish veterans and a small part of the original IRA, his fight was to compose 26-county dominion status and not a republic.
That a majority of popular 26-county democratic opinion supported Collins mattered not to those who still asserted “1916” moral superiority.
After the Civil War as Eamon De Valera attempted to convert the defeated republican forces into a political movement, he again came up against the 1916 lesson.
Sinn Féin, the party he led at the time, would not recognise Leinster House and he was forced to form Fianna Fáil. After he took them into the Dáil, he made numerous efforts to unify the republican movement and bring what was left of the IRA into Fianna Fáil. For example, in 1932 he had his number two, Frank Aiken, suggest a merger. The IRA listened but would not come in. Within five years, as they consistently asserted their separate political agenda, he was forced to first jail them and finally ban them.
Effectively from then on the IRA was redundant in the 26 counties as a political force and it wasn’t until after World War II that a new generation of the IRA ceased to attack the Southern state and began to concentrate on the North and partition. Their 1950s campaign achieved very little except to leave behind a generation of veterans who emerged with the Provisional IRA in 1969.
Not surprisingly, their attitude to parliamentary politics North and South from 1969 until the Belfast Agreement in 1998 was of the 1916 variety. Despite the fury of the Southern political establishment and the despair of constitutional politics in the North, the IRA bore allegiance only to themselves and the “moral rights” as asserted in the 1916 tradition.
Down to the present day the current crisis in the republican movement is directly descended from the original “revolutionary” as against “popular mandate” dispute. In this contest, the “ballot box and Armalite” slogan is therefore historically fascinating. In short, in almost a hundred years, even allowing for a brief period of crossover during the War of Independence, it has never been tried before.
No wonder that at this particular moment, the current republican movement is experiencing such difficulty. No wonder the Southern political establishment has been so insistent on burying 1916 in a political consensus that ignores so many questions.
However, by contrast, 1916 as a proto-type of anti-colonial assertion of national sovereignty had an extraordinary impact on 20th century world history.
Across the British Empire from India to Africa and then into the Middle East, the lessons of the “foggy dew” spread like a plague on imperial assumptions. The ghosts of Pearse and Connolly became symbolic anti-colonial stereotypes across the globe.
Whatever about Ireland the proclamation went about and the world was never the same again.

Tom McGurk is a writer and broadcaster based in Dublin.

CAIN: Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 24 April 1916

**Click to read - from Spencer Library - Special Collections

POBLACHT NA hÉIREANN
THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
OF THE
IRISH REPUBLIC
TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND

IRISHMEN AND IRISHWOMEN: In the name of God and of the dead generations from which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.

Having organised and trained her manhood through her secret revolutionary organisation, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and through her open military organisations, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army, having patiently perfected her discipline, having resolutely waited for the right moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that moment, and supported by her exiled children in America and by gallant allies in Europe, but relying in the first on her own strength, she strikes in full confidence of victory.

We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies, to be sovereign and indefeasible. The long usurpation of that right by a foreign people and government has not extinguished the right, nor can it ever be extinguished except by the destruction of the Irish people. In every generation the Irish people have asserted their right to national freedom and sovereignty; six times during the past three hundred years they have asserted it in arms. Standing on that fundamental right and again asserting it in arms in the face of the world, we hereby proclaim the Irish Republic as a Sovereign Independent State, and we pledge our lives and the lives of our comrades in arms to the cause of its freedom, of its welfare, and of its exaltation among the nations.

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all of the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

Until our arms have brought the opportune moment for the establishment of a permanent National Government, representative of the whole people of Ireland and elected by the suffrages of all her men and women, the Provisional Government, hereby constituted, will administer the civil and military affairs of the Republic in trust for the people.

We place the cause of the Irish Republic under the protection of the Most High God, Whose blessing we invoke upon our arms, and we pray that no one who serves that cause will dishonour it by cowardice, inhumanity, or rapine. In this supreme hour the Irish nation must, by its valour and discipline, and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worthy of the august destiny to which it is called.

Signed on behalf of the Provisional Government:

THOMAS J. CLARKE
SEAN Mac DIARMADA

THOMAS MacDONAGH
P. H. PEARSE

EAMONN CEANNT
JAMES CONNOLLY

JOSEPH PLUNKETT

Daily Ireland

TAKE FIVE: The lives they led

BY Laurence McKeown

At Easter time we remember those who gave their lives in the struggle for the Republic; family members, close friends, neighbours, schoolmates, and others known to us only through song and text. Too often we interpret, “given their lives for the Republic”, as applying only to those who died in battle. We don’t immediately think of those who endured poverty, harassment, torture and imprisonment as they struggled for the vision of a better society and the impact their activism had upon their families, parents, partners and children. Leaving hardships aside, what too of the opportunities in life they denied themselves? The comforts and rewards that would have come easy to them had they applied their skills, commitment and dedication to the pursuit of more individualistically oriented goals. To turn an ideal into a reality requires conviction and carries a price tag. To move a struggle forward requires more than cheap talk.
The republicans convicted of the killing of Garda Gerry McCabe recently issued a statement apologising for his killing and stating that they no longer wished the issue of their release to be a stumbling block to future negotiations. It’s not that the men now think they are not entitled to release under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement. They believe that as much today as at any time in the past when they pursued numerous legal challenges to their continued incarceration. But for the overall good of the peace process, for progress, for the Republic, they are prepared to endure further years of imprisonment. They are to be commended in their selfless stance.
Maybe those who killed Robert McCartney will reflect on the actions of the prisoners in Castlerea and consider how they too could help further the cause that they signed up to? Did they ever ponder what sacrifices they might one day have to make? Or was being in the IRA more important in itself than the goal for which that organisation struggled?
Romanticism may well regard falling in combat on the battlefield as the only true manifestation of martyrdom, but it rarely happens that way.
It’s more about a daily slog, about hardships, anxieties, fears. It’s about taking harsh decisions in the cold light of day that you know will impact greatly upon you personally. It’s about giving up the personal for the collective.
When we think of our patriot dead it’s about the lives they led and the courage they displayed; not their deaths.

Laurence McKeown was a republican prisoner for 16 years in Long Kesh and spent 70 days on the 1981 hunger strike. He is the author of a doctoral thesis, the co-author of a feature film, H3 and two plays, The Laughter of Our Children and A Cold House. **He also wrote Out of Time - Irish Republican Prisoners Long Kesh 1972-2000.

Daily Ireland

Interface trouble brews

**Photo - CCTV cam in area from WHITEWELL UNDER SIEGE - Please visit for more information and photos

Community leaders at a notorious Belfast interface have called for calm after a series of attacks on nationalist homes.

On Tuesday, loyalists from the White City estate in the north of the city threw paint at four homes in the neighbouring nationalist area of Longlands.
Other nationalist homes on the Serpentine Road, which is separated from the White City by a six-metre-high fence, were attacked by loyalist stone-throwers.
The latest sectarian attacks came less than 24 hours after 12-year-old Catholic teenager Megan Brown was assaulted by loyalists on the Whitewell Road.
Prior to this attack, Protestant homes in the area also had paint thrown at them.
Lynne Noble’s ten-year-old son Terence McDonald was one of those injured in Tuesday night’s disturbances.
The schoolboy was hit on the face by a brick thrown by loyalists as he played with friends in the back garden of his home on the Serpentine Road.
Ms Noble said her family would now be moving out of the area.
“I can’t take any more,” she said. “I have three children, all aged under ten, and I feel that their lives are in danger.
“They don’t want to live here any longer, and who can blame them? Living in this part of north Belfast is like living in a war zone at times.”
North Belfast Sinn Féin councillor David Kennedy said Tuesday’s attacks were unjustifiable and purely sectarian.
“Local nationalist residents were very concerned following the sectarian attacks last weekend.
“However, their fears have not been alleviated by subsequent events in the area.
“These are worrying developments and I am urging nationalists to be extremely vigilant in the coming days.
Loyalism is doing what it does best in a political vacuum - attacking vulnerable targets in the knowledge that very little pressure will be brought to bear on them,” said Mr Kennedy.
Whitewell community worker Paul McKernon said that, despite calls for calm, there was potential for fresh trouble in the area at the weekend.
He said: “There will be a republican band parade in the Whitewell area on Easter Sunday.
“Although it will stay entirely within the nationalist community, loyalists have indicated they will protest by blocking sections of the Whitewell Road on Saturday evening.
“I’m calling for cool heads and urging loyalist community representatives to ensure there is not a repeat of the missile-throwing incidents and attacks we have seen over the last few days.”
Mr McKernon said the catalyst for the latest violence was a loyalist band parade held at the end of February by the Ulster Defence Association in support of the Whitewell Defenders.
“The PSNI escorted loyalists past nationalist homes and that caused anger within the community. Since then, things have gone from bad to worse.
“There is an awful lot of tension in Whitewell at the moment. The area is ready to explode.
“I am calling on everyone to take a step back,” said Mr McKernon.
Ulster Political Research Group spokesman Sammy Duddy, who gives political advice to the UDA, echoed this call for calm.
“Violence is pointless. Nationalists and unionists should be working together to ensure people can live in peace.
“Both communities are suffering in Whitewell for no reason,” he said.

Daily Ireland

Death of a music legend

Ireland’s traditional music community was saddened yesterday by the news of the death of legendary fiddle player, Sean Maguire.
Mr Maguire’s friend and one of the greatest exponents of Irish traditional music, Joe Burke, last night expressed the wide sense of loss felt across the country.
“It’s a massive loss to Irish traditional music as he had an enormous effect on Irish music in the twentieth century,” Mr Burke said.
“Right from the early 1940s he astounded audiences and other musicians with his skills. There was nobody else like him. He had a way with music that was unique.”
Mr Maguire suffered a stroke a number of months ago and passed away shortly after 8am yesterday.
He was born in Belfast on December 26, 1927, into a family with a rich musical tradition.
His father, John, played piccolo, concert flute, whistle and fiddle while his brother Jim, who passed away in early 2002, was also highly respected as a fiddle player.
Mr Maguire had played the fiddle since he was 12-years-old and famously turned down an invitation to join the Belfast Symphony Orchestra because he felt more at home playing traditional music.
“I decided to devote my techniques to the furtherance and promotion of my culture,” he once said.
Over the years he became an accomplished musician playing the piano, guitar, concert flute, whistle and uillean pipes.
In 1948 he joined the Malachy Sweeney Céilí Band, playing alongside his father John before he formed The Sean Maguire Céilí Band, playing all over Ireland and England and making a number of solo, group and céilí albums, and later played with the Four Star Quartet.
He toured the USA and Canada in the early 1950s playing to packed audiences in Carnegie Hall and he also appeared on the prestigious Ed Sullivan televsion show.
In the 1960s he played with the Gael-linn Cabaret before meeting accordionist Joe Burke. They formed a lifelong musical friendship in the late 1960s and played together for years.
“In the early 1970s we played a lot together all over Ireland and Britain. We played right across England and Scotland and we even played on the Shetland Islands,” Mr Burke told Daily Ireland yesterday.
“He was never the same man two days in a row as he was such a colourful character and he was larger than life. He was such a great conversationalist, was always great company and he was liked by everyone he met.”
Mr Maguire also played with Barney McKenna from the Dubliners and their duet on The Mason’s Apron is revered as a traditional music classic.
He also gave classes at the Clonard Traditional School, run by the McPeakes, and later at the Andersonstown Music School.
In the 1980s cancer of the throat forced him to withdraw from public performance.
But spirit and determination helped him overcome it and he had a speech valve fitted and returned to living a normal life.
He resumed his master classes, interviews and concerts.
His love affair with Irish traditional music continued right up until his death yesterday.
Mr Maguire will be taken to St Luke’s Church, Twinbrook, Belfast on Sunday afternoon before burial in Milltown Cemetery, Belfast, after 10am mass on Monday.

Belfast Telegraph

Transfer of police from forkhill ‘part of review’

By Jonathan McCambridge
25 March 2005

Policing services in south Armagh are to be transferred from Forkhill army base to Crossmaglen police station, it was today announced.

For years south Armagh has been the only part of Northern Ireland where all police movement is by Army helicopter, and officers need constant military back-up because of the threat from republicans.

Newry and Mourne Chief Superintendent Bobby Hunniford informed the local District Policing Partnership at a meeting last night of a complete review of policing in south Armagh as part of the normalisation of policing.

Officers will be switched from Forkhill army base to Crossmaglen from the beginning of May.

Police said the level of service in Forkhill would not be diminished, although officers will be redeployed to Crossmaglen, Bessbrook and Newtownhamilton.

Additional police officers are also set to be redeployed to south Armagh.

Chief Superintendent Bobby Hunniford said: “I believe these arrangements will provide a better policing service across the whole south Armagh sector. Local people will see a significant change in policing style.

“We look forward to additional officers, who will start working in the area in May, joining their colleagues in the sector.

“I call on members of the communities in Forkhill, Crossmaglen, Bessbrook and Newtownhamilton to support their local officers as they strive to provide policing services for them through working in partnership.”

Information leaflets on the new arrangements have been prepared and will be distributed to residents in the Forkhill area.

Forkhill residents wishing to contact local police can do so by ringing Bessbrook on 30 838222, Newtownhamilton on 30 878222, Crossmaglen on 30 861777 or Ardmore on 30 265500.

The Sector Inspector for the south Armagh area is Inspector Ian McDonald, who can be contacted at Bessbrook Station.

Sinn Féin

SDLP Accused Over Plastic Bullet Move

Published: 25 March, 2005

Sinn Féin spokesperson on policing issues Gerry Kelly has accused the SDLP ‘of once again acquiescing to the continuing use of plastic bullets by the PSNI’. Mr Kelly’s remarks come after the Policing Board of which the SDLP are a key component voted to introduce a new plastic bullet.

Mr Kelly said:

“Plastic bullets kill that is the bottom line. They are lethal devices and have no place in an acceptable policing service. The SDLP in public have consistently claimed to be opposed to the use of plastic bullets. They told us that through membership pf the Policing Board they would ensure the removal of Plastic Bullets. Yet on the Policing Board they have previously rubber stamped the purchase of thousands of these devices. Yesterday the Policing Board voted to introduce a new plastic bullet, the SDLP made noise but were ultimately powerless to prevent this and will without doubt go along with the decision of the Board. The SDLP have once again acquiesced to the continuing use of plastic bullets by the PSNI.

“The continuing use of Plastic Bullets by the PSNI causes great anger within the broad nationalist and republican community. The Sinn Féin position on Plastic Bullets is clear and unambiguous. We are absolutely opposed to the use of plastic bullets and have campaigned to have them removed for decades. The ongoing use of plastic bullets has of course formed part of our discussions with the British government on the wider issue of trying to achieve an acceptable and accountable policing service. Nationalists and republicans want to see plastic bullets removed not re-invented or re-branded by the Policing Board or the SDLP.” ENDS

RTE News

CIRA suspects charged with terrorist offences

25 March 2005 14:55

Two men thought to be leading figures in the Continuity IRA have been charged with terrorist offences following a police operation in Belfast.

The two men, aged 35 and 34, face a number of charges, including attempted murder, extortion and firearms offences.

The charges are connected to arrests in north Belfast earlier this week.

Both men will appear in court in Belfast tomorrow.

BreakingNews.ie

McCartneys say IRA has readmitted murder suspect

25/03/2005 - 09:56:56

The family of murdered Belfast man Robert McCartney has claimed the IRA has allowed one the men it expelled over his role in the murder back into its ranks.

The IRA expelled three members who they say were involved in the killing of the Short Strand father of two outside a Belfast bar. But now the McCartney family claim that one of them has been allowed to rejoin the IRA ranks.

Paula McCartney accused the IRA of contradicting itself.

“They have admitted that this person was indeed a criminal, they expelled him from their ranks because he was a criminal and now he’s been brought back in again,” she said.

New Ballymun - Regeneration and Demolition

I was looking through my comments to approve–and I have to do that or I get hit with hundreds of spam ads–and I came across this really cool comment on the post I made when they demolished the McDermott Tower. This is the clickable thumbnail I put in at the time. Martin C. has kindly written that if we would like to view more awesome pics of the demolition, we can go >>>here. Thank you, Martin!

click thumbnail to view

——————-

BBC

Bomb charge accused is remanded

A man has appeared in court charged in connection with a bomb attack.

John Joseph McCusker, 51, of Galloon Gardens, Newtownbutler, was also charged with membership of the Continuity IRA.

He was remanded in custody when he appeared at Craigavon Magistrates Court on Thursday evening.

He was charged with a bomb attack in Lurgan in June 2004 and with the attempted bombing of Rosslea police station in October 2003.

BBC

Illegal fuel plant is shut down

An illegal fuel laundering plant

An illegal fuel laundering plant with the capacity to process about 20,000 litres of fuel a week has been uncovered in County Armagh.

Customs officers say the plant, found in farm buildings on the Armagh to Caledon road, would have meant an annual revenue loss of £620,000.

Officers removed 5,000 litres of contaminated diesel from the site, two miles from Armagh city.

Customs officer Colin McAllister said their work was having an effect.

“This operation highlights our intention to stop organised smuggling and laundering operations,” he said.

“The successes we have had over the last week will have disrupted a number of criminal enterprises in Northern Ireland and has stopped a substantial amount of harmful diesel entering the legitimate fuel market.”