SAOIRSE32

Belfast Telegraph

Senior Ulster Unionists back DUP men

By Noel McAdam
11 April 2005

The DUP staged an early election coup today after two of the Ulster Unionist Party’s most senior figures gave their backing to DUP candidates in key constituency battles.

Former party leader Lord Molyneaux and MP Martin Smyth came under fire from their own party members after openly supporting the rival candidates in South Belfast and Lagan Valley.

Lord Molyneaux is photographed with both Jeffrey Donaldson in Lagan Valley and Jimmy Spratt in South Belfast on their official election leaflets.

And Mr Spratt is also joined in the picture by Mr Smyth - MP for the area for more than 15 years - who is quoted as saying: “I have known Jimmy Spratt and his family for many years. I believe he would make an excellent MP.”

Lord Molyneaux of Killead also pays tribute to Mr Spratt’s service as a member of the RUC which, he says, was “treated disgracefully by unworthy persons in high places”.

Lord Molyneaux, who still holds the honorary position of patron of the Ulster Unionist Party, also refers to Mr Donaldson as an excellent MP.

Ulster Unionist South Belfast candidate, Michael McGimpsey, today admitted it was an “unprecedented step” and added: “I am obviously disappointed that both Jim and Martin do not appear to be prepared to abide by the democratic procedures of the party.

“There is obviously a lot of personal animosity involved here but to pull a stunt like this so early shows the DUP are under pressure and are prepared to do anything to hand this seat to a nationalist or republican because they know they cannot win.”

Mr Donaldson’s opponent, Basil McCrea, said: “There is an issue of decency here, as when Mr Donaldson jumped ship from the party. It appears to be deeply personal between Molyneaux, David Trimble and Donaldson.”

But both Mr McCrea and Mr McGimpsey said the question of disciplinary action against Lord Molyneaux was an issue for the party leadership.

Mr Spratt said he was the only candidate who can unite unionists and Mr Donaldson said: “My long and close working relationship with Lord Molyneaux will continue.”

The DUP claimed first strike signalling a bitter campaign battle ahead but an Ulster Unionist spokesman said the party overall was “unruffled”.

Neither Lord Molyneaux nor Mr Smyth were available for comment but DUP sources said they had given their consent to the photographs and quotes.

Belfast Telegraph

Brain op Ulster boy ‘is in good shape’

By Nigel Gould
11 April 2005

Brave little Ulster boy Pearce Gilmore was today recuperating in a US hospital after successfully coming through his life-saving brain operation.

The nine-year-old’s family now faces a couple of anxious days to find out more about the tumour, which Pearce’s father Seamus said had been 80% removed.

Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph from New York, he said: “Things couldn’t have gone any better.

“We are hoping the tumour is benign and the doctor thinks that is the case.

“They say Pearce is in good shape and is five days ahead of schedule.”

Incredibly, within hours of the operation, Pearce was sitting up joking with the nurses.

“He’s had the nurses laughing so much,” Mr Gilmore added.

“There’s no stopping him at the moment.

“He’s eating wee bits and bobs as well but the important thing is he is OK.”

More than £40,000 was raised by readers throughout the province to send Pearce to the US after an appeal in the Belfast Telegraph.

Pearce, Seamus and mum Sophie met up with Dr Rick Abbot in his New York practice last week.

Tests, including an MRI scan, were carried out on the youngster ahead of his five-hour surgery.

Pearce is suffering from an unusual brain condition and his family say his only hope of survival rests with Dr Abbot.

Several weeks ago, in an interview with the Telegraph, Dr Abbot, a paediatric neurosurgeon who works and teaches at the Einstein Centre in the Bronx, said that his practice specialised in this type of operation and were “renowned internationally” for it.

It is likely Pearce will be in intensive care until tomorrow.

Irelandclick.com

Morning Madness

Whiterock, 8am, Sunday. Knife-wielding thugs bring chaos to streets and cops fire shot.

PSNI fire shot in Moyard

A man was last night described as stable in hospital after an argument in a house in Moyard Parade resulted in a vicious knife brawl at the junction of the Whiterock and Springfield Roads just before 8am yesterday morning.

The man was found was severe injuries to his head on the Whiterock Road.
Minutes later the PSNI, who were called to the scene, opened fire on a vehicle attempting they said was attempting to flee the scene. The round hit the car bonnet.

Two males and one female were taken from the vehicle – which the PSNI allege struck two police officers – and were later arrested in connection with the earlier knife brawl.

Last night a spokesperson for the PSNI told the Andersonstown News: “Four people have been arrested and are being questioned about a serious assault.”

Local resident, Art ó Coribain, who witnessed the incident at Moyard Parade said he believed the PSNI were heavy-handed in their approach to the upset.
“I heard a scuffle about 7.40am and that was what initially woke me up. Then 20 minutes later I heard the jeeps arriving so the knee-jerk reaction was to get up, and when I looked out the window I saw that three peeler jeeps had the car hemmed in.

“At least six to eight peelers got out of the jeeps,” said Mr ó Coribain, “and hit the windows of the car with their truncheons. Then I saw one particular officer drawing his weapon and, without shouting a warning, he fired at the car.

“They pulled the occupants out off the car and beat them with their truncheons and then put them in the jeep.

“The car was moving back to get away from the peelers when one opened fire. Lucky enough the car didn’t move a foot forward or the wee lad driving would have been shot dead.”

Speaking after the incident, Sinn Féin Councillor for the area, Marie Cush, explained that there are conflicting reports from PSNI officers and local residents over the incident and added: “Local people are saying that the cops rammed the car which received a gunshot to the bonnet. The cops are saying that the car rammed the jeep.

“Two people were pulled out of the car and badly beaten. They were taken away in a jeep even though there was an ambulance on the scene and it was obvious that the men were injured. They were later stopped on the Springfield Road and put into an ambulance.

“The woman who was taken from the car and put in a jeep in handcuffs was clearly in a state of shock and we have raised concerns that she should have been taken away instead in an ambulance.”

Speaking at the scene, PSNI Chief Inspector Peter Farrar said that police officers were called to Kelly’s Corner at around 8am on Sunday morning. He said they were responding to a reported knife brawl.

Directed to Moyard Parade, Chief Inspector Farrar said that officers were pointed in the direction of the car and its occupants who had been identified to them as the perpetrators of an assault.

“The first two Land Rovers arrived and tried to stop the car but it went around them, the third Land Rover stopped and the car crashed into the back of it.

“The car then reversed at high speed, officers were starting to get out and it was driving everywhere to get away. It hit two police officers on the leg and the arm, another officer fired a shot. Those three people in the car were arrested in relation to the attempted murder of the police officers and also in relation to the earlier incident.

“Three people were injured and the third person is critical, and their family has been notified.”

Four people have been arrested in connection with the disturbance.
The identity of the man left in a critical condition in hospital following the incident has not yet been released.

The Police Ombudsman’s office has been called in to investigate the incident.

Journalist:: Ciara McGuigan

BBC

Police seek assets freezing order

Former UDA leader Jim Gray

The police are expected to apply for an order in the High Court which will freeze the assets and bank accounts of former UDA leader Jim Gray.

Details of an investigation into Gray’s alleged money laundering emerged during a weekend court appearance. He denies having and hiding criminal property.

Gray, 47, was stood down from the UDA leadership in east Belfast last week.

Meanwhile, a 39-year-old man is due in court on Monday charged with four counts of money laundering.

Times Online

“”Via News Hound

Threat from IRA ‘sleeper’ network

April 10, 2005
Stephen O’Brien

SINN FEIN and the IRA put a network of “sleepers and collaborators” in key positions across Irish society that was uncovered by the investigation into money laundering, Michael McDowell, the justice minister, said yesterday.

The garda inquiry into IRA criminality following the Northern Bank raid uncovered “a frightening threat” to Irish democracy, he said.

“IRA-Sinn Fein were well on the way to creating a state within a state,” McDowell told the Progressive Democrats’ annual conference in Cork. “They were using well-placed sleepers and collaborators — some of them pillars of society — to achieve that end.

“By violent and criminal means, the army council of the IRA was preparing to transform from a heavily armed private army to a lightly armed enforcement wing for a revolutionary political movement, half in and half out of the democratic process.”

He said the garda inquiries were not just part of a continuing criminal investigation, but part of a “massive operation” by police “to prevent the subversion of our democracy by IRA-Sinn Fein criminality, and to break up and dismantle the Provo ‘state within a state’.”

McDowell accused the Provisionals of organising robberies, smuggling and counterfeiting operations, and using the proceeds for political ends.

“That is why policing must be made difficult or impossible in Provoland. That is why the Provos hold many nationalist communities in a reign of terror,” he said. “The IRA needs to stop the PSNI from enforcing the rule of law. That is why the Provos have tried to wreck district policing partnerships and to intimidate those who serve on them.”

In a reference to Gerry Adams’s appeal to the IRA to disband, the minister said the past week’s events showed that the Irish government’s “no budge, no fudge, no deal” message had struck home.

“For there will be no appeasement, no dealing and no compromise by the Irish government on the fundamentals of republican democracy,” he said.

Daily Ireland

Northern ex-prisoners get cold shoulder down South

A new report entitled The Emerald Curtain has disclosed that 2,000 Northern ex-prisoners and about 2,000 Southern ex-prisoners have settled in Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Cavan, Monaghan, and Louth.
The groundbreaking research highlighted the impact of the Border on marginalised social groups such as ex-prisoners and displaced people in the Border counties.
A total of about 11,000 displaced people arrived in the southern border counties during the troubles and until the Emerald Curtain study was carried out these people have been largely ignored as a subject for research.
The researchers explained that many of the ex-prisoners feel a sense of isolation, stigmatisation and discrimination and, indeed, some of them were put under surveillance for many years after the ceasefires.
Many suffered mental illness and considerable difficulty in readjustment on their release. “This group continues to face difficulty in accessing employment due to both legal and illegal discrimination. Legal barriers prevent the holding of vehicle licences and travel,” Brian Harvey, one of the report’s authors, told Daily Ireland.
People running support groups in the Louth and Monaghan areas for former Republican prisoners were not at all surprised at the findings of The Emerald Curtain report.
Looking at the report’s claims that displaced Northerners were treated badly after moving South, Tommy McKearney, who runs the Ex-Pac group in Monaghan said, “It was a very common experience for people moving into the Southern Border counties from the North to be treated in that way.
“There was an ongoing suspicion that people from the North were troublemakers. People in the South wanted to keep the Troubles in the North and there was a concern that Northern people were different and prone to violence. It was all part of the project of preserving the Southern state.”
He added, “If you were a known Republican or a former prisoner, you were treated as a people apart from everyone else.”
Mr McKearney, who is originally from Moy, Co Tyrone, was released from jail in the North in 1993 and went to live in Monaghan town the following year.
“I remember after getting a job in Monaghan, the gardaí approached my employer to let him know my background. But I have to give the man his dues, he kept me on.
“After a Republican was employed in the South, the gardaí would often come and say to the employer that they would keep an eye on the premises and no business wants it to be known that the gardaí are watching their premises.
“A lot of Republicans in the South tended to become ghettoised as a community and certain areas in towns like Monaghan were labelled.”
Mr McKearney can see that the anti Northern sentiments that were so vivid in the Southern Border counties were actually evident in many fabrics of Irish society from the establishment down to the man on the street.
“I think that a lot of it goes back to the Arms Trial when the decision was taken not to stand up to the British.
“They did not want to confront the British as their analysis was based on their own political agenda,” he claimed.
“They perceived that the problems in Northern Ireland were caused by Republican violence.”
Mr McKearney contends that the Irish State created a particular attitude towards the North and Northerners that was endemic throughout Southern society.
“RTÉ, instead of becoming the State broadcaster, was the government information service, no different to Vatican radio or Moscow radio and this was echoed in every part of the state.”
Eugene Byrne is originally from South Armagh and lived in Co Louth in the 1970s to get away from the Troubles.
“People who were fleeing the North at the time were known as ‘on-the-runs’ and there was a certain status attached to being one of them,” he said.
“However, it was only when you moved South, when you thought that you would be welcomed with open arms, that you realised the people questioned you coming south with your baggage.
“People looked at you suspiciously but I have to say they didn’t try to make life difficult for you. He added, “When you moved to the South, you were moving to a different political reality where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were the main parties.
“When there were elections on, candidates from these two parties would just ignore you and not call to your door.”
Meanwhile, Kevin Mulgrew, of the Dundalk based Fáilte Abháile group for ex-prisoners and displaced people, echoed Mr McKearney’s comments.
Mr Mulgrew, who was involved in a number of focus groups when the study was being compiled, can recall the way the displaced people have been treated in the South from the late 1960s up to the present day.
“I happened to be looking back through old newspapers from 1969 and people were called refugees in reports from the time. That is a very emotive word to be called in your own country,” said Mr Mulgrew.
“Initially when the Troubles started there was goodwill among the ordinary people but then the State came down heavily on the displaced Northerners.
“For a lot of the Free Staters ignorance is bliss because if you don’t know about something you don’t have to make up your mind.”
Mr Mulgrew also agreed with the study’s finding that it was extremely difficult for ex-prisoners and displaced people to find employment in the Southern Border counties.
“What a lot of people forget is that the displaced and political prisoners were coming from working class estates in the North to working class estates in the South,” he explained.
“When you couple this with anti-Republican and anti-Northern bias it was extremely difficult for these people to get jobs.”
The Emerald Curtain report also revealed that many of the republicans’ children now have an identity crisis.
“What some of the young people whose parents are from the North find is a lack of identity. When their parents moved South the children were left with no family support structures as their wider family lived in the North,” he added.

Sunday Life

Gray’s ‘Day’ in court
Former UDA boss faces charges of money laundering
10 April 2005

DEPOSED UDA terror-boss Jim Gray appeared in court yesterday, accused of money-laundering.

The flamboyant former east Belfast ‘brigadier’ was arrested near Loughbrickland, Co Down, on Thursday, as he prepared to leave the country.

Gray (47) appeared before Banbridge Magistrate’s Court dressed in a red sports jacket, blue-and-white striped shirt and jeans.

There was no sign of the usual UDA entourage that accompanies senior figures when they appear in court. Gray was accompanied by his father and sister.

The court was told that ex-terror boss Gray was allegedly trying to flee the country with thousands of pounds, when he was arrested.

Cops stopped him travelling towards the Republic, allegedly with a Northern Bank banker’s draft worth 10,000 euros.

Gray is also alleged to have had £2,720 in cash, as well as 270 euro in notes.

Gray is accused of possession of criminal property and concealment of criminal property, contrary to the Proceeds of Crime Act.

A police detective said that, when charged on the first count, Gray replied that he could account for all the possessions found on him.

To the second charge, of concealment, Gray said he didn’t understand the charge.

The officer said he believed he could connect the defendant to the charges.

He also told the court that Gray’s earnings did not justify his lifestyle.

Gray’s lawyer said his client had lived most of his life in debt, and produced a credit-card bill as an example of his borrowings.

The money that Gray had in his possession came from the sale of two public houses worth £130,000, the lawyer added.

A “very substantial” amount of this had gone on paying debts, the court was told.

The detective said that Gray had approximately £40,000-£50,000 left in his bank account, which police will apply to have frozen tomorrow.(correct)

Police objected to bail on the basis of information received that he was planning to flee the country at the time of the alleged offences.

RM Paul Copeland rejected the bail application.

Gray was remanded in custody, to appear again before Banbridge magistrates, by videolink, on Thursday.

Sunday Life

IRA enforcer targets teen tearaways

By Joe Oliver
10 April 2005

THE IRA appointed a hardline enforcer in north Belfast to clamp down on anti-social elements - and growing dissident activity - just a week before Gerry Adams urged the terror group to cease all violence.

And Sunday Life can reveal that the Provo boss, who won his freedom from prison under the Good Friday Agreement, supervised a brutal punishment beating doled out to a teenager.

The IRA gang was waiting for their victim and grabbed him as he returned to the Carrick Hill area in central Belfast, early last Sunday.

He was battered with hurley sticks and an iron bar, and warned that it would be a bullet next time.

The youth was admitted to hospital - but no complaint was made to police.

The IRA gang also made it clear they were hunting down other so-called anti-social elements in the north of the city.

One republican source revealed: “They were sending out a message to the community that they are still in control.

“They had relaxed their policy of ‘policing’ local problems - especially given the fallout over the murder of Robert McCartney - but things had got out of hand recently and it was decided to take action.

“There has also been rising tensions between mainstream republicans and dissident sympathisers, which is currently being looked at.”

Senior police chiefs believe the IRA is trying to reinforce its grip on nationalist and republican communities because of the growing influence of the INLA and dissident groups, in dealing with troublemakers.

Added the source: “The fact that such a senior republican was told to clean up districts in north Belfast illustrates that the IRA has not gone away.”

Nevertheless, the latest statistics show a dramatic reduction in the number of punishment attacks being carried out.

Fewer than 10 incidents were logged by police last month - three of them attributed to republicans.

Chief Constable Hugh Orde revealed last year that IRA punishment attacks were “drastically” scaled back following key pre-election Sinn Fein statements calling for an end to violence.

slnews@belfasttelegraph.co.uk