IRISH REPUBLICAN INFORMATION SERVICE (no. 22)
Teach Dáithí Ó Conaill, 223 Parnell Street, Dublin 1, Ireland
Phone: +353-1-872 9747; FAX: +353-1-872 9757;
e-mail: saoirse@iol.ie
Date: 22 Meitheamh / June 2005
NB: Please note that the Irish Republican Information Service (IRIS) is issued by the Publicity Department of Republican Sinn Fein via either RSF News or saoirse@iol.ie. No other source is entitled to use the name IRIS.
Internet resources maintained by SAOIRSE-Irish Freedom
http://saoirse.rr.nu
In this issue:
1. RSF protest against British naval presence in Cork
2. ‘Families lucky to be alive’
3. Garda corruption and brutality
4. Serious rioting in Belfast after Orange parade
5. Intellegence files found in Six Counties.
6. Spooks to open up in Derry city
7. Opposition to plastic bullets
8. RPAG public meeting in Fermanagh
9. Orangemen refuse to talk to nationalists
10. RUC/PSNI ‘won’t remove flags’
11. Nationalists complain over Union Jack display
12. Police policing police is a joke
13. Two women are brown killing suspects
14. New push for McAllister family
1. RSF PROTEST AGAINST BRITISH NAVAL PRESENCE IN CORK
ON Sunday June 19, the Mac Curtáin / Mac Swiney Cumann, Republican Sinn Féin Cork, in association with Comhairle na Mumhan Republican Sinn Féin organised a protest against a British naval presence in Cork..
Twenty members of Republican Sinn Féin placed a demonstration at the city’s Custom House where the British warship HMS Grafton stands at the junction of the Éamon de Valera and Michael Collins Bridges. Members of the 26-County police Armed Response Unit guarded her with their Uzi submachine guns along with regular police.
Flying from her flagstaff was the Union Jack, a symbol of suffering and death in Ireland. England is an occupying power in the Northern Six Counties and yet the 26-County Administration invites these English symbols of tyranny to our island.
Séan O’Murchú, PRO, of the Mac Curtáinb / Mac Swiney Cumann said in a statement, that “Republican Sinn Féin strongly opposed the visit of this killer ship to Cork as being wholly inappropriate and hardly having anything to with culture. In particular it is an affront to the memories of the dead generations that fought to rid Ireland of English occupation.”
2. ‘FAMILIES LUCKY TO BE ALIVE’
TWO families have had to abandon their homes and one man was injured in a sectarian attack on their homes in Old Throne Park (just of the Whitewell Road).
At aroung 1am on June 20 two youths walked in to the mainly nationalist cul-de-sac and threw a number of petrol bombs on to the roofs of the houses. One of the houses caught fire instantly and one of the other petrol bombs bounced back of the house and ignited an oil tank. The burning oil spilled into neighbouring gardens, melting a further two oil tanks and setting them alight.
Local residents who came out to help their neighbours saw the two youths run back towards the loyalist White City estate, where a gang of loyalists cheered as the youths who carried out the attack, mingled amongst them.
The heat from the fire melted rubbish bins, damaged cars and the flames soon spread to other houses and property. One man who was injured was treated for the effects of smoke inhalation.
One of the houses was badly damaged. The fire had actually got into the roof space and the fire service had to remove roof tiles to extinguish it. Earlier that day loyalists beat a 57-year-old man as he walked past the White City estate, the same group of loyalists later threatened nationalists in the Throne shopping centre “that they were going to burn them out”.
This was the third time in 48 hours that nationalists in this small community have been attacked by loyalists.
In the early hours of Saturday morning loyalists, this time from the Graymount estate, smashed windows of the homes of nationalists in the lower Whitewell and many people living here are convinced this an orchestrated wave of attacks by the UDA in an attempt to drive nationalists from their homes in a run up to the marching season.
3. GARDA CORRUPTION AND BRUTALITY
A FAMILY in Clonmel, Co Tipperary is suing the state over the death of their 14-year-old son who died two days after being taken to hospital from the Garda Station. Brian Rossiter was arrested in the town on September 11, 2002 along with a friend. According to a statement made by his friend, during the arrest ‘extreme violence was used against them involving the breaking of a flashlight over his head’. When they reached the station another assault took place on both of them.
Pat Rossiter, Brian’s father, called to the station to see Brian and gave his consent to his being kept in for the night but asked that if Brian was making a statement he was to be contacted. Gardaí claim that Brian Rossiter was checked every half-hour during the night and he was asleep. However at 9.30am the following morning Brian was found to be in a coma. He was removed to hospital by ambulance.
The gardaí told the ambulance crew that Brian “had been in a fight a few days previously and had been on a drink and drugs binge for four to five days”. Dr Marie Cassidy, the State Pathologist, was told this also prior to her carrying out an autopsy. Brian had been seriously assaulted a few days previously (an individual is before the court for this assault) but two toxicology tests showed no trace of drink or recreational drugs.
Pat Rossiter is angry that the Department of Justice have refused to give the family the results of the autopsy report and other relevant files. He says they want answers, “we want to know what happened to our son”.
This week a man is in the Mater Hospital in Dublin having been taken there, unconscious, from a garda station in the city. He is on a life support machine.
On May 22 Mary Stevens from south Dublin was knocked down by a squad car as she stood at a bus stop outside Clonskeagh hospital. She died on June 15. Also on June 15 a man, walking on Con Colbert Rd in Kilmainham, Dublin was struck by a squad car which was in collision with another car. He is in a serious condition in hospital.
In 2003 according to the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, 114 accidents involving Garda vehicles occurred which were directly attributable to the garda, resulting in damages and costs of €94,671. The total for damages and costs came to €291,399.
In light of the two reports from the Morris Tribunal, in which several members of the Gardí were accused of framing two men for the murder of Richie Barron - who died of a hit-and-run accident, the gardai would be doing everything in its power to restore people’s confidence in the force. Instead they continue to give the two fingers to the public - they believe they are untouchable. An arguably they are.
During the Reclaim the Streets trials this year eight gardai were acquitted of assault on young men and women. This in spite of the fact that Garda Corcoran admitted he assaulted a protestor! (The public are suitably cowed). One garda was found guilty of assault on a teacher (all the other protestors were students at the time) and was sentenced to a month in prison but is appealing the conviction.
Confidence in the gardaí is at an all time low. Small wonder.
4. SERIOUS RIOTING IN BELFAST AFTER ORANGE PARADE
ON Friday June 17 serious rioting broke out in the Ardoyne area of Belfast after ‘the Tour of the North’ Orange parade passed along the left hand side of the Crumlin Rd past nationalist homes. Hand to hand fighting broke out with bottles and stones thrown. One woman had her arm broken when she was attacked by loyalists outside her home. The RUC used a water cannon on the protestors and a petrol bomb was thrown at it.
Nationalists and clergy have criticized the handling of the parade by the RUC/PSNI. There were hundreds of the RUC in riot gear and dozens of Land Rovers along the length of the road protecting the Orange march. Fr Aidan Troy said “…I honestly feel that there can’t be another march like this along the Crumlin Rd until some sort of agreement is brokered between both sides. It is totally unacceptable that this community is plunged back into this situation every summer”.
Nationalists claim that they were first beaten by loyalists and then by the RUC/PSNI and that the RUC tried to arrest those who were beaten.
The Tour of the North is among the first of a series of parades by Orangemen which culminates in the biggest demonstrations on 12 July.
A ruling by the Parades Commission had restricted nationalist protesters to the footpath outside the Ardoyne shops and loyalists supporters also face restrictions, following conflict at a parade last July.
A caller to the Irish News, Belfast, using a recognised code-word, claimed that the Red Hand Defenders now considered members of the Ardoyne residents group as “legitimate targets”.
5. INTELLIGENCE FILES FOUND IN SIX COUNTIES
FILES dating from the 1930s have come to light after a handwritten RUC ledger was found. The files name alleged IRA members and ’secret societies’ and give first hand accounts of how the RUC monitored Republican activities in the run up to WW11. The names and personal details of men who the RUC believed to be involved in the Republican Movement are detailed, IRA suspects, sympathisers, men and women, are recorded in detail. Those suspected of membership are listed alphabetically. The RUC, born out of the RIC, were and still are the eyes and ears of the British establishment.
6. SPOOKS TO OPEN UP IN DERRY CITY
A PRIVATE security firm consisting of former British soldiers and spies intends to establish a presence in Derry City. Nexus Intelligence’s motto is |He who would desire peace should be prepared for war”.
However Nationalists in Derry are insistent that these former members of the British Crown Forces would be unwelcome in a city where they murdered fourteen innocent people in cold blood on Bloody Sunday, amongst countless other atrocities.
The owner of Nexus Intelligence acknowledges that many security firms have links to British-backed Loyalist death squads, but fails to see the irony of those connected to the Crown Forces setting up in Derry claiming “that’s what makes us as good as we are”. He does admit however that what he calls “the Troubles” … “are still going [in the Six Occupied Counties] though they get a lot less publicity because the [British] Government wants to keep it quiet during the peace process (sic)”.
7. OPPOSITION TO PLASTIC BULLETS
OPPONENTS of plastic bullets are to initiate a judicial review against the RUC/PSNI Policing Board’s decision making process which led to the approval of a new type of baton round. Earlier this year the Policing Board approved the introduction of the so-called “soft-nosed” bullet (known as the Attenuating Energy Projectile (AEP)) into the RUC/PSNI’s arsenal of weapons.
Despite claims that this bullet is “less lethal” than its predecessor, it is discharged at the same velocity as the old bullet. Richard Moore - who was blinded by a rubber bullet when he was just 10 years of age - has said that “whatever way they find to describe these bullets they aren’t firing teddy bears from these guns. There is no such thing as a ‘less lethal’ plastic bullet.”
However the Police Federation has called for restrictions on the use of plastic bullets to be relaxed, as the RUC/PSNI would have difficulty restraining the urge to fire the weapon.
8. RPAG PUBLIC MEETING IN FERMANAGH
The Republican Prisoners Action Group will hold a public meeting on Saturday, June 25 in the Donn Carraig Hotel, Lisnaskea, Co. Fermanagh at 2pm. All those concerned about the ongoing plight of Republican prisoners are asked to attend.
9. ORANGEMEN REFUSE TO TALK TO NATIONALISTS
EFFORTS to bring a residents group and the Orange Order around the negotiating table have failed with Orangemen refusing to enter face-to-face talks.
The Orange Order has ruled out direct dialogue with the Bogside Residents Group ahead of next month’s Twelfth parade in Derry. The Order indicated that its local leadership would be prepared to sit on a forum involving businessmen and “other interested parties”.
The offer has been flatly rejected by the residents group, which has said that a similar initiative failed in recent years.
The BRG claimed the Orange Order has ignored its attempts to begin a process similar to that which paved the way for peaceful Apprentice Boys’ parades in the city. The BRG warned that the parade had the potential to cause widespread disruption in the city.
Some 6,000 Orangemen hope to march through Derry on July 12. The Order has not held a demonstration of that size in 13 years. The parade will be subject to a ruling by the Parades Commission.
Meanwhile, nationalists in south Antrim say they are prepared to “reach a hand across the divide” to their unionist counterparts ahead of a controversial Orange parade on June 28.
Residents from both sides of the community have clashed over parades through nationalist areas and the erection of flags and an Orange Order arch over Church Road in Glengormley.
Talks between the two sides have never got off the ground because the Orangemen insist they will only meet nationalist residents if the RUC\PSNI act as an intermediary. Nationalists say they are willing to sit down with the Orangemen but not with the RUC/PSNI.
The parade in two weeks time is followed by another on July 3 and two on the Twelfth.
10. RUC/PSNI ‘WON’T REMOVE FLAGS’
THE RUC/PSNI has said it will not immediately remove loyalist paramilitary flags and banners mounted on lampposts along three of Belfast’s busiest roads.
Ulster Volunteer Force flags and banners depicting masked gunmen have been attached to lampposts along the Beersbridge, Cregagh and Newtownards roads in the east of the city in the lead-up to July 12.
Although the displays are illegal, the RUC\PSNI said that its members would not physically remove the banners.
The RUC/PSNI was unable to say if or when the illegal UVF flags in east Belfast would
be taken down.
11. NATIONALISTS COMPLAIN OVER UNION JACK DISPLAY
NATIONALIST residents of Stoneypath on the outskirts of the Co Derry village of Newbuildings have condemned the erection of loyalist flags at the entrance to the development.
British Union Jack flags, loyalist Six-County flags and Orange Order flags were erected on every lamppost in Newbuildings on June 15, including those outside the Catholic St Columba’s primary school.
Flags are flown in the village outside Derry city during every marching season but residents in the predominantly Nationalists Stoneypath development have said they have been extended as far as their homes for the first time.
A number of nationalists in the area have expressed concern. The issue has arisen just months after Newbuildings was highlighted as a “cold house for Catholics” in a feature by The Irish News.
12. POLICE POLICING POLICE IS A JOKE
IN 2004, RTÉ’s Prime Time featured the story of a young Wicklow man who claimed he had been assaulted in garda custody.
What marked out this story was the intervention of a politician. The young man’s family, respectable and middle-class, knew Wicklow TD Dick Roche, then a junior minister, now 26-County Minister for the Environment.
The morning after the alleged assault in September 2000, the family had asked Roche to come to their home to see the injuries for himself.
Roche was appalled at what he saw and wrote a letter to the 26-County Minister for Justice describing the young man’s injuries. The minister passed the letter on to the Garda Commissioner.
Four years on, the chairman of the Garda Complaints Board, Gordon Holmes, saw the RTÉ programme which featured several stories alleging garda assault.
This case was the only one the board had investigated and Holmes decided he would review its file.
To his great surprise, he discovered that Dick Roche’s letter was not in the file. The senior garda who had investigated the complaint had not deemed it worthy of inclusion.
This meant that the board, and what’s worse, the DPP, were unaware of Roche’s evidence when they deliberated the complaint.
When the board followed this up, it was told the senior garda didn’t include the letter because the evidence “was already covered by the evidence given by other witnesses”.
The board was unhappy with this “manifestly wrong” decision. But when it pointed this out to the garda’s most senior management, it found the commissioner did not share its concern.
This stunning response tells you all you need to know about the opacity of the gardaí when it comes to public scrutiny. This week’s publication of the Complaint Board’s annual report for 2004 came hot on the heels of the second Morris Report.
Combined, they expose our system of making gardaí publicly accountable for their behaviour as a joke.
As Holmes points out in his excellent introduction, the fault lies not with the board or its executive, who have lobbied for years for reform, but with the toothless legislation underpinning the board’s work.
Holmes specifies defects in three primary legs of the legislation. They are all whoppers.
The first is “the lack of independent investigative resources”. In other words, gardaí investigate gardaí.
Secondly, the board cannot compel gardaí to answer questions in connection with any complaint.
“This power was never given to the board,” Holmes writes. “The result was that frequently investigations were met with a wall of silence - a problem internationally known as The Blue Wall.”
And when a complaint is investigated, a senior garda (usually a superintendent) is seconded to it. But he is not answerable to the board but to the Garda Commissioner.
The board, utterly stymied by its dud hand, has tried innovations. It floated the idea of an informal resolution process. The carrot was that no details of the complaint would appear on the garda’s personal records.
Any joy? Fat chance! Holmes notes that this system “is not readily accepted by gardaí”.
The board, with 22 staff, has 10% of the personnel of the North’s police ombudsman.
Its budget is also 15 times smaller. It hardly needs to be pointed out that the South is far bigger than the North, albeit without its peculiarly sensitive situation.
The other statistic that stands out relates to another beacon of transparency, the Director of Public Prosecution’s office. Some 240 complaints were passed on to the DPP in 2004. Only three prosecutions (less than 2%) followed. Why is this? The DPP says that under the current system, investigations of complaints are so tortuously slow that they are timed out for summary prosecutions - which must be taken within six months.
That’s a disgrace. But is that the sole reason for the shockingly low prosecution rate? We will never know.
Justice Minister Michael McDowell promises the Garda Síochána Bill - with its Ombudsman Commission and Inspectorate - will be the panacea for all these ills. But even if the legislation is passed this year, we will still be lumbered with this nonsense until the new institutions are up and running. And that could take years.
13. TWO WOMEN ARE BROWN KILLING SUSPECTS
A MOTHER and daughter have emerged as suspects in the murder of Co Derry GAA man Sean Brown.
The spotlight fell on the pair after dramatic BBC Crimewatch reconstruction on June 15 of the Bellaghy man’s brutal murder by the British-backed Loyalists Death Squad the Loyalist Volunteer Force in 1997.
The killing of the Bellaghy Wolfe Tone’s chairman sent shockwaves across the country when he was ambushed and murdered as he locked up after a club committee meeting over eight years ago. After the graphic reconstruction of Sean Brown’s murder the RUC\ PSNI issued an appeal for a male caller with information about a mother and daughter to contact the investigation team. The women are known to have strong connections with the LVF in Mid Ulster.
The RUC/PSNI confirmed that one of the women was a close associate of Mark ‘Swinger’ Fulton in the late 1990s. The LVF gang that gunned down Sean Brown is believed to have included deceased former leader Fulton.
A close ally of LVF founder Billy Wright, Fulton was found dead in Maghaberry prison in 2002. He is believed to have taken his own life.
The RUC\PSNI say they received over 30 calls after the broadcast and received definite leads in respect of two vehicles used in the murder of Sean Brown. They also claim to have opened up several new lines of enquiry.
Nationalists have long believed that the British state forces colluded with loyalists in the murder of the father-of-six.
An independent investigation into the murder was launched in 2004 after the Police Ombudsman’s office raised serious questions about aspects of the RUC’s original investigation.
The Brown family later agreed to an independent review of their father’s murder and demanded that no current members of the RUC\PSNI involved in the original RUC investigation be allowed to participate. In the past Mr Brown’s family have been scathing in their criticism of the original investigation.
14. NEW PUSH FOR McALLISTER FAMILY
WITH a critical appeals court decision looming in a matter of days, Irish American activists and sympathetic members of Congress are making a new push to secure safety from deportation for Belfast man Malachy McAllister and his family.
A bipartisan letter is gathering signatures on Capitol Hill this week before being sent to Michael Chertoff, head of the Department of Homeland Security.
The family’s congressman, New Jersey Democrat Steve Rothman, is reintroducing a private bill in the House of Representatives aimed at securing permanent legal status for the family, which suffered a tragedy just over a year ago when Malachy McAllister’s wife, Bernadette, died from cancer.
The letter to Chertoff, co-authored by Rothman and GOP rep. Peter King, requests the homeland security chief’s intervention in the case of Malachy McAllister and his two dependent children, Nicola and Sean.
“The McAllister family is seeking political asylum in the United States based on past persecution they have suffered and a fear that their lives will be in danger if they are returned to Northern Ireland,” the letter states.
The letter points out that following the Stormont Agreement, the US suspended deportation proceedings against nine Irish nationals charged with various offences in Northern Ireland arising out of the troubles.
“We respectfully request that you suspend deportation proceedings for Malachy, Nicola, and Sean McAllister,” the congressional letter continues.
The letter notes that Malachy McAllister served time in prison during the 1980s arising out of the conflict in the Six Counties.
“When Mr. McAllister was released from prison, loyalist paramilitaries fired 26 shots into his family’s home, barely missing his children and mother-in-law,” the letter informs Chertoff.
This attack had forced the family to flee Belfast.
“If they are deported from the United States, the McAllister family is likely to face the same dangers in Northern Ireland that they escaped from years ago,” the letter contends.
It states the view of the signatories that McAllister and his children are neither a threat to the United States nor its citizens. The letter urges Chertoff to take “quick action” to suspend deportation proceedings.
In a separate move, Rep Eliot Engel also argued for leniency on the part of U.S. authorities.
“The McAllister family represents no threat whatsoever to the homeland security of the United States,” Engel said.
“This nation was founded on the principal of freedom from religious persecution and violence. Sending the McAllister family back to Ireland would be against everything this country stands for,” he said.
“I hope the Bush administration does the right thing and gives the McAllister family political asylum,” the New York Democrat added.
ENDS
'So venceremos, beidh bua againn eigin lá eigin. Sealadaigh abú.'
--Bobby Sands