Bomb blast in Madrid stadium
25 June 2005 19:59
A bomb exploded in the car park of a sports stadium in Madrid this evening following a telephoned warning in the name of armed Basque separatist group ETA.
No injuries were reported.
ETA’s last fatal attack was in May 2003 when a bomb killed two police officers and seriously injured a third in northern Spain.
25 June 2005. Thanks to A.
Related: www.intelligencecorps.co.uk
Major Adrian Weale, former British Army intelligence officer, who served in Northern Ireland, and more recently in Iraq, military book author and erstwhile BBC commentator on military and national security affairs, has threatened the life of Samuel Rosenfeld — a former British army undercover agent in Northern Ireland.
Rosenfeld has written the Queen asking her to order the Ministry of Defence to investigate the death threat. The Queen’s scribe has responded by scribbling Rosenfeld that the matter has been referred to MoD — QED, rubbished.
Rosenfeld is under court injunction to not to name Weale nor a slew of others in charge of Northern Ireland’s dirty war.
More on Sam Rosenfeld and his long-running battle with the Blair Government and MoD, HMG-protective and boneheaded judges, the murderous Force Research Unit, and a briar patch of villainous military officers ever ready to serve as the Queen’s bloodlustful hatcheters:
http://cryptome.org/fru-claimant2.htm
Admire the major’s camouflage couture and war lit hit list:
http://www.andrewlownie.co.uk/books/weale.adrian/index.shtml
Orange Order protest march ends peacefully
25/06/2005 - 18:21:20
A massive protest march in Belfast, which was held after the Orange Order postponed today’s contentious parade, passed off peacefully.
Over a thousand people, including a dozen bands from different Orange Order lodges, took part in the march in the Shankill area of Belfast as police kept a discrete presence.
However, the Order has warned it is determined to march along its traditional route in west Belfast before the autumn after it abandoned plans for today’s Whiterock parade.
The Order’s North and West Belfast Parades Forum decided to postpone the contentious march in the Whiterock area of the city after the Parades Commission rerouted it.
Residents in the nationalist Springfield Road area welcomed the abandonment of today’s march.
In a statement, nationalist residents said the only way to resolve the matter was for the parade organisers to resume negotiations with the residents.
However, DUP councillor and Orangeman Nelson McCausland said the Order was determined to march in the area without being re-routed, as the forum decided to stage a protest parade in the Shankill area instead.
“The protest parade today is only the start and we would encourage people to support that protest parade. Then over the coming weeks and months that campaign strategy will unfold,” Mr McCausland said.
“It undoubtedly will include such things as an exploration of a legal challenge to what the parades commission has done.
“But in the end we are determined to secure our basic right to parade there to the Whiterock hall as brethren have done for the past 48 years.”
North Belfast DUP MP Nigel Dodds also appealed to people to come on out and support today’s protest parade on the Shankill area.
The Orange Order’s North and West Belfast Parades Forum decided to postpone the march in the Whiterock area after the Parades Commission rerouted it.
Northern Ireland’s Parades Commission refused to lift restrictions on the parade, despite several attempts by the Orange Order to overturn it.
A statement from the North and West Parades Forum confirmed the parade will be postponed.
The statement said: “This has been an extremely difficult decision for our community to make.
“There has been a deliberate attempt to humiliate and demean our community and we are aware of the deep hurt that has been caused to our people.”
Mr Dodds said: “The Parade’s commission has been discredited in its disgraceful ruling over the Whiterock parade.
“It has rewarded the violence of Republicans against the Orange Order Parade last Friday.”
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams said he was concerned at the Orange Order’s decision not to follow the route advocated by the Parades Commission in the Whiterock area.
Mr Adams said: “The Orange Order must realise however that it is not simply a case of entering into dialogue and being rewarded by a parade. The Orange Order must accept any discussions have to be open to resolutions, which may involve compromises.
“In this context the decision of the Parades Commission to re-route today’s Whiterock parade is the correct one. However the Orange Order have in recent days embarked upon a dangerous strategy of heightening tensions and threatening violence.”
Mr Adams said republicans would work towards a peaceful summer but the Orange Order, Parades Commission and the British government also had a role to play.
McDowell must go - Opposition
25/06/2005 - 21:00:48
Opposition politicians tonight called on the Taoiseach to consider removing the Justice Minister Michael McDowell from his post.
Fine Gael’s MEP Jim Higgins made the move after it emerged the Government had damning information on some Donegal gardaí as far back as five years ago.
Mr Higgins said Bertie Ahern should consider removing Mr McDowell from the Justice portfolio, after it was reported that gardaí had passed on hard-hitting information on activities of Donegal garda to the Government in 2000.
However, Mr Higgins said the Morris Tribunal to investigate complaints by the family of publican Frank McBrearty Snr against gardaí in Donegal during the 1990s was not set up until two years later in 2002.
“The Taoiseach should seriously consider the position of Michael McDowell because he really has been dismal in relation to the manner in which he handled this particular case,” Mr Higgins told RTÉ News.
“He has been arrogant, he has been indifferent, he has never seen himself as being in sympathy with the McBrearty family or the other families who were grossly victimised by gardaí in Donegal.”
The second report from the Morris Tribunal found that the investigation into the death of cattle-dealer Richie Barron in Co Donegal in 1996 was “prejudiced, tendentious and utterly negligent in the highest degree“.
Two senior gardaí resigned in the aftermath and five officers were transferred from Co Donegal to Dublin postings.
TDs made the call for the resignation of Mr McDowell after it emerged a damning summary of an investigation by an Assistant Garda Commissioner detailing activity of some gardaí in Donegal in the 1990s was allegedly sent to the Justice Department in August 2000.
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Justice said: “The Justice Minister has dealt with this at length in the Dáil over the last couple of weeks.”
She said there was nothing new in reports that information on garda activities in Donegal had been passed on to the Government in 2000.
It is believed this document made several damaging accusations and recommendations about the situation in Donegal.
Labour’s Brendan Howlin said the then Minister for Justice, John O’Donoghue and former Attorney General, Michael McDowell, must explain the reasons that a year after receiving the report they voted down moves to establish an inquiry in 2001.
He said: “At a very minimum it is now essential that Minister O’Donoghue should come into the Dáil next week and make a full statement on why he turned down requests for an inquiry when he knew the situation was so serious. The two year delay in establishing an inquiry prolonged the suffering and trauma of the McBrearty family and others in Donegal.”
Joe Costello, the Labour Party’s spokesman on Justice, added: “It is now imperative that the Minister for Justice then, John O’Donoghue, comes into the Dáil and makes a statement on the matter. I think that if he is not prepared to do that himself then the Taoiseach should ensure that he does so.”
Meanwhile, PJ Stone, the general secretary of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), said no decision had been taken by the organisation over any attempt to stop the transfer of gardaí from Donegal.
He said around two out of the five officers transferred to Dublin in the aftermath of the tribunal report may be appealing individually to the Garda Commissioner through an internal mechanism.
Loyalist freed after questioning
Loyalist killer Michael Stone was released from jail in 2000
Convicted loyalist killer Michael Stone has been released from police custody.
Stone presented himself to police in London earlier this week and was brought back to Northern Ireland by PSNI officers.
Police said a 50-year-old man who was being questioned in relation to terrorist offences had been released.
A report will be sent to the Public Prosecution Service. Stone murdered three men at the 1988 funerals of three IRA members killed by the SAS.
He was released early in June 2000, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
In addition to the three men murdered, about 60 people were injured as Stone ran through Milltown Cemetery, firing shots and throwing hand grenades.
Security forces caught him at the edge of the cemetery, and he was later sentenced to several life terms.
His autobiography was published in 2003.
SF defend d’Hondt motion
25 June 2005
Sinn Fein in Limavady yesterday defended attempts to introduce the d’Hondt system against accusations unionists are being denied top positions.
United Unionist Coalition councillor Boyd Douglas claimed relations between the nationalists and unionists in the chamber had plummeted to a new low over the issue.
“Limavady Council is a real disaster story” he said.
His comments came after a motion by SF’s Anne Brolly that the council “employ d’Hondt to achieve the fairest possible allocations” was pulled at Thursday’s meeting.
Ms Brolly vowed that the motion would be tabled at a later date.
Unionists staged a walk out after the system was deployed at the Annual General Meeting last month to share out seats. Mr Douglas said: “It’s a fiasco - the electorate is losing out.”
Elderly urged to ‘lock out crime’
25 June 2005
Elderly residents across Armagh are being encouraged to take advantage of a “Lock Out Crime” initiative.
The scheme is open to householders whether living in public or private property.
The project’s implementation is being overseen by the NI Housing Executive District Office maintenance teams. The entire programme will take roughly two years to complete. Eligible elderly people are being offered a specific package of measures namely front and back door mortice locks, front door restrictor bar or chain, window locks to “accessible” windows, front door peephole viewers and bulkhead lighting to the front and rear of their homes.
All eligible persons are being contacted by post.
Encouraging people to take up the scheme the Executive’s district manager in Armagh, Joyce Dobbin, says it is not often people have the opportunity to benefit from an offer like this.
She added that unfortunately the criteria for participation is strict and only those who meet it will be eligible.
Skaters to get on their boards
25 June 2005
Young people from across Northern Ireland will be in Belfast this weekend for a skateboarding championship extravaganza.
The thrills and spills of the extreme sport will be on show at the Ozone complex, Ormeau Road, today.
Skateboarders from as far afield as Nashville, USA will also be there.
The main part of the Globalclub PepsiMax Sk8Jam festival is from noon to 6pm. As well as the championships there will be a unique blend of skateboarding, mini-moto, Virgin Megastore’s Battle of the Bands, urban arts, DJing and music from Cool FM.
An outdoor skatepark will remain at the Ozone Complex until Sunday.
For further information visit www.sk8jam.co.uk
——————
Firefighter and cop up for award
By Linda McKee
25 June 2005
A firefighter and police officer have been nominated for a bravery award after the pair joined forces moments after the horrific two-car collision outside Larne last year.
Harry Phillips, a police officer who was travelling to work, and Robert (Roy) McAllister, an off-duty firefighter from Glengormley, were nominated for a Vodafone Lifesavers award by David Hanna, PSNI district commander in Larne.
He told the Belfast Telegraph their responses showed members of the services never consider themselves off-duty.
Two people lost their lives in the crash. Mr McAllister, who had been travelling behind one of the cars, tended to the injuries of the female driver, then pulled the passenger of the other car free as it went up in flames.
The driver was trapped in by a jammed seatbelt.
“Roy found a piece of glass near the car and used this to cut the seatbelt from the driver,” Mr Hanna explained.
“He then pulled the driver from the burning car through the open window.”
The pair tried to release the driver of the other car but she was too heavily trapped.
“Roy and Harry helped others to drag the second car away from the fire and remained at the scene until emergency services arrived.
“There’s no doubt that the actions of these brave men saved the life of another in quite remarkable circumstances.”
The face of justice in Ulster
Sir Alasdair Fraser, head of the new Prosecution Service, speaks to Chris Thornton
24 June 2005
A matter of yards from where the fatal attack on Robert McCartney forced republicans to confront fundamental questions about what constitutes crime, a different kind of transformation in justice is under way.
Hidden from the scene of the McCartney murder by a high wall is the new headquarters of the Prosecution Service. It is where the next key decisions about the case against McCartney’s alleged killer will be taken, and the base for the most significant changes to Northern Ireland’s justice system in a generation.
Five years after it was recommended by the Criminal Justice Review - a product of the Good Friday Agreement - the independent and regionalised Prosecution Service is on its way to being fully established.
Over the next year-and-a-half the service will begin setting up bases in major towns across Northern Ireland, and take over almost every prosecution, including the most minor cases currently prosecuted by police.
And in cases like the McCartney murder, prosecutors will operate alongside the police, shaping a case by advising on legislation and what kind of evidence might be required, instead of waiting for a case file to be presented to them.
The reshaped service is presided over by the Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Alasdair Fraser. For 16 years Sir Alasdair - son of the manse, educated in Holywood and at Trinity College - has been Northern Ireland’s chief prosecutor.
For most of that time he has been a remote figure at the head of an organisation that was battened down, not only against the dangers it faced through the Troubles, but from general public scrutiny as well.
Now Sir Alasdair and his organisation are entering a new era. For the Service this means a rapid expansion - a caseload jump from about 10,000 cases a year to around 70,000 and a quadrupling of legal staff.
For the ‘Director’ - as his staff refer to him - it also means giving the first interviews about his work, and about dealing with new initiatives and old criticisms.
This week, for example, Sir Alasdair’s office was on the defensive side of a courtroom, confronting one of those criticisms. Belfast man John Boyle, who was wrongly jailed for terrorism charges, brought a High Court action to get the DPP to give detailed reasons why the police who put him away were not prosecuted. The Police Ombudsman had recommended that the officers should be charged with perjury, but prosecutors declined to bring the case to court.
Critics say there is a particularly public interest in explaining decisions involving police. Sir Alasdair won’t comment directly on the Boyle case, but he says the question of explaining the reasons why some cases don’t make it to court is not a problem exclusive to Northern Ireland.
“It’s a problem prosecutors share throughout the common law world,” he says. “The position is that we provide reasons in general terms - that there was insufficient evidence, or that the public interest did not require prosecution.
“We do that not out of any sense of being defensive, but there are issues of rights and concerns of individuals in society. For example, if I said ‘I’m not going to prosecute an individual because I find the following persons not capable of belief’, that would be an inappropriate thing for me to say.
“Those persons, I recognise, would not have due process to protect them.
“Now, if there is a request for more detailed reasons, then we look at the case on an individual basis and we measure how far we can go in assisting the person who is making that request by providing greater detail. That is rather different from saying ‘the Director doesn’t give reasons’.”
He says his office’s policy on giving decisions is “evolving”, and could be assisted by legislation.
Another repeated criticism is the length of time it takes some cases to reach court or come to some resolution.
Although Sir Alasdair says the average time to complete cases is falling - against an increased workload - high profile cases routinely take long periods to complete. Currently the Stormont spy case and the extradition of chef Larry Zaitschek (wanted for questioning about the Castlereagh police burglary) have taken more than two years.
“It’s not a problem which a single agency has responsibility for. It crosses across the system as whole,” Sir Alasdair says.
“I think it is important that prosecutors are given sufficient time to take informed decisions which are sustainable. The system of justice is rather like an orchid. If there were a series of cases that went badly wrong , the damage would be immense.
“It’s very hard to say how long cases should take. A simple case should be reported quickly; a more complex case will take a greater amount of time.
“If you take a complex fraud, it’s quite clear that will take a number of months perhaps for the police investigation to be completed, and the analysis in this office could take a number of months. It all depends on the degree of complexity.
“There isn’t perfection in any walk of life. And there are occasions, clearly, where cases take too long.
Thousands at Orange protest march
Thousands of people have gathered in the Shankill area of Belfast for an Orange Order protest being held in place of the suspended Whiterock parade.
The Orange Order has said, however, it will march along its traditional Whiterock Parade route before autumn.
Nationalist residents of the Springfield Road welcomed the postponement of the parade.
But DUP councillor Nelson McCausland said the Order was determined to march without being re-routed.
“The protest parade today is only the start and we would encourage people to support that protest parade. Then, over the coming weeks and months, that campaign strategy will unfold.
“It undoubtedly will include such things as an exploration of a legal challenge to what the parade’s commission has done.
“But, in the end, we are determined to secure our basic right to parade there to the Whiterock hall as brethern have done for the past 48 years.”
The Parades Commission had imposed route restrictions on the march.
The Orange Order wanted to go through Workman Avenue, off the mainly nationalist Springfield Road, but had been ordered by the commission to go though the former Mackies factory site.
The decision to call off the parade was announced by the North and West Belfast Parades Forum following a meeting on Friday.
The forum represents a wide range of unionist-loyalist-Orange opinion.
Forum spokesman Tommy Cheevers described recent events as “a deliberate attempt to humiliate and demean” the loyalist community.
He also called on the government to review the role of the Parades Commission.
North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds called on people to support the protest parade.
He said: “The disgraceful Parades Commission ruling to insult the Orange brethren, by forcing them through an industrial site, has been rightly rejected.
Residents welcome move
“By their actions in postponing, not cancelling, the Whiterock parade, the Orange Order, the North and West Forum and the entire community are committed to an ongoing campaign for the human and civil rights of Orange brethren and Protestants throughout north and west Belfast. ”
In a statement, nationalist residents said the only way to resolve the matter was for the parade organisers to resume negotiations with the residents.
Earlier this week, the Parades Commission rejected two applications for it to reverse its decision to impose restrictions on the parade.
It said it could not review its original ruling as it has not received any new information.
The commission said its original ruling was a “genuine attempt to manage the many difficult and emotive issues” surrounding this year’s Whiterock parade.
It said it wanted to “accommodate the concerns of the parade organisers and residents”.
The Parades Commission was set up in 1997 to make decisions on whether controversial parades should be restricted.
IMC bill tops £2m
By Jarlath Kearney
The Independent Monitoring Commission has cost taxpayers on both sides of the border over £2 million (€3 million) since January 2004.
Daily Ireland can also reveal that the IMC’s budget between April 2005 and March 2006 will be set at a further £2 million (€3 million).
A Northern Ireland Office spokesperson confirmed the figures to Daily Ireland last night and added: “We plan to publish final audited accounts for the first 15 months of the IMC’s operation in due course.”
The IMC was formally constituted by both the Irish and British governments in January 2004. Its four members are paid £625 (€942) for every day of their professional services. The budget is jointly paid by both governments.
Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) deputy director, Dick Kerr, former Department of Justice secretary general, Joe Brosnan, former Alliance Party leader, John Alderdice, and ex-Scotland Yard Special Branch head, John Grieve, have published a series of controversial reports on alleged paramilitary-related activity in the North.
Republicans have repeatedly criticised the IMC, claiming it is a tool of both governments.
Last night’s revelations came as new statistics from the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) revealed that confidence in the PSNI and the Policing Board has dropped during the past year.
The NIO also disclosed that the North’s Forensic Science Agency failed to maintain key professional accreditation from the United Kingdom Accreditation Service during 2003/04.
Both disclosures are included in the NIO’s annual departmental report which was published yesterday.
According to NIO survey figures for 2004/05, public confidence has fallen in the PSNI’s ability to provide a good service to everyone in the North and “treat both communities equally”.
The percentage of people who think the Policing Board “helps ensure the PSNI does a good job” and is “independent” of the PSNI has also dropped. By contrast, overall confidence in the Police Ombudsman’s office has risen.
One of the NIO’s key public service agreement targets is “increasing confidence in the police throughout all parts of the community in Northern Ireland”.
Commenting on the results, the NIO’s Policing and Security Directorate, headed by senior civil servant, Nick Perry, noted that progress “has declined slightly this year”.
“This is disappointing. The issue of confidence in the police will be carefully considered in the year ahead.”
The NIO annual report also disclosed that during 2003/04 the North’s Forensic Science Agency only met half of its key targets. According to the report: “The agency was not successful in meeting a target relating to the speed with which it turns around casework in those cases where a case is required to be submitted to the DPP within the notified timescale.”
This marked the second year in succession that the agency failed to meet this target.
Shots fired after car fails to stop in Armagh
25 June 2005 14:48
Politicians in the North have criticised the British Army for firing shots at a car that failed to stop at a police checkpoint in the early hours of this morning.
Army officers were accompanying police on an anti drink-driving campaign in the Cullaville Road area of Crossmaglen in Co Armagh.
Dominic Bradley, the SDLP’s Newry and Armagh MLA, said there were other means which could be deployed to deal the situation without resort to firearms.
The PSNI is seeking assistance in tracing a dark coloured Peugeot 406 which was involved in the incident.
80,000 fans turn out as U2 return home in triumph
YOU TWO: back home . . . storming Croker, and giving the fans exactly what they wanted. Picture: Kenneth O’Halloran
U2 made a triumphant homecoming to Dublin last night when they played the first of three concerts in front of 80,000 people at Croke Park.
The biggest band in the world came back to the city where Bono, The Edge, Larry and Adam first began rehearsing together more than 25 years ago as teenagers at Mount Temple school. And their fans - across the generations - loved it.
The music went down a treat - and it was just as well as Bono’s words were lost on a large section of the crowd.
In many parts of the huge Croke Park stands, fans said the sound system didn’t allow them to make out what Bono was saying. Speakers positioned half way down the stadium to relay sound to fans further away from the stage created what some fans described as a time delay effect.
Fans from all over the country and from further afield began filing into the stadium just after 3pm when the doors officially opened to the public.
The diehard followers, some queueing in dismal conditions since Wednesday evening, were rewarded for their loyalty by securing a place early in the day in The Elipse, or front pit of the stadium, which holds 4,500.
The three concerts are reckoned to be worth €50m to the capital. “It’s not as big as a Papal visit but it’s the next biggest thing,” said Dublin Tourism spokesman Frank McGee.
Although there were reports of disgruntled fans being moved by gardai to the back of a queue of people on Jones’s Avenue after queueing all morning at the wrong entrance on Jones’s Road, gardai said last night they were pleased with the crowd and the fact that there were no arrests or serious disruptions.
Ticket touts, who may have expected to rake in hundreds of euro for tickets outside Croke Park were last night left disappointed and forced to drop their prices at the last minute. By late evening touts were selling tickets for as little as €130 - just €70 more than the face value for a standing ticket for last night’s show, and hundreds less than those offered on Irish internet auction site ebay.
But if the touts were losing out, local publicans in the areas surrounding Croke Park were reaping the benefits of the crowds descending on Dublin 3.
James Gill’s pub on North Circular Road and Quinn’s pub in Drumcondra were packed to the brim, with people spilling out onto the streets.
And the money-making outside the stadium was more than matched by that within. Alcoholic drinks were €5 a go and nibbles such as burgers and hot dogs were selling for €4 a piece.
Despite the dark clouds looming overhead, spirits were high amongst revellers in the streets surrounding Croke Park.
“We don’t mind if it rains all night as long as we get to see them,” said Jimmy O’Shea who travelled from Tralee with his wife Minnie and daughter Aoife to see the show.
Traffic came to a standstill as concertgoers descended on the stadium in their thousands. Trains into the city were mobbed, as were the extra buses put on by Bus Eireann. An estimated 30,000 travelled down from the North.
A short time before the concert, manager Paul McGuinness said: “Playing Dublin is always extra excitement, extra pressure. It’s great to be playing this magnificent stadium.”
Bono and the boys bounded on stage at 9pm and, after a brief intro, yelled: “Uno, dos, tres, quatorze’ - the opening line of their hit single ‘Vertigo’, whereupon the whole audience joined in.
In a stage towering 28 metres above Croke Park, Bono, forever proud of his roots, told the crowd: “This is the funky side of town, this is the north side.” And with that the multi-million-euro stage erupted into an visual extravaganza blasting out pyrotechnics and brightly colour lights to the packed arena.
While Bono initially seemed nervous, he quickly got into the swing of things, engaging the crowd with hits such as ‘Beautiful Day’, ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’.
The 22,000-strong crowd who were standing leapt up and down in frenzied enthusiasm at the start of each song. And the gesture wasn’t lost on Bono, who commended them on their performance. “Thank you for all your support, you crazy fools,” he yelled before launching into a back catalogue of hits spanning more than 25 years.
Louise Healy
New Bedford gets a visit from a Nobel Irishman
By JACK SPILLANE
Standard-Times staff writer
John Hume isn’t a man who would likely put a “26+6=1″ sticker on his car’s bumper.
The 1998 Nobel Prize winner avoids that call for a unified Ireland and instead calls for an “agreed Ireland.”
Mr. Hume, 68, is the former Irish Catholic member of Parliament who negotiated the Good Friday peace accords with Protestant leader David Trimble.
He was in New Bedford yesterday visiting with the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick and their supporters.
The Irish-American fraternal organization is celebrating today’s dedication of a monument to area Irish Americans. A Celtic cross, located at Fort Taber adjacent to the Acushnet River, will be dedicated at 1 p.m.
Mr. Hume avoids talk of a united Ireland lest he offend Protestant militants.
His “agreed Ireland” is a place in which Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland will determine their future through peaceful means.
The Good Friday accords — which outline a governing scheme for Protestants and Catholics sharing power — will ultimately lead to peace in his troubled homeland, Mr. Hume said.
“For the first time in history, the people of Northern Ireland voted on how they are going to live together,” he said of the elections that followed the peace agreement brokered by former Maine Sen. George Mitchell.
Since the Good Friday accords, the streets of Irish trouble spots like his home town of Londonderry (Derry) are calm, he said.
“No longer can the paramilitary organizations (such groups as the Irish Republican Army and Ulster Defense League) claim — as they always have — to be representing the people,” he said.
As younger Protestants and Catholics spend their lives working out differences through the ballot box instead of with guns, they will not go back to violence, he said.
“If we have 25 to 30 years of Catholics and Protestants working together to build a society, you don’t think that’ll change attitudes?” he asked.
All change takes time, Mr. Hume acknowledged, but he insisted change is on its way for a country that has been fighting for 400 years.
“The structures are in place for it to come,” he said.
“In a generation or two, there’ll be a new Ireland,” he said.
Mr. Hume said that the late Congressman Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy played key roles in changing the atmosphere in Northern Ireland.
“We owe a deep debt of gratitude to your public representatives in Massachusetts,” he said.
They were instrumental in convincing President Jimmy Carter to become the first American president to recognize the problems of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, he said.
When Rep. O’Neill visited Ireland, Mr. Hume researched where the late American politician’s Irish grandmother had been born and took him there, he said.
The only way forward for Ireland is by forging agreements through peaceful means, he said.
“Having gone through what I’ve gone through for 30 years — seeing people killed in our streets — I don’t want to see that happening anywhere,” he said.
The Irish peace model, is based on the same respect for diversity that is the model for American democracy and the European union, he said.
“The essence of our community is respect for diversity,” he said.
“E pluribus unum.”
Contact Jack Spillane at jspillane@s-t.com
This story appeared on Page A1 of The Standard-Times on June 25, 2005.
IRA apologizes for shooting to death teenage girl in 1973
Posted 6/24/2005 2:26 PM
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) — The Irish Republican Army apologized Friday for shooting to death a Catholic girl in 1973 during a botched ambush on a British army patrol.
The IRA had long insisted that British soldiers killed the girl, 14-year-old Kathleen Feeney, in Derry, Northern Ireland’s predominantly Catholic second-largest city. But in a statement published in the Derry Journal newspaper, the outlawed group said a new internal investigation had confirmed what the public had long believed — the IRA did it.
“Our failure to publicly accept responsibility for her death until now has only added to the hurt and pain of the Feeney family,” the IRA statement said. “The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann (IRA) wish to apologize unreservedly to the Feeney family for the death of Kathleen and for all the grief that our actions have caused to them.”
The statement was the latest act of public contrition from the IRA, which killed about 1,800 people from 1970 to 1997 as part of a failed campaign to abolish Northern Ireland as a British territory. The underground organization called an open-ended truce that year as part of a peace process that produced Northern Ireland’s Good Friday accord of 1998.
Usually, IRA apologies have been roundly criticized as cynically timed for political effect, for containing qualifications that offend the victims’ families, or simply for coming decades too late.
Mark Durkan, the moderate Catholic who represents Londonderry in British Parliament, and the Irish government’s justice minister, Michael McDowell, both said the IRA should have told the truth long ago on scores of such disputed killings.
“The IRA lied through its teeth at the time and blamed the killing on the British army and maintained that lie in a cowardly fashion for many years,” McDowell said.
“No family should have had to wait so long for the truth. No family and no community should have been left for so long with a false understanding of such a great loss,” Durkan said.
But the Feeney family, who always accused the IRA of responsibility, offered a muted welcome in a prepared statement. Siblings of the slain girl had approached IRA members in Derry earlier this year.
“In memory of our parents, Kathleen and Harry Feeney, the family of Kathleen Feeney decided to seek an unconditional apology from the Provisional IRA for the death of their sister,” the family statement said, using the IRA’s full formal name. “It is the family’s wish that this will help bring closure.”
A single bullet struck Kathleen on Nov. 14, 1973, as she played with friends in a street about 200 yards from a British army foot patrol, which came under fire from at least one IRA gunman. One of the British soldiers tried to resuscitate the girl.
Until Friday, the IRA’s official position had been that British troops killed the girl, and the IRA began shooting afterward in retaliation. Although a 16-year-old IRA member was charged with murdering Kathleen and attempting to murder soldiers that day, he was acquitted on those charges in 1975 and instead received a 7-year prison sentence for possessing an assault rifle and ammo.
Statements of apology and regret, particularly by the IRA and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have formed one particularly emotionally charged plank of Northern Ireland’s peace process.
In the most sweeping but divisive gesture, the IRA in 2002 apologized for killing what it called “noncombatants” but insisted that most of its victims — including police officers and soldiers targeted while off-duty in their homes or private cars — were “legitimate targets.”
In March, four IRA prisoners convicted of shooting to death a southern Irish police officer in 1996 said they were sorry.
In October, the IRA apologized for killing a 15-year-old Belfast boy and dumping his body in the city zoo in 1973. In October 2003, the IRA apologized for secretly burying nine Catholic civilians in unmarked graves from 1972 to 1981.
For his part, Blair pioneered the path of peace-process contrition just two months after taking office in 1997. He issued Britain’s first official statement of regret for its role in the Irish potato famine of 1845-1850, which left 1 million dead and compelled 2 million more to emigrate.
He also authorized fact-finding probes into the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre by British soldiers in Derry, where 13 Catholic demonstrators were shot to death, and into four cases that involve accusations of British security-force collusion in killings.
In February, he apologized to a London family and Belfast man Gerard Conlon — subject of the Daniel Day-Lewis film ‘In the Name of the Father’— for their wrongful imprisonment in the 1970s and 1980s over IRA pub bombings.
IRA Apologise For Death Of Derry Schoolgirl
By Eamonn MacDermott
Friday 24th June 2005
A dramatic and unprecedented move, the IRA in Derry last night apologised ‘unreservedly’ to the family of schoolgirl Kathleen Feeney for her death in a shooting incident almost 32 years ago.
In a statement issued to the ‘Derry Journal’, the IRA said: “The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann wish to apologise unreservedly to the Feeney family for the death of Kathleen and for all the grief that our actions have caused to them.”
The move came after the Feeney family approached the IRA seeking full disclosure of what happened to 14-year-old Kathleen and also seeking an unconditional apology.
Kathleen Feeney was shot dead on November 14, 1973, just yards from her Quarry Street home in the Brandywell. Her father, Harry, witnessed his daughter being shot as he stood in the doorway of his home.
Following the death, controversy arose over who fired the shots that struck the Derry schoolgirl. The British Army said that one of their patrols was fired upon but did not return fire while the IRA denied responsibility for the shooting and blamed the army. The IRA also claimed they killed a soldier ‘in retaliation’.
However, last night the IRA issued a lengthy statement about the events surrounding the death of Kathleen Feeney in which they acknowledged that they had killed her.
The full IRA statement reads: “On 14th November 1973, 14-yearold Kathleen Feeney was shot dead in Quarry Street, Derry.
“The IRA in Derry, in a statement, denied that any of its volunteers were responsible for the death of Kathleen Feeney. In a further statement, the IRA in Derry claimed to have carried out an operation against the British Army in retaliation for the death of Kathleen Feeney.
“The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has been asked by the Feeney family to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of their sister and to publicly acknowledge that she was killed by the IRA.
“The IRA leadership agreed to do so. We found, as the Feeney family have always believed, that Kathleen was hit by one of a number of shots fired by an IRA Active Service Unit that had fired upon a British army foot-patrol in the Lecky Road area.
“The IRA accepts responsibility for the death of Kathleen Feeney. Our failure to publicly accept responsibility for her death until now has only added to the hurt and pain of the Feeney family.
“The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann wish to apologise unreservedly to the Feeney family for the death of Kathleen and for all the grief that our actions have caused to them.”
In response to the IRA statement, the Feeney family issued a brief statement which they said was their definitive response on the matter.
The Feeney family said: “In memory of our parents, Kathleen and Harry Feeney. The family of Kathleen Feeney decided to seek an unconditional apology from the Provisional IRA for the death of their sister, who was shot dead 32 years ago. Kathleen was then aged 14-yearsold. It is the family’s wish that this will help bring closure.”
Catholics burned out
Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Saturday June 25, 2005
The Guardian
In the dead of night on the smart north Belfast cul-de-sac, a river of burning oil had scorched everything in its wake. The roof of one house had caved in and a children’s playhouse, which four children had slept in a few days earlier, was a burnt-out shell.
If they had been there at 1am, when arsonists set an oil tank alight, causing two more to explode and sending a fireball through the edge of the estate, they would have been burned alive like their pet rabbit.
“We can’t stay here now,” said the children’s father, Peter McCall, as the smell of smoke hung in the air. The McCalls are now abandoning this middle-class idyll of the new Northern Ireland.
The image of parents waking to the crackle of burning, wrenching children from their beds and throwing them over fences to safety is a throwback to the Troubles. Attacks still occur in working-class areas and on the homes of migrant workers. But in a leafy new mixed development of Catholics and Protestants, where most children attend the local integrated school, it is not supposed to happen.
When a group of youths told Catholic children from the estate “You are invading our territory and your houses are going to burn tonight”, no one took it seriously.
Police are investigating a motive for Monday’s attack in Old Throne Park. Sinn Féin said it was attempted murder, a sectarian act by loyalists to stoke tensions during the marching season, which began with violence last weekend and was due to continue with the contentious Whiterock parade in Belfast tonight before it was suspended. This could mark the start of a fraught summer, the party warned.
When a Catholic church was burnt by arsonists in Portadown this week, a local priest appealed for no revenge attacks.
The first major parade of the Protestant marching season ended in chaos last weekend after Catholic demonstrators threw bottles and bricks and clashed with police after the return leg of the Orange Order’s Tour of the North passed the nationalist Ardoyne shops in north Belfast.
This rundown and embittered interface between Protestant and Catholic communities who live behind dividing “peace walls” is a flash point of tension every year. This area of north Belfast suffered the most murders of the Troubles and the loyalist protests outside Holy Cross school four years ago still play strongly in people’s minds.
Northern Ireland’s chief constable, Hugh Orde, said the disturbances, in which 18 police officers and 11 others were injured, should serve as a “wake-up call” for the marching season.
Father Aidan Troy, the priest who led Catholic children to school during the Holy Cross dispute, warned that tension had descended to “the subhuman” and if the Irish or British governments did not intervene soon, someone could be killed.
Various groups are working to stop the rioting at Ardoyne sparking further violence in west Belfast tonight.
But politicians on both sides are unhappy. The Democratic Unionist party’s Nigel Dodds described the violence at the parade in Ardoyne as “an outrageous, unprovoked and vicious attack by republicans” which “Sinn Féin/IRA allowed to happen”.
In March, at the height of the Robert McCartney crisis, the moderate nationalist SDLP leader, Mark Durkan, warned that Sinn Féin and the IRA might orchestrate violence during the marching season so they could then try to claim advantage by calming tensions on the streets.
He said this was a way of “reminding people that there are some things that the IRA are needed for”.
Last year, 99% of parades were peaceful. In the whole marching season, there was only an hour and a half of extreme violence - crowds turned on the army and police in Ardoyne on July 12, the pinnacle of the season when the Orange Order commemorates the Protestant William of Orange’s victory over the Catholic James II at the battle of the Boyne.
Asked this week if Sinn Féin was turning violence “on and off” for its own advantage, the party’s justice spokesman, Gerry Kelly, said this was a “strange logic”. He said the footage of the recent Ardoyne rioting had shown it had been out of control and community leaders had tried to stop it.
But he warned that tensions were high in north Belfast, worsened by the government’s decision this week to send a senior republican released under the Good Friday agreement back to jail. Sean Kelly was convicted of the IRA’s Shankill Road fish shop bombing in 1993 in which nine Protestants and one of the bombers died.
It remains to be seen whether, amid the mood of renewed distrust, the IRA will produce its awaited statement announcing it is to abandon guns for politics.
I won’t join assembly with Sinn Féin, says Empey
24/06/2005 - 23:39:19
New Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey tonight insisted that his party would not go into government with Sinn Féin in the lifetime of the current suspended Stormont Assembly.
“I made it clear in my literature that this party will not participate in an executive which includes Sinn Fein in the lifetime of this Assembly,” the East Belfast MLA said.
“I made it clear at four meetings this week. That has been my position.”
As he celebrated victory in a close run leadership contest to succeed David Trimble, the former Stormont Economy Minister vowed to bring forward fresh talent from within the UUP.
He also criticised the British government for allowing politics to be paralysed with a moribund Assembly.
The 58-year-old UUP leader was forced into a second count in the leadership contest by north Down Assembly member Alan McFarland.
At the end of the first round of voting, there were 29 votes between the two candidates. But after the distribution of 54 votes for the third candidate, David McNarry, Sir Reg emerged victorious, with 21 votes to Mr McFarland’s 287.
Sitting beside his wife Stella and surrounded by supporters, including MEP Jim Nicolson and Assembly members Danny Kennedy and Michael Copeland, Sir Reg reminded opponents that he would not contemplate sharing power with Sinn Féin in the near future.
Sir Reg said he hoped that the Government would wake up to the fact that politics should not be paralysed in Northern Ireland with a moribund Assembly at a time when local politicians should be taking key education and health decisions.
He also vowed that the Ulster Unionists would work together as a united team.
After the heavy losses of last months Westminster and local government local elections, and anxious to put years of internal feuding behind the party, the new UUP leader declared: “We are going to use our talents.
“We are drawing a line. We are going to try and start afresh.”
25 JUNE 1985
Police hunt IRA resort bombs
The IRA may have planted several devices in resorts around the UK
Thirteen people have been arrested in connection with a suspected IRA mainland bombing campaign uncovered by police two days ago.
The men - who are being held under the Prevention of Terrorism Act - include a 33-year-old from Belfast, suspected of carrying out the attack on the Conservative Cabinet in the Brighton Grand Hotel last year.
It is feared the IRA may have planted devices in a dozen seaside resorts around the UK - timed to go off at the height of the summer season - and a massive police hunt has been launched.
A controlled explosion was carried out on a suspect package in Brighton and a hotel in Hull was evacuated, but both incidents proved to be false alarms.
The only bomb discovered so far was found in the Rubens Hotel, London, where civil dignitaries and mayors were expected to stay for three Buckingham Palace garden parties next month.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher congratulated the police on their prompt action and said the eight forces involved in the bomb hunt had averted a disaster “calculated to maim and kill many innocent people”.
Home Secretary Leon Brittan told the BBC he had given Metropolitan Commissioner Sir Kenneth Newman three weeks to make safe the resorts named in the IRA plot.
In Context
The alleged IRA summer bombing campaign was successfully averted.
One of the 13 men arrested, Patrick Magee, was charged on 29 June 1985 for the murder of the five people killed in the Brighton bombing the previous October.
He was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment for that attack and the seaside resort conspiracy, but released in 1999 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
'So venceremos, beidh bua againn eigin lá eigin. Sealadaigh abú.'
--Bobby Sands
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