SAOIRSE32

Boston Globe

He was a teenage revolutionary. He tried to kill a bishop. After 14 years in prison, he got married. Now the Catholic Church wants him to become a priest. Is no man beyond salvation?

From revolutionary to priest: The Catholic Church believes no man is beyond salvation. Even Shane Paul O’Doherty.

By Kevin Cullen | August 7, 2005

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“LET’S GO FOR A WALK,” SHANE PAUL O’DOHERTY SAYS. The Long Corridor at St. Patrick’s College, Ireland’s last remaining seminary, is a vision out of Harry Potter’s school, Hogwarts, dark and slightly foreboding. The oak walls are lined with solemn portraits of clerics who have educated more than 11,000 Roman Catholic priests since 1795. Inside College Chapel, heels click on the marble mosaic floor, under the gaze of a procession of saints and angels painted on the ceiling. Outside, the three Gothic buildings that form St. Mary’s Square overlook a lush garden and a pond with rocks positioned as steppingstones, designed to symbolize man’s spiritual journey toward God.

In the sleepy college town of Maynooth, 15 miles outside Dublin, we walk through a stone archway into an idyllic Gothic quadrangle called St. Joseph’s Square, gravel paths snaking through grassy swaths dappled with bright red flowers. The only sound is bird song. At 50, O’Doherty still boasts a boyish appearance, thin and fit, bone-china skin, his brown hair closely cropped.

Between 1993 and 2002, seven seminaries closed in Ireland, leaving only St. Patrick’s. Though it reeks of history, it also seems a lonely place. In the 1960s, as many as 600 seminarians studied at St. Patrick’s; today, 60 do, a drop that’s been attributed both to a more materialistic Ireland and to the country’s own ongoing clergy sex abuse scandals, which mirror those in Boston and other American dioceses.

The last time we had gone for a long walk together, a decade earlier, I was covering the conflict in Northern Ireland for the Globe, and he was a married man six years removed from prison. Before his arrest, he’d become the most wanted man in Britain, a hero for the Irish Republican Army whose letter-bomb campaign had maimed a dozen people and terrorized all of London. We had walked the streets of Derry, his hometown. At that time, we paused at the rooming house for British soldiers where he had planted his first bomb in 1970, when he was 15. We passed the spot in the Bogside where Barney McGuigan’s brains spilled out onto the pavement on Bloody Sunday in 1972, when British paratroopers shot and killed 14 civil rights demonstrators. We walked by the apartment in Crawford Square that O’Doherty used as a bomb factory, the one that blew up, killing Ethel Lynch, his 22-year-old assistant.

He was given his middle name because he was born on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, who was a zealous killer of Christians before his own conversion on the road to Damascus. But O’Doherty’s story is not about a miraculous religious conversion as much as a gradual spiritual evolution. He had a tug of war with God, and God won. His odyssey, from teenage revolutionary to middle-age seminarian, is a story of redemption.

PHOTO GALLERY

“Hell,” he says, shrugging. “If I can be saved, anyone can.”

IN 1965, WHEN HE WAS 10 YEARS OLD, HE tore a sheet of paper from a notebook he used to copy lessons at school and wrote down a pledge: “When I grow up, I, Shane Paul O’Doherty, want to fight and, if necessary, die for Ireland’s freedom.” Even at his tender age, he knew his words were treasonous, and so he hid them under the floorboards of the attic of his family’s home and forgot about them until 10 years later, when he was sitting in an interrogation room, under arrest, and a detective shoved the yellowed paper under his nose. He blushed, more embarrassed by his childish idealism than terrified at the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison.

O’Doherty was born in Derry in 1955 during a winter so cold his mother called him the Snow Baby. Unlike most of Northern Ireland, Derry had a Catholic majority, and an established Catholic middle class, one of the reasons the Catholic civil rights movement bloomed there in the late 1960s. O’Doherty was part of that middle class, one of eight children in a family that wasn’t especially political. His father was a teacher and principal at a school run by the Christian Brothers, a Catholic order. His mother hailed from a prominent business family. Two of his uncles fought the British in Ireland’s war of independence in the 1920s. But O’Doherty’s father never spoke of any of this and quietly aspired to unity with the Irish Republic while opposing violence as a means of achieving it. Despite holding the majority in Derry, Catholics were excluded from power through gerrymandering and other discriminatory practices of the Protestant unionist government that was loyal to Britain.

Most of O’Doherty’s neighbors were Protestant, and he never heard a sectarian word in his home. But as a child, he would sit alone in his family’s well-stocked library, reading about Irish history. “There was something about the tragedy of British rule in Ireland against the wishes of the Irish people,” he says.

He was spellbound reading about the Easter Rising of 1916, when a quixotic band of patriots staged a rebellion they knew was doomed, determined to ignite a wider revolution. As a 10-year-old living in British-controlled Northern Ireland, Shane O’Doherty offered himself up to martyrdom, which was something of an empty pledge, not because of his age but because, at the time, there was no rebellion to join. The IRA, widely regarded as a small bunch of dreamers, was dormant.

But that all changed when the Protestant government’s response to the demands of the Catholic civil rights movement was to beat protesters off the streets. In 1968 and 1969, around the time O’Doherty was turning 14, Derry convulsed with protest and attacks on demonstrators by loyalist mobs and the predominantly Protestant police force. By the time British troops were deployed, O’Doherty had thrown Molotov cocktails at police, and the IRA had become active again. A new group, the Provisional IRA, or the Provos, had sprung up, determined to bring the fight to the British, and 15-year-old Shane O’Doherty began an almost farcical search for them, knocking on doors, so he could join. He eventually found two men who inducted him into the secret organization.

“I was no longer an insignificant teenager, “he says now. “I became heroic overnight. I felt almost drunk with power.”

At 16, he threw nail bombs at British soldiers and almost hoped he’d be shot dead, fantasizing that his sacrifice would inspire a mural or, better yet, a song, ensuring his immortality. He jumped out of alleys, firing a revolver at soldiers armed with automatic rifles. In 1971, he loosed a rocket at a British Army observation tower. It missed but hit another army post by dumb luck. Soldiers then opened fire on a passing car, wounding a woman and two children. O’Doherty went home and prayed that the woman and children would survive. They did, but his having almost caused their deaths had shaken him. He stopped reporting for duty.

Any chance he would stay away from the IRA for good evaporated five days after his 17th birthday, however, when British paratroopers opened fire on Catholic demonstrators on January 30, 1972 - what became known as Bloody Sunday. He saw unarmed men and teens gunned down. In the chaos, he bumped into a priest he knew, and the two went to the local morgue, where O’Doherty saw police and soldiers laugh and joke about the shootings. He accompanied the priest to the homes of the dead and the injured, and his fury smoldered. He reported back to the IRA and was flattered when his commander eventually asked him to go to London to launch a letter-bomb campaign.

“I had come to the conclusion that all these British soldiers from working-class backgrounds that we were shooting and blowing up in Northern Ireland were deemed expendable by the British government,” he says. “The idea was to have those in high places in British military and political circles face the consequences of occupying Ireland.”

ONCE IN LONDON, HE POSED AS A STUDENT and bought a copy of Who’s Who, to draw up a target list. One of his bombs injured Reginald Maudling, the British Cabinet member in charge of security on Bloody Sunday. He sent a bomb to Bishop Gerard Tickle, the Roman Catholic chaplain to the British Army, after reading a newspaper story quoting Tickle as saying British soldiers did nothing wrong on Bloody Sunday. (He later called the story a “press misrepresentation.”) The bomb, stuffed into a hollowed-out Bible, failed to detonate. He sent a letter bomb to 10 Downing Street, the prime minister’s residence, and it sat unnoticed in a wastebasket for 24 hours. It didn’t explode, but O’Doherty’s ability to pierce security at the heart of the government made him, as the mystery letter bomber, the most wanted man in Britain.

Other bombs sent by him exploded at the London Stock Exchange, the Bank of England, and a government building. The injured included secretaries and security guards, and, as a result, O’Doherty’s doubts returned. He went back to Derry to fight on the home front and knelt in a confessional at St. Eugene’s Cathedral, where he had been a choirboy a few years and a whole lifetime before. He told the priest he was in the IRA and wanted to talk about the morality of violence in a liberation struggle. But the priest was in no mood to debate.

“Murder and violence are always wrong,” the cleric told him.

O’Doherty left that church a more tormented 19-year-old than when he entered but continued fighting.

In 1975, the IRA called a cease-fire, with the promise from authorities that IRA operatives would not be arrested as a political compromise was hashed out. But that promise turned out to be empty, and, in May 1975, police descended on the house of O’Doherty’s mother. Sarah O’Doherty, who had no idea her son was in the IRA, was making him lunch; she looked on in bewilderment as he was bundled into a car, shirtless, and whisked away.

The IRA shot a police officer in retaliation for O’Doherty’s arrest. The dead cop was the son of the chief officer at the Belfast prison where O’Doherty was being held, and the guards beat the 20-year-old mercilessly the next day. Guards ripped sheets into long strips and placed them in his cell, advising him to hang himself, because it would be better than what they had planned for him. One guard sat outside his cell and turned the light on and off, so O’Doherty couldn’t sleep. Years later, the warden who had presided over his torture was murdered by the IRA, and O’Doherty could not muster sympathy for him.

In September, O’Doherty was flown to London and charged with the letter bombings. As he prepared for his trial, he read the reports that chronicled in clinical and shocking detail the extent of the injuries he had inflicted on 12 people. A secretary was blinded by glass in her eyes. A security guard had his hand blown off and an eye blown out. Another man lost the tips of his fingers.

Even as O’Doherty second-guessed himself, he remained defiant. He refused to recognize the authority of the court that tried him in London. The feeling was somewhat mutual, as the elderly judge frequently nodded off. But the judge woke up long enough to give O’Doherty 30 life sentences.

If St. Paul’s transformation was on the road to Damascus, O’Doherty’s was in solitary confinement in Wormwood Scrubs, a London prison. His conversion was in the monastic tradition of Ireland. For more than a year, he was isolated in a cell, where he read books on the theory of a just war.

“I was trying to justify the violence I had used,” he says.

Where guards saw only a stubborn man who refused to wear prison clothing and who insisted he was a political prisoner, the Rev. Gerald Ennis, the Catholic chaplain, saw a pilgrim.

“Your little brother is an extraordinary young man given very special gifts, and I believe those gifts are going to be used for the greater glory of God,” Ennis wrote in a prescient letter to one of O’Doherty’s brothers in 1977. “I have never worried particularly about his being in the [solitary] block, because he was always a person who was searching for the truth. Once the discovery was made, his prison cell became a monastic cell where he was alone with God and his own thoughts.”

O’Doherty emerged from solitary still defiant toward a prison regime he saw as needlessly cruel, but he was changed. At great personal risk, he left the security of the IRA, associating with English prisoners at a time when the Irish in England were held collectively responsible for ongoing IRA violence.

Back in his cell, he began reading the Bible more intently. The Gospel of St. Matthew nagged at him, especially one passage:

So, if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

“I had rejected the Church’s doctrine of a just war,” O’Doherty says. “I had come to believe that only pacifism was truly moral, truly Christlike. But, as I was trying to make myself a better person, to distance myself from the violence I had committed, I couldn’t really move forward until I had addressed my victims.”

O’Doherty then did what no other IRA member ever had: apologize to his victims. He never heard back from them, though one, the security guard who had lost an eye and a hand, told British newspapers he opposed the prospect of O’Doherty being released from prison. O’Doherty said he didn’t expect or need to be forgiven. The point was his being able to apologize and admit he was wrong.

In September 1985, after demanding repatriation for a decade, O’Doherty got into a taxi with two guards for the drive to Birmingham’s airport and a short flight to Belfast. One of the guards handed him a religious paperback. Inside was an inscription from the guard saying that he and his wife had been praying for O’Doherty for months. After 10 years of abuse, physical and psychological, in British jails, O’Doherty left the country with tears in his eyes, moved by an Englishman’s kindness.

Upon his release in 1989, O’Doherty enrolled at Trinity College in Dublin, pursuing a degree in English and writing his autobiography. A few years later, he met a pretty blonde from Chicago named Michelle Sweeney, who was getting a doctorate in medieval history. They married, settling into a small house in Dublin. He got a job as a computer software trainer. As he prospered in Ireland’s booming high-tech economy, he tried to soothe a troubled conscience. He edited a magazine sold by the homeless. He volunteered to help Bosnian Muslim refugees. He taught computer skills to children from itinerant families.

Sweeney accepted an offer to teach in the United States, but O’Doherty could not get a visa to live there because of his criminal record. In the late 1990s, even as other former IRA members who never expressed remorse for their violent deeds flitted in and out of the United States promoting the peace process, O’Doherty was repeatedly denied permission to enter.

Their separation caused the marriage to collapse. Sweeney sent him an e-mail, saying she wanted a divorce. O’Doherty wanted an annulment. He wrote a 50-page letter to the board that oversees annulments in the Archdiocese of Chicago. He got his wish.

In the spring of 2001, O’Doherty was sitting at his desk in Stockholm, where he had begun working for Ericsson, the mobile-phone maker. He was a former terrorist, former prisoner, former husband. He had a good salary, and he was miserable. He decided to go back to Dublin. In just a generation, Ireland had gone from being one of Europe’s poorest countries to one of its richest. But the sudden, widespread pursuit of materialism disturbed O’Doherty.

The priesthood intrigued him; it had even as a kid. But if his record precluded his getting into the United States, how could he possibly get into a seminary?

On a religious retreat, a priest sidled up to him and asked him if he had ever been on a retreat before.

“Yes,” O’Doherty said.

“How long was it?” the priest asked.

“Fourteen and a half years,” O’Doherty replied.

IN THE BASEMENT KITCHEN OF DUBLIN’S Pro-Cathedral, on the city’s gritty North-side, Gemma and Triona King, spinster sisters in their 50s, are making sandwiches and explaining how they became two of the approximately two dozen consecrated virgins in Ireland. Their virginity is a gift to God, a symbolic gesture of their giving themselves to serve Jesus Christ. They have worked with Dublin’s disadvantaged for years. They also offer intercessions, or prayers, for those who want to become priests. They realized something was up when O’Doherty, who had been volunteering around the cathedral and visiting inmates with the prison chaplain, asked them to pray for him.

“We encouraged Shane,” Gemma King says, sipping tea as O’Doherty and another seminarian stand in another part of the kitchen, making plans to visit a homeless shelter. “Shane has sinned, like all of us. But he knows the power of repentance, of forgiveness, of redemption, of God’s love, not as abstract concepts but as real life. What better qualities could you have for a priest?”

Walking the grounds at the seminary, O’Doherty acknowledges he could do good works as a layperson. But becoming a priest, with five to seven years of intense study and soul-searching, was to him the logical, spiritual conclusion of his odyssey, something he calls “my journey through the largely unknown, praying for the three gifts I have never had: humility, patience, and gentleness.”

However long it takes him to be ordained, at 50, he is still 10 years younger than the average priest in Dublin.

Gone are the days of long, flowing black cassocks. In jeans and sweaters, the seminarians blend in with the 5,000 other students who, since 1997, have shared the bucolic campus that is National University of Ireland, Maynooth.

O’Doherty was elected class representative by his 27 classmates, the largest seminary class in Ireland in more than 20 years.

“What’s the difference between a terrorist and a liturgist?” a priest asked the seminarians at one of their first classes last fall.

No one raised a hand.

“You can negotiate with a terrorist,” the priest said, answering his own question, as all eyes drifted to O’Doherty.

“They want me to argue,” he says later, almost as if he can’t believe his luck. “I can start an argument in an empty house.”

His classmates had told me an illuminating story. In one class, they engaged in role-playing. The instructors hung three signs around their necks and asked the seminarians to stand behind the person who most needed the support of a priest. Most stood in back of the person labeled as religious. A few stood in back of the person labeled a prostitute. Only O’Doherty stood behind the person labeled a homosexual.

Asked about it, O’Doherty shrugs.

“Hey, I was in prison. I was married.

I have a gay brother. Who am I to judge anyone?”

Having been married didn’t exclude him from becoming a priest, because the marriage was annulled. Neither did his past membership in the IRA. But there was the small matter of having tried to kill Bishop Tickle.

THOMAS GROOME, AN IRISH-BORN THEOlogian at Boston College, explains that canon law forbids anyone who has killed or tried to kill an ordained cleric in the Catholic Church from becoming a priest. Such a sacrilege requires dispensation at the highest levels of the Church. “Technically, only the pope can forgive this,” says Groome, a former priest.

Tickle died of natural causes in 1994 and could not vouch for O’Doherty, but Bishop Edward Daly could. Daly is one of the most venerated priests in Ireland, a fierce critic of violence. A photograph showing him waving a white handkerchief as he and a group of men tried to get first aid for one of the casualties of Bloody Sunday is one of that day’s indelible images. Daly, who was especially kind to O’Doherty’s mother, had corresponded with O’Doherty and visited him in prison and believed his conversion to pacifism was genuine and Gospel-inspired. Daly assured the Vatican in general and Pope John Paul II in particular that O’Doherty had the potential to become a good priest. With Daly behind him and with the sponsorship of Diarmuid Martin, the archbishop of Dublin, O’Doherty was accepted at St. Patrick’s College.

The Rev. Kevin Doran, who recruits candidates for the priesthood for the Dublin Archdiocese, says O’Doherty was accepted last year with the understanding that neither he nor anyone in the Church would publicly discuss his story during his study for the priesthood. Doran, in an e-mail, says: “There is, undoubtedly a `story’ in Shane’s journey to seminary. The diocese has taken the view, however, that this is not the time to focus on that story.”

Groome says some will see O’Doherty’s candidacy for the priesthood as a sign of just how desperate the Catholic Church is for priests. But Groome believes a defining characteristic of Catholicism is at play.

“At its best, Catholicism has great magnanimity,” Groome says. “We believe in last-minute conversions. We like the story of the good thief who repented on the cross. O’Doherty’s life story is about redemption, but it redeems all of us. The great saint, the great soldier, and the great lover are all similar. They are gamblers, full of idealism, looking for a noble cause.”

When, God willing, he is ordained, Shane Paul O’Doherty says, he knows where his ministry lies.

The prisons.

Kevin Cullen, the Globe’s former Dublin bureau chief, has covered Ireland for the Globe for 20 years. E-mail him at cullen@globe.com.

Sunday Life

By Andrew Bushe
07 August 2005

FIRST World War military courts were anti-Irish and handed down many death sentences to innocent men, according to a damning Irish government report.

The scathing report into the execution of 26 Irish soldiers - from north and south - was given to the British Government last year.

It says the 26 cases are “starkly revealing” of treatment it describes as “shocking”, “inconsistent”, “capricious” and “unpredictable”.

A defence of Great War military justice by the MoD is described as “fundamentally flawed”.

The paper concludes that the system had a “difficult to explain” racist bias against Irish soldiers.

Among the Irish courts-martial, the report points out presiding officers ignored or didn’t consider medical evidence in 11 cases, and four cases involved extenuating circumstances, such as the death of family members.

There were 11 “clear cases” where an execution was thought necessary to “make an example”, because of bad discipline.

“Soldiers were effectively condemned to be shot because of both the behaviour of others and the opinion of others as to their fighting potential,” it adds.

“Executing a soldier simply to deter their colleagues from contemplating a similar crime, or because their attitude in the face of the gravest of dangers was not what was expected - in some cases after only a matter of weeks of basic training - must be seen as unjust, and not deserving of the ultimate penalty.”

The report calls for full pardons to “grant the men the dignity in death they were denied in life”.

Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern (pictured) said: “We continue to press the British Government to restore the good names of these men. It was a different world, a different society and a harsher, most bloody time.

“We must ensure that these men’s names are cleared and their memories honoured well in advance of the centenary of their deaths.”

The ‘Shot At Dawn’ campaign, which wants pardons for executed soldiers, has the backing of many politicians here.

One out of every 2-3,000 British troops was executed, compared to one in less than 600 in Irish units. This applied equally to the 36th Ulster Division as to regiments from the south.

Sunday Life

By Chris Anderson
07 August 2005

REPUBLICAN sympathisers inside the Garda supplied the IRA with information leading to the triple murder of three Co Armagh men, an ex-Army Intelligence officer has said.

The claim has added weight to calls for an inquiry into the killings of Gregory Burns, John Dignam and Aiden Starrs.

The bodies of trio - who had been recruited as informers by the Army’s Force Research Unit - were found on the south Armagh border in July 1992.

Irish officials met recently with Dignam’s parents to discuss the case. Pat and Irene Dignam, from Portadown, said the allegation of a Garda link cemented their belief an inquriy was needed.

The IRA said it “executed” the men after they confessed to spying for the security forces, and claimed they murdered Portadown woman Margaret Perry, whose body was found in a shallow grave in Co Sligo the month before.

The ex-FRU soldier claimed Garda officers told the IRA Burns, Dignam and Starrs were suspects in the Perry killing.

“There is no doubt the IRA was tipped off and it immediately suspected all three were British agents,” said the former soldier.

“Burns, Dignam and Starrs were lifted by the IRA and interrogated for almost a week before they were executed. No-one really knew how much information the IRA got about how we operated at that time.”

The ex-FRU member also claimed hundreds of documents used to collate information from Army agents and informers had been destroyed in 2002.

These classified documents would have shown contact between Army handlers and agents like Burns, Dignam and Starrs, he said.

The ex-FRU soldier said he believed the documents were destroyed as part of a cover-up into allegations of state collusion in murder here.

Mrs Dignam said last night: “As far as we are concerned, John’s murder has never been properly investigated on either side of the border.

“We are convinced the cover-up which took place in July 1992 still exists today. These latest claims only compound that belief.

“They must be investigated and an independent inquiry is the only way the truth about John’s murder can be uncovered.”

Sunday Life

By Joe Oliver
07 August 2005

DETECTIVES have drawn a blank in one of their main lines of inquiry in the so-far fruitless hunt for the Northern Bank robbers.

They were hoping some scrap of evidence would turn up in the search for clues at THEIR OWN sports club.

The £50,000 discovered at the Newforge Country Club in February is the only money yet recovered by cops from the mind-boggling £26.5m haul.

The embarrassing discovery was made after a call to the Police Ombudsman from a man claiming to be a police officer.

The money - in five shrink-wrapped plastic packages - was found hidden in the toilets of the south Belfast complex.

At the time, Chief Constable Hugh Orde insisted the bundles of cash were planted to try and divert attention from the cross-border police investigation into the robbery and IRA money-laundering operations.

Former and serving police officers use the sports club, which is owned by the force’s Athletics Association.

But it also facilitates a wide range of sporting activities, and has been used in the past by international cricketers and rugby stars, as well as the Northern Ireland football team.

Police investigating the biggest cash robbery in history, spent hours poring over CCTV footage taken from cameras around the club.

Dozens of members were also quizzed in a bid to jog memories and possibly identify anyone who may have been a stranger to the club.

A police source told Sunday Life: “Forensic experts went over the toilet areas with a fine tooth-comb and, obviously, detectives have thoroughly examined all available film footage.

“But, to date, nothing has turned up that would provide a positive link to the robbers.

“There were a number of problems - one being that the security gate at the entrance to the club’s main car park had been unmanned for some time.

“Another difficulty was that quite a lot of time had elapsed between the actual bank robbery, on December 20, and the discovery of the £50,000.”

A police spokeswoman said yesterday that, while no one had yet been detained or questioned about the cash found at Newforge, the investigation was “live and ongoing”.

In the wake of the robbery - in which the families of two employees were taken hostage - the Northern Bank decided to relocate 40 staff in order to “safeguard their welfare”.

Sunday Life

07 August 2005

LVF chiefs last week flatly rejected an offer to mediate its bloody feud with the UVF.

Instead, sources claim the terror group is intent on a “hit” against the UVF leadership on a par with its January 2000 murder of mid-Ulster paramilitary boss, Richard Jameson.

Loyalist sources close to the LVF say a respected figure in the Protestant community approached the organisation last week in the hope of brokering a halt to the feud, which has already claimed three lives.

But the offer was rebuffed, and the would-be mediator decided that, in the circumstances, there was no point in going to the UVF.

Sources say no LVF man has been killed in the feud so far, and the group isn’t overly concerned at being driven out of the Garnerville estate.

“The LVF isn’t in any way diminished by UVF attacks to date and isn’t looking for a way out of the situation,” said a source close to the outlawed group.

“The offer to mediate was considered, but rejected.”

Other loyalist sources say the LVF is intent on perpetrating a major assault on the UVF.

“Quite honestly, the LVF hasn’t been hit except to the extent that a small number of people have had to move out of an area in east Belfast (Garnerville) where the organisation doesn’t have the numbers,” said one source.

“They still have a lot of hitters and they intend to hit.

“They don’t, obviously, say who they intend to attack but their leadership is talking about Richard Jameson-level strikes against the UVF leadership, and they aren’t bothered about how long they may have to wait to pull that off.

“They know the UVF wants this over quickly, but the LVF is in no particular rush.

“The numbers of police and Army on the streets is restricting movements, but the LVF reckons it has time on its side and can wait for months before biffing one or two big fish in the UVF.”

Jameson was the UVF’s mid-Ulster commander who was gunned down outside his home in Portadown in January 2000, following a violent confrontation between supporters from the two groups in a football social club on New Year’s Day.

His murder sparked a brutal feud between the two groups, which later led to an even bloodier feud between the UVF and UDA in north and west Belfast, in which eight lives were lost.

So far, Jameson Lockhart, Craig McCausland and Stephen Paul have been murdered in what are believed to have been UVF gun-attacks last month.

The LVF has shot and seriously wounded one man in north Belfast last month, but it is believed he was not the LVF’s intended target.

UVF victim Lockhart was a close personal friend of two senior LVF figures, but 20-year-old Mr McCausland is thought to have had no link with the paramilitary group.

Notorious criminal Stephen Paul, who was murdered last Saturday, isn’t thought to have been a member of the LVF, but did associate with known individual LVF members.

His family have claimed he may have been targeted to settle a recent dispute he had with a senior UVF man.

Sunday Life

07 August 2005

LOYALIST terrorists who forced a rival faction to flee an east Belfast estate recovered £48,000 in cash.

UVF men also found a small number of handguns and Ecstasy tablets after a 200-strong mob forced families linked to the LVF to flee homes in the Garnerville estate a fortnight ago, loyalist sources claimed

It is understood the cash, guns and drugs were removed by the mob before cops arrived and to the UVF.

The items were found near one of the homes vacated by LVF supporters.

Said the loyalist source: “Local UVF leaders wanted to keep this quiet but a number of residents have been talking about what was found.

“The UVF will be happy that they have scored a double success against the LVF.”

The source claimed the UVF had destroyed the drugs.

“The UVF couldn’t be seen to keep the drugs because they have justified their feud with the LVF because of the group’s drug dealing in loyalist areas.”

DUP councillor Robin Newton said he “wasn’t surprised” at the discovery of the haul.

“If the LVF is selling drugs in any estate, there will always be cash, weapons and drugs.”

A police spokesman urged anyone with information on the cash, weapons and drugs to contact them immediately.

Sunday Life

Unfinished business say the UVF

07 August 2005

THE UVF committed the first murders of the modern Troubles, killing two Catholic men and an elderly Protestant woman back in 1966.

Almost 40 years on, and with the IRA claiming its war is over, the UVF is still killing, taking three lives last month.

But before the latest round of feuding, the UVF appeared to be looking towards an exit strategy - there was talk of disarmament and disbandment in response to any similar Provo initiatives.

Now, those internal discussions have been put on the back burner as the group focuses on crippling the rival LVF, which was founded by expelled UVF man Billy Wright in 1996.

A UVF source revealed disbandment had now been ruled out by the leadership.

“It is being ruled out now, not just because the IRA have ruled it out, but because the UVF might be needed if republicans resume attacks on loyalists.

“Surrendering weapons is ruled out because replacing them at any later time would be much harder, if not impossible, for loyalists than it would be for the IRA with all its international contacts.”

The UVF has the arms and men to sustain a campaign against the LVF, but its leaders know the longer it goes on, the greater the risk that its political wing, the PUP, will be forced into the wilderness.

LVF sources allege the feud is a smokescreen for the UVF to avoid talk of disarmament or disbandment, which they claim would cause splits in the group.

But UVF sources claim they simply want to get rid of the LVF once and for all following years of bloodshed, and that means driving them out of Belfast and north Down.

“We don’t want to be looking over our shoulders, or under our cars, every morning fearing an LVF attack, so it has to be sorted now”, one source said.

PUP leader David Ervine has claimed that intelligence agencies have been controlling the LVF to undermine the UVF, while the LVF counters that the UVF is riddled with informers.

Meanwhile, a former senior RUC Special Branch source said it was “extremely worrying” that the UVF killed three times in Belfast in July without major loss of personnel or weapons. He suggested the police ability to combat loyalist terrorism has been severely affected by the loss of high-level informers and experienced Branch officers.

But a police spokeswoman said: “There’s no evidence whatsoever to suggest that current tensions between paramilities relate to the PSNI capacity to gather and disseminate intelligence.”

She added: “The PSNI is using all resources to proactively disrupt these ongoing paramilitary activities. The approach has been largely successful in preventing attacks on people and property. Police are doing all they can.”

BreakingNews.ie

07/08/2005 - 12:04:59

A man has been shot and seriously wounded in a gun attack in north Belfast today.

The victim is understood to have been hit a number of times in the chest during disturbances close to the Crumlin Road.

Sources have linked the shooting to a deepening loyalist paramilitary feud in the city that has claimed three lives so far.

The attack happened at Glenside Park, at around 6.30am.

Neighbours said Loyalist Volunteer Force members locked in a vicious turf war with the rival Ulster Volunteer Force were seen in the area.

The man injured was taken to the nearby Mater Hospital for emergency treatment.

A crowd of up to 20 men also gathered outside the hospital, but were held back by police, according to frightened staff.

One woman who arrived for work said: “I parked across from the hospital and got out of my car still only half-awake.

“Then I saw a crowd coming with scarves up over their faces and baseball caps on. I took to my heels and ran in and they started running too.

“Thankfully they didn’t get in, they just came up as close as they dared.”

The shooting victim was later transferred across Belfast to the Royal Victoria Hospital.

“Whether these men were his friends or the ones who shot him I’m not sure,” the staff member added.

“But when the ambulance left here to take him to the Royal they stood across the road cheering. It was scary.”

Sunday Times

Enda Leahy, Stephen O’Brien and Liam Clarke
August 07, 2005

IRISH authorities came under intense pressure this weekend to track down and arrest the Colombia Three.

The American government issued a statement saying it expected the government to pursue the matter, while a spokesperson for Interpol said gardai were obliged to honour an international warrant for the men’s arrest.

Bertie Ahern interrupted his summer holiday in Co Kerry to address growing international concern about the men’s re-emergence in Ireland last week. The three have been on the run since they were convicted of training terrorists in Colombia in June 2004.

The taoiseach said gardai would seek to talk to the men, particularly in relation to possible passport fraud. He added that any extradition request by the Colombian authorities would be dealt with by the courts.

Ahern branded their reappearance, just a week after the IRA issued a statement calling for the dumping of arms, as “unhelpful to the peace process”.

An Interpol officer said this weekend that gardai were obliged to arrest and question the men. She said the men were the subject of a “red notice” from the international policing organisation.

According to the officer, Niall Connolly, James Monaghan and Martin McCauley are all named in an Interpol file code-named The Amazon Project, updated on January 19.

“If these men are found in Ireland then they must be arrested,” she said. “They’re wanted to serve a sentence in Colombia, and Colombia has asked for their arrest and extradition if they are found.”

Charlie Bird, whose interview with one of them, James Monaghan, was broadcast on RTE on Friday night, refused to give gardai information about the fugitive’s whereabouts. He was driven by a contact to meet Monaghan on Friday.

The American government issued a response yesterday to news that the three fugitives had returned to Ireland last week.

The American statement said: “Three individuals tried and convicted in Colombia are fugitives from Colombian justice. We believe this is a matter that must and should be pursued by the Irish and Colombian governments. The US condemns contributions to terrorism, such as those of which the three men were found guilty, no matter where perpetrated.”

Ahern insisted that no deal had been done with Sinn Fein to give the men safe haven in the republic. He said the issue was never mentioned in talks with the republican leadership prior to the IRA statement of last month. The government had no knowledge of their return before the news broke on Friday, he said.

“I assume the offences they may or not be responsible for (in Colombia) are matters that the gardai could look at,” said the taoiseach.

“And, of course, any prosecutions in the normal way would be taken by the independent Director of Public Prosecutions office. If there is any issue, like passports for instance, that the gardai wish to raise with them, I understand they will do so.”

He said the men’s activities “whatever they were” had created a lot of difficulties for the Irish government, for Britain and for America. “These men have created in the peace process, on a number of occasions in the last few years, an enormous amount of difficulty and their return creates difficulty as well.”

Pat Doherty of Sinn Fein said he was glad to see them home and reunited with their families.

“There is a lot of nonsense in the media at the moment of a side deal having been done with the Irish government which is simply not true,” he said.

One republican, who has talked to Monaghan since his return, said: “Jim had been anxious to pay respects at the grave of his sister who died while he was in custody in Colombia.

“He does expect to be taken in and questioned by gardai at some stage.

“But he does not expect the Irish people to allow his return to Colombia for what would be a death sentence.”

A garda special branch source said the men’s appearance had taken them by surprise and said arrests were inevitable.

“They’ll probably be picked up under section 30 (of the Criminal Justice Act) and if there’s evidence against them of IRA membership, it’ll be thrown against them,” he said. “There’s no extradition treaty . . . but they’ll have to be picked up if there’s an international warrant.”

The three could also be arrested and charged for possession of forged passports.

Mary Harney, the tanaiste, who is acting as minister for justice while Michael McDowell is on holiday, was being briefed this weekend on developments by senior department officials liaising with gardai.

She said on Friday that there were “serious issues” to be raised about how the men returned to Ireland without valid travel documents.

Irish Independent

**Mary Harney as ‘acting Minister for Justice’ while McDowell is on holiday–now THAT’S messed up.

MAEVE SHEEHAN
and JIM ‘talk shite’ CUSACK

MARY Harney has said that Charlie Bird, the RTE reporter who interviewed one of the Colombia Three, has an obligation to “fight against terrorism” by helping gardai find the IRA-linked fugitives.

The Tanaiste, who is acting Minister for Justice while Michael McDowell is on holiday, told the Sunday Independent: “I hope that everyone who knows where they are, including members of the media, will co-operate with gardai.”

Her reference to the media was clearly aimed at RTE’s Chief News Correspondent, Charlie Bird, who met James ‘Mortar’ Monaghan on Friday. The journalist has since been interviewed by gardai.

Ms Harney said: “We have all got an obligation to fight against terrorism, not just politicians and government but ordinary citizens.”

But last night Mr Bird said: “What journalist in the country would reveal his or her sources?”

The RTE reporter revealed he had been telephoned on Thursday about a story and was driven from Dublin on Friday afternoon to meet a contact. He was then driven to meet a man at a second location. The man turned out to be James Monaghan, one of the Colombia Three and a convicted IRA mortar bomber.

Monaghan told RTE’s Chief News Correspondent that the other two men were also back in Ireland. Mr Bird said: “I believed him. He said that they had all met their families. I have no evidence to prove that, but I believe all three are back in the country.”

Mr Bird would not discuss how long the car journey took, and said he was unable to even guess where he’d been taken.

Thelack of garda intelligence about the men’s whereabouts was underlined when sources last night told the Sunday Independent that investigating detectives asked Mr Bird if he had a phone number for Monaghan.

A source said: “It’s no joke. The gardai were totally in the dark over this and it was clear they had absolutely no idea that the three were back in the State, let alone where to look for them.”

Mr Bird declined the Garda request and was last night adamant that his first duty as a journalist was to protect his sources, despite Ms Harney’s comments.

Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and James Monaghan disappeared in December after a Colombian appeals court reversed an earlier acquittal and sentenced the men to 17 years in prison for training guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc. It had been thought the men were hiding out in Cuba or Venezuela.

The trio were captured at Bogota’s airport in 2001 in possession of false travel documents after spending five weeks in a Farc stronghold deep in southern jungles. Military officials believe they helped Farc terrorists develop bombs from gas cylinders.

The men, who say they travelled to Colombia only to observe the country’s now-defunct peace process, spent 34 months in prison before a June 2004 court acquittal. The judge, however, demanded they remain in Colombia pending a state appeal to a higher court.

By the time the first ruling was overturned in December, Colombian authorities embarrassingly acknowledged they had lost track of them. Police officials say the three men probably fled by land through one of the country’s porous borders.

Niall Connolly, who travelled to Colombia on a false Irish passport, should be investigated by Gardai, according to Ms Harney.

The Tanaiste said: “The passport was obtained fraudulently and that is a crime in this State. That matter should be investigated.”

But yesterday, Connolly’s brother, Frank Connolly, the director of the so-called Centre of Public Inquiry, told the Sunday Independent he had no idea where his brother was.

Frank Connolly, who was also questioned by gardai in relation to allegations that he too had travelled to Colombia on a false passport, said: “I’ve no notion whatsoever where Niall is. I’m on holidays. Any inquiries about him should go through Catherine Ruane.”

As the Garda manhunt for the three got under way yesterday, potentially embarrassing questions are arising as to how the trio managed to re-enter the State undetected.

Detectives will want to know if the men used false travel documents - a criminal offence. Gardai believe they almost certainly used false passports to get from South America to Europe via Spain and then to Ireland. Spain was the most likely point of entry into Europe as there are many air routes into Madrid from South America.

Colombian authorities believe the three returned to the Farc-controlled countryside after absconding while on bail last December and travelled to Venezuela and from there to Cuba or directly to Spain.

The IRA is known to have safe houses in Spain where two of the men wanted in connection with the murder of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe have been living for the past nine years.

The third man wanted in connection with the killing of Detective Garda McCabe is married to a South African and is living in that country.

Ms Harney said: “It’s a long way from Colombia to here, there are no direct flights. Given the whole international emphasis on terrorism at the moment, I think a lot of people in a lot of jurisdictions would be interested to know how they got here.”

Last night Taoiseach Bertie Ahern denied there had been a deal put in place to allow for the return of the fugitives.

“Some of the suggestions that were emanating - that we had prior knowledge of this - are false, untrue and unhelpful,” said the Taoiseach, speaking from Kerry yesterday.

“To make it absolutely clear, this issue was never discussed - was never even mentioned - in any of the meetings, either with me or with any of my minsters.”

But last night PD Senator John Minihan said the men’s return was a litmus test of the republican movement’s pledge to pursue peaceful politics and uphold the rule of law. He said people in SF who knew where the fugitives were should co-operate with the authorities.

And in another potentially embarrassing twist, it has emerged that the Gardai have no powers to arrest the men, despite an Interpol edict seeking their arrest and extradition to Colombia to serve their 17-year sentences.

The Government now faces a quandary over what to do with the three, who are the subject of an Interpol ‘Red Notice’ issued on behalf of the Colombians. While many countries treat the Red Notice system as an official warrant for arrest and extradition, Ireland, along with the UK, does not and cannot arrest people under such a warrant.

Senior gardai have also recently warned that Ireland’s extradition powers are virtually useless. Almost 20 extradition cases to the US alone have failed on a variety of grounds. Ireland is also the only EU state not to have implemented the European Arrest Warrant system introduced after 9/11.

According to senior Garda sources, it is almost certain that the trio will not be extradited to Colombia even if the Government signs an extradition treaty with that country. They would almost certainly be able to claim that they would be subjected to human rights abuses in prison there.

Ms Harney said yesterday: “It is a matter for the courts to decide ultimately whether they be extradited.”

She continued: “We are not going to shirk our responsibilities internationally and these people do not qualify under the Good Friday Agreement or as ‘OTRs’ [on the runs].”

Ms Harney described as “laughable” a claim by Jim Monaghan that he was not “on the run”.

“Gardai are seeking to find out where they are,” she said.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Click thumbnail to view full size - photo of Kieran’s mural by CRAZYFENIAN

The 2nd of August marked the 24th anniversary of the death of hungerstriker Kieran Doherty after 73 days without food. I apologise for not posting this in a timely manner. I mean no disrespect to any particular hunger striker or any other important republican anniversary by my lapses. This particular season is a very difficult one to get through because there is a constant reminder of some painful memory to re-live, and for people who take the priciples and the events of the hunger strike seriously, the trauma of the deaths repeats itself over and over, year after year and never goes away.

Thomas McElwee

Tomorrow, August 8, also marks the anniversary of the death of Thomas McElwee after 62 days on hunger strike.

Irish Northern Aid

Thomas McElwee

“When you see the official photograph of Thomas McElwee on hunger strike posters, a 3/4 profile, he looks like a choir boy. When you look into his left eye — you can’t help but — there’s mischief. A twinkle that black and white photography and death don’t dim. He lost his other eye in a premature explosion on an IRA operation with his brother Benedict. He was nineteen. Benedict was seventeen. A comrade, Colum Scullion, lost several toes and Sean McPeake’s leg was blown away.

He looks directly at you through the camera, like he knows something that you know too. Even if you don’t want to admit it, he knows you share this secret. If you don’t see it, he isn’t looking at you…”

**Please see this post for more information about Thomas.

INA

Kieran Doherty - Irish Hunger Strikes Chapter 40

The Dohertys

“The Dohertys lived on a hill in a nationalist section of West Belfast called Andersonstown. Kieran was the third of six children. His mother Margaret was a Protestant who converted to Catholicism after she married Alfie Doherty. The family was Irish republican through and through. Alfie managed the local Republican Club that helped raise funds for the prisoners’ families after the previous manager was shot dead. Kieran’s granduncle, Ned Maguire, had taken part in a famous escape from the Crumlin Road jail in 1943. Two of Kieran’s second cousins, Maura and Dorothy Maguire, were shot dead by the British army in 1971. His second cousin Ned was interned and was now on the blanket. In 1972, his uncle Gerry took part in another famous escape from the Crum, when republican prisoners pretending to be playing football leaped over the fences en masse to freedom.

At fifteen, Kieran left formal schooling to work with his father as a floor tiler. His brothers Michael and Terence were at that time interned without trial and the Doherty family were constantly harassed and raided.

Kieran joined Na Fianna Eireann in 1971 at the age of fifteen. He was arrested almost immediately, but his father Alfie raised hell about his son’s age and Kieran was released — only to arrested and taken away again when he turned sixteen and interned without trial.

In November 1975, Kieran was one of the last internees to be released. He immediately went on active service with the IRA in the Andytown area with Joe McDonnell, John Pickering and others. He was mostly on the run as their unit was very active and effective.
Kieran

They say Kieran was a very internal person, but big, very strong and decisive. Once he gave a man a public beating for hitting a woman. He was quiet and shy, but nobody crossed Kieran Doherty. They called him “Big Doc.”

He was arrested in 1976 after a bombing, with John Pickering [who was to join him later on hunger strike] and others including Terry Kirby [who escaped from the Kesh in ‘83 and was later arrested and held for extradition in the U.S.], and in 1978 was given 18 years.

He went on the blanket immediately. He was not an easy man.

He would take no orders. He would neither talk to or “hear” screws. He wouldn’t even acknowledge the existence of screws!

He was beaten unmercifully. Once he was hit, kicked and had his testicles squeezed until he was unconscious because he refused to cooperate on a mirror search. Another time eight screws took him into a room for a rectal search. Kieran treated this as usual. They nearly beat him unconscious but he refused to comply. Next they asked him to open his mouth for an oral search, but he refused again and was punched and karate chopped to get him to open his mouth. He didn’t. They took him back to his cell. He refused to wash to see the doctor. He was beaten so badly the doctor came to his cell. Later that night, he began to vomit, probably from the stomach punches and kicks, and was taken to the prison hospital.

Typically, Kieran on his release was sent to the punishment cells and charged with attempting to strike a warder.
By God, they will not rub my nose in it

When the first hunger strike was broken through the deceit of the Brits, Kieran was very angry [he was among the last group of hunger strikers in ‘80]: “They are rubbing our noses in it. By God, they will not rub mine.”

On Friday, 22 May 1981, Kieran Doherty replaced Raymond McCreesh on hunger strike. Almost immediately, Kieran was put forward for the Dail elections. On 11 July, he was elected TD for Cavan/Monaghan. Some thought that this would get the Irish government into action. Kieran was under no such delusions.

‘The Menace’

In the beginning of August, Kevin, Kieran, and Paddy Quinn were all into the last stages of deterioration. The Republican movement was coming under a lot of pressure in the press and from the hunger strikers’ families because of the behind the scenes actions of various forces including Catholic Churchmen. Particularly active in this regards was Fr. Denis Faul, whom the prisoners called “The Menace”. They were spreading the lie that the Movement was ordering the men on the hunger strike and then orchestrating events. The press loved this angle.

When Joe McDonnell died, the Daily Mail [11 July 1981] wrote: “In the blackmailing battle to achieve political status for thugs, they had ordered him to starve to death. To the IRA Joe McDonnell is worth far more dead than alive. The men with the guns are weeping no tears. For them the funeral was no more than another well managed melodrama, another notch on the gun barrel in their propaganda war.”

The lie that the Movement was keeping the hunger strikers ignorant of what was going on outside the prison was another manufactured problem. Fr. Faul was to thank for this one as well, who stirred up the families that the men were being kept in the dark. It was decided that Gerry Adams, Owen Carron, and Seamus Ruddy of the IRSP would be allowed to go into the Kesh to explain the realities to the men, not that they needed any explaining.

Fr. Faul’s reasoning was: if Adams and the others told the men exactly what the situation was and explained that the decision to stay on the strike was totally theirs, then the men would come off. The Movement’s reasoning for agreeing to the meeting was: the men were always in charge of the hunger strike, so what was to loose? In fact, the hunger strike was costly for the Movement in terms of human loss and resource depletion as well as energy going into one part of the struggle. The men went on hunger strike themselves. They could call it off as easily and the republican movement would welcome the decision. Even if one man decided off, his decision would be respected.”

Larkspirit

Thomas McElwee

“Speaking of the hunger strike and her sons and their comrades during Thomas’ strike, Mrs. McElwee said: “I know Thomas and Benedict would be determined to stand up for their rights. In the Blocks one will stand for another. If this hunger strike isn’t settled one way or another they’ll all go the same way. There’ll never be peace in this country.”

Thomas McElwee died at 11.30 a.m. on Saturday, August 8th. Indicative of the callousness of the British government towards prisoners and their families alike neither had the comfort of each other’s presence at that tragic moment. He died after 62 days of slow agonising hunger strike with no company other than prison warders - colleagues of those who had brutalised, degraded and tortured him for three-and-a-half years.”

Click thumbnail to view all photos at Larkspirit’s ‘Scenes from the Funerals’

**Please see also Irish Hunger Strike 1981 Memorial Website

Daily Ireland

Zoe Tunney

A public meeting being organised by Frank McBrearty Jr is expected to reveal hundreds of new allegations of Garda corruption.
The man at the the heart of the second term of the Morris Tribunal set up the meeting as a “vent for people’s frustrations”.
Mr McBrearty says since his family have been involved in a long and high profile legal battle against gardaí in Donegal he has received hundreds of calls from people all over Ireland who say they have also been victims of Garda corruption.
The meeting will be held in his family’s pub in Raphoe, Co Donegal on September 3.
Among the names who have agreed to speak at the event are journalist and political activist, Frank Connolly, Jim Higgins MEP, Jerry Cowley, Independent TD for Mayo, and champion of the Rossport Five campaign, another journalist and Westminister candidate for the Socialist and Environmental Alliance Party, Eamon McCann and Joe Costello, Irish Labour Party spokesperson on justice.
Police Ombudsman for the North, Nuala O’Loan, is yet to confirm whether she will speak at the conference.
Likewise, Senator Maurice Hayes, the former Northern Ireland Ombudsman, and one of the architects of the Patten Report on police reform in the North has also to confirm if he will take up his place at the podium.
The main aim of the public consultation is to highlight the need for a Garda ombudsman in the South similar to the model in the north of Ireland.
“What we have in the South is the police investigating themselves,” Mr McBrearty said.
In 1994 the Police Complaints Board was set up following the Kerry Babies scandal.
Following the McBrearty section of the Morris Tribunal, two months ago, the current minister for justice, Michael McDowell, replaced the Complaints Board with a three-panel Ombudsman Commission.
Critics say the commission does not go far enough to regulate gardaí. It will have the power to conduct its own investigations, to arrest members of the force and to seize documents from Garda stations.
However, it will have to apply to the Department of Justice for permission before it will be allowed access to documents linked to the “security of the state”.
Frank McBrearty Jr has had 50,000 flyers and 10,000 posters printed to advertise the public meeting at Frankie’s Nightclub in Raphoe.
“We have had a huge, huge response so far,” he said, “There are a lot of people out there who contacted me with similar stories to my own. I have had hundreds of letters and phonecalls from everything from people killed in car accidents and the guards have not investigated the circumstances to complaints about the fisheries and planning departments.
“Corruption is rife in this country of ours from the highest level down and we are inviting people to come along and tell us their stories.”
Mr McBrearty advised people to put their experiences in a written statement and he will make representations to Dáil ministers on their behalf.