Where Terror Reigns
Fred A Wilcox • 10 August 2005
“On August 11, 2001, three Irish citizens were arrested in Bogota, Colombia…”
10/8/2005
James McPhilemy, Fallen Comrade
**Posted by Danielle Ni Dhighe
Fallen Comrade of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement
James McPhilemy
Volunteer - Irish National Liberation Army
Killed in Action on 10 August 1988
Aged 20, James McPhilemy was part of a three-man INLA unit from Strabane. When the unit was preparing to attack a British Army checkpoint in Clady, Co. Tyrone, he made himself vulnerable by calling out to warn children in the area to get down. The British soldiers opened fire and killed him.
A memorial to McPhilemy and another comrade was unveiled in Strabane on 10 August 2003.
He died as he lived: a Republican Socialist. Remember him with honour and pride.
http://www.irsm.org/fallen/mcphilemy/
Article about the memorial unveiling:
teachnafailte.org
Stand against dissidents, SDLP urges
10/08/2005 - 18:45:23
A community was tonight urged to unite against dissident republicans who placed a bomb in a hijacked vehicle and ordered its driver to park outside a police station.
The SDLP claimed the plot was designed to lure police to a location where they came under attack from missiles, including more than 30 petrol bombs.
Seven officers were injured in the riots, which involved youths as young as 14, in Lurgan, Co Tyrone.
Referring to the hijacking, a PSNI spokesman said a takeaway delivery driver was threatened at gunpoint while the explosive was placed in the back seat of his car at about 10pm on Tuesday.
He was told to park the vehicle outside Lurgan Police Station, but abandoned it outside St Peter’s GAA Club in North Street, about 400 yards short of the station.
Dolores Kelly, SDLP MLA for Upper Bann, said: “This is the work of dissident republicans. There is no doubt about it.
“In Lurgan we are used to home-made bombs being used to entice police officers to a location where they are attacked. This is a sinister development in that pattern of activity.
“The driver was forced into the position of being a reluctant bomber. There are houses right up to the police station and it could have gone off with disastrous consequences.”
Ms Kelly called on locals in Lurgan to stand firm against those responsible for the violence.
She said: “It is known that there are dissidents in that area and it seems that they are trying to use young teenagers to carry out their activities for them.
“It is clear that as a community we must take a strong stand against this kind of activity and work with the police in finding and apprehending those responsible for Tuesday night’s events.”
UUP assemblyman hits out at Ahoghill attacks
10/08/2005 - 17:35:30
Ulster Unionist North Antrim Assemblyman Reverend Robert Coulter has said the intimidation of catholic families in the Ahoghill area near Ballymena and ongoing attacks on a Harryville Church must stop immediately.
“There is no justification whatsoever for sectarian attacks,” declared Rev. Coulter. “People have a right to live in their homes, safe in the knowledge that they are secure and free from intimidation by mindless thugs.”
Rev. Coulter also strongly condemned a late night paint bomb attack on a Catholic Church in Harryville, Ballymena.
“Every person living in this country has the right to worship. There is nothing more sacred than expressing ones religious beliefs. I would urge those responsible to stop these attacks immediately and call on the police to ensure that the area is regularly patrolled,” he said.
Lawyers bid to dismiss case against Omagh accused
10/08/2005 - 17:15:10
Lawyers for a man accused of murdering 29 people in the Omagh bomb massacre today launched a new bid to have the case against him halted.
Electrician Sean Hoey, 35, is due to go on trial for Northern Ireland’s worst terrorist atrocity later this year.
But at Belfast Magistrates Court today his legal representatives claimed he had been framed, warning there was little chance of a successful prosecution.
Defence solicitor Peter Corrigan alleged there was less evidence connecting his client to the outrage than against a man who had charges of supplying the bomb car dropped.
He said: “In the light of that I would ask the prosecution to review this case, see if there is a real prospect of conviction and immediately withdraw the charges.
“Mr Hoey is obviously a political scapegoat.”
The accused, of Molly Road, Jonesborough, South Armagh, faces a total of 61 terrorist and explosives-related charges.
Among these are the 29 killings in the dissident Real IRA’s no-warning strike on Omagh.
Hundreds more people were injured when a 500lb car bomb detonated in August 1998, devastating the Co Tyrone market town.
Hoey was accused of the Omagh killings after a major review of all available forensic evidence.
A dozen boxes of files have been gathered on the suspect, who has also been charged with Real IRA membership.
But Mr Corrigan expressed serious concerns at how the case has been handled, declaring: “We would submit that these proceedings have been infected.”
The lawyer referred to the dropped action against Anthony Donegan.
The 34-year-old from Dundalk in Co Louth was freed in June on the orders of the Public Prosecution Service after a study of the police file.
The first stage in Hoey’s trial is due to begin on August 30.
But, after the defence requested details of the Crown’s skeleton argument for accepting the strength of evidence from the forensic scientist, today’s hearing was adjourned until Friday.
A prosecuting solicitor told the court that a PPS assistant director had been involved in preparing the file.
She added: “It’s his view that there’s a realistic prospect of conviction.”
Tensions grow in Lurgan estate
10/08/2005 - 17:30:59
Tensions have mounted in the nationalist Kilwilkie estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh after police officers in riot gear moved into the area and made one arrest.
Seven officers were injured in rioting in the same area overnight after dissident republicans tried to bomb the town’s police station.
Local Sinn Féin assembly member John O’Dowd said he was making an official complaint to the Police Ombudsman, and claimed that the police were trying to provoke nationalists.
IRA cease-fire no solace to Irish expatriate
By ZINNIA FARUQUE
HERALD NEWS
Tuesday, August 9, 2005
WALLINGTON - The Irish Republican Army may have pledged to lay down its arms after fighting British rule in Northern Ireland, but that doesn’t mean the McAllisters want to go back to their homeland.
Caught in the endless rounds of violence that tore apart the province, the McAllisters, a Catholic family, escaped Belfast 17 years ago, but are still seeking asylum in the United States.
Malachy McAllister, 48, and his two youngest children, Nicola, 19, and Sean, 17, are waiting to hear whether a judge from the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will order their deportation by the end of this month.
Rep. Steve Rothman, D-Fair Lawn, introduced a bill in June that would allow the family to stay in Wallington because their lives would be in danger in Northern Ireland. Rothman also recruited 43 other members of Congress to sign a letter to Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, expressing support for the family.
Malachy McAllister was convicted in Northern Ireland in 1983 of serving as a lookout for the Irish National Liberation Army, a paramilitary group separate from the IRA, during an attempted assault on a Royal Ulster Constabulary officer. Five years later, the family narrowly escaped injury when 26 shots were fired by into their living room by British loyalists, Malachy McAllister said.
Although the IRA issued a statement on July 28 saying that it would abandon its armed campaign to unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic, Rothman contends that the McAllisters would still be in danger.
“It was the loyalist forces that initiated the attacks against his family,” said Shelly O’Neill Stoneman, a legislative aide for Rothman. “It was [several] years after the attempted crime that he participated in occurred, when he thought it was safe to go home.”
Malachy McAllister said he was heartened by the IRA announcement, but also thinks the danger to his family hasn’t diminished.
“You always have that wary, conscious feeling that the same people who tried to assassinate you will still be there,” he said.
Melvin Dubnick, a political science professor from Rutgers University who was in Northern Ireland for the past two years on a Fulbright scholarship, said that violence has declined dramatically since the McAllisters lived there 17 years ago.
“You really don’t see a whole lot of sectarian confrontation in Belfast,” Dubnick said. “It’s not like a war zone. You couldn’t really tell that there were any troubles at all.”
He added that as IRA members became older and weary of the violence in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they became more willing to work within the political processes.
The Irish National Liberation Army, of which Malachy McAllister was once a member, declared a cease-fire in 1998.
As he waits for the judge’s decision, Malachy McAllister sits behind a shrine of pictures of his wife, Bernadette, who died of cancer last year.
“We, as parents, have experienced the reality of the violence in Ireland when we were young, and we fought so that our kids could have the life that we never had,” he said.
E-mail: faruque@northjersey.com
Former IRA prisoner probes informer psyche
By Paul Majendie
Wed Aug 10, 8:34 AM ET
photo from Danny Morrison
Former Irish Republican prisoner Danny Morrison was determined to leave all ideology at the stage door when penning a play about an IRA informer that offers a chilling take on a traitor’s psyche.
“The Wrong Man” is being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe just two weeks after the Irish Republican Army issued a statement pledging to lay down its arms for good in British-ruled Northern Ireland.
Morrison, once chief spokesman for the Republicans, believes Protestants loyal to Britain and Catholics seeking Irish unity can still settle their differences after a conflict that took 3,600 lives.
“I am an optimist on that front,” said Morrison, who once famously coined the phrase “A ballot box in one hand, an armalite rifle in the other” to sum up the twin strategies of the IRA and its political ally Sinn Fein.
He was speaking to Reuters at the world’s largest arts festival, which this year is offering a string of political plays.
But Morrison wanted to steer away from polemic in his play, a dark tale with no heroes.
“I didn’t feel the need to write an apologia for the IRA and I don’t think that would work as a piece of theater because it would undermine its universality. This is an attempt to be even-handed,” he said.
“It is indeed a very dark story but all ideology is left at the front door of the theater.”
INFORMERS
Interned without trial for 14 months in the 1970s by the British, he rose to prominence promoting the guerrilla cause during hunger strikes by IRA prisoners in 1981.
When he was held in 1990 on charges of conspiracy to murder, kidnapping and IRA membership, he began reflecting on the conflict and started writing his novel “The Wrong Man” which has now been converted into the play.
He finished the book when he was released from jail after serving five years. Now he devotes himself full time to novel writing and working as a TV and radio pundit.
The play revolves around the grilling of an alleged IRA informer, but Morrison is careful to portray interrogations on both sides of the conflict.
“There is no way that you would leave the theater wanting to join the IRA or the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) or the Loyalist paramilitaries,” he said.
“I have met informers, I was put in jail by an informer. I have spoken to informers in prison who took advantage of IRA amnesties.
“The sense of betrayal is so deep. It is difficult to parley with someone from your own side who has devastated the organization and got comrades killed.”
Both the IRA and police interrogations in the play are equally graphic.
“It presents a unique insight into not just an IRA interrogation but also I have clearly borrowed from my own experience of interrogation inside RUC barracks,” he said.
After 35 years of conflict, IRA ‘volunteers’ face uphill return to society
10 August 2005
Agence France Presse
The Irish Republican Army has ordered its militants to lay down their arms after 35 years of conflict in Northern Ireland, but a smooth return to normal life for these “volunteers” is far from guaranteed.
The number of full-time IRA militants is only about 200 and many one-time supporters feel they would make ideal additions to the territory’s police force due to their experience in prison.
But hardline Protestants, who were the main target in the Roman Catholic group’s campaign to free Northern Ireland from British rule, are outraged at such a suggestion.
“I think you will see ex-IRA volunteers getting a life, going back to their families, getting into education,” said Gerry Adams, president of the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein.
In addition, “there is a huge need on the policing issue to strengthen community responses,” he told AFP.
Laurence McKeown, a former IRA leader at the notorious Maze prison in Belfast, said the IRA’s statement last month to disarm and pursue purely peaceful means to achieve its goal of a united island of Ireland affected a couple of hundred militants and their future.
“You are not talking about thousands of IRA volunteers who are in the jungle or in the mountains but only several hundreds who are part of the community,” he told AFP, putting the figure at about 200.
“It’s not like if you had a big group out there who are suddenly being demobilised,” said McKeown, who served a 16-year-sentence for attempting to murder policemen, and was released in 1992.
He felt that former convicts or IRA volunteers should be allowed to join the police service in the same way that they could become teachers or doctors.
“We had the example of Robert McBride, he is now a police chief in South Africa … there is no better person to be a police chief and give an example in black militant townships than someone who has been in prison,” he said.
At the same time, McKeown said former IRA militants would have to overcome legal barriers to join the police, noting that Adams was able to take part in a devolved government but could not join the civil service.
But Ian Paisley junior, an MP for Northern Ireland’s main Protestant party, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) — headed by his father — rejects the mere notion of IRA militants becoming police officers.
“There are enough good Protestants and Roman Catholics out there who will make very good police officers, without us having to turn paramilitaries and gangsters into officers,” he said.
“There must be no change in the vetting procedure,” insisted Paisley. “Otherwise, there would be no confidence in the police force if criminals and former criminals are allowed in.”
McKeown, who runs an emotional support service with 19 trained councilors to help former “brothers-in-arms”, said the main problem for ex-prisoners was a lack of professional experience in the work force after spending years in jail.
In addition, such men have to come to terms with the fact that their armed struggle is over.
“They are coming out to a different world, creating a new identity in the future. It’s like somebody working on a job for 30 years and suddenly being made redundant, it does have an impact,” said McKeown.
In the large cities, such as Belfast or Derry, such people often find work at taxi companies, while in rural areas they can use more manual skills such as plumbing and building, according to the former IRA member.
DUP clearly involved in organising loyalist onslaught on Catholic homes
Published: 10 August, 2005
North Antrim Sinn Féin MLA, Philip McGuigan, has said that the DUP has serious questions to answer about the loyalist protest toward Fisherwick estate in Ballymena last night.
Mr McGuigan said:
“Last night after loyalists marched over the Ballymena footbridge from Ballykeel toward Fisherwick with UDA flags, lambeg drums and tricolours to burn in front of the PSNI, DUP MLA Mervyn Storey addressed the crowd. I was not surprised when I saw coverage of him on BBC this morning thanking the loyalist crowd for coming to the bottom of Fisherwick.
“This raises serious questions about the role the DUP played in this proposed loyalist onslaught on Catholic homes. By thanking them he has made known that his party had some part to play in the organising of this onslaught. Indeed as members of the UDA and UVF, some who had come from Banbridge, Maghera and Belfast, marched toward the nationalist estate, local DUP Councillors were seen standing aside with their hands in their pockets.
“This approach is totally reflective of the DUP’s attitude toward attacks on Catholics in the North Antrim area in recent weeks. They are quite willing to stand back and let loyalist paramilitaries do whatever they want, and then provide a minimal token condemnation of their activities before justifying it by saying that it’s in reaction to something that nationalists have done. It stinks to the high heavens and shows that the DUP are flirting and working with the loyalist paramilitaries now more than ever.” ENDS
Bomb planted on hijacked taxi in Co Armagh
10 August 2005 17:29
A taxi driver was hijacked at gunpoint in the republican Kilwilke Estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh, and a crude but viable explosive device was placed in his vehicle.
The driver was ordered to take the bomb to Lurgan PSNI station but abandoned the vehicle at St Peter’s GAA grounds in the town and immediately alerted police.
The area around the vehicle was sealed off as army bomb disposal experts moved in.
Advertisement
Nationalist youths attacked police lines close to the railway tracks and 30 petrol bombs were thrown during the disturbances. Seven police officers were injured with one hospitalised.
Sinn Féin has condemned both the dissident republicans for planting the device and the police for adopting what they say were heavy handed tactics during the disturbances.
Meanwhile, loyalist paramilitaries in Antrim have being blamed for an attack on the Catholic church at Harryville, Ballymena overnight. Several paintbombs were thrown at the doors of the chapel.
Bogside residents call off protest against loyalist parade
10/08/2005 - 12:12:32
Nationalist residents in Derry’s Bogside have decided not to mount a protest against a loyalist Apprentice Boys march in the city at the weekend.
The Derry Bogside Residents Association had threatened to mount a protest if the Parades Commission allowed a feeder march in Belfast to pass through the nationalist Ardoyne area.
The Parades Commission has decided to ban this contentious march from Ardoyne and the Bogside residents have now asked all supporters to refrain from any protest action in Derry.
SF bashing for the hell of it
I am posting this article from NEWSHOUND for two reasons. First, I have not posted the articles concerning this rape because I myself, being a woman, am upset that so many people do things which I consider to be so cavalier and careless concerning their own welfare and then when something traumatic happens, they take no responsibility whatsoever for it. Friends and family all start saying how the victim’s life is ruined and how they just never had a clue that anything BAD like this would happen. Yes, I agree that the comment made by SF’s Ferguson was off-target because this girl was with her friends, so she wasn’t exactly alone. My point is that in today’s world, you cannot take the high road and say that women and girls should be able to go anywhere they want to at whatever time they want to, with whomever they want to and in whatever condition they want to and be perfectly safe. Anyone having a passing knowledge of Belfast news, for instance, would realise that it is unsafe enough for a man to be out walking the streets in the middle of the night, let alone a 15 year old girl. And that pretty much applies to anywhere in the world, not just Belfast and not particularly Belfast. This is NOT a perfect world. I could go on and on about this issue because I feel very strongly about it, but I don’t have time right now. The second reason I am posting this is because I see it as a prime example of SF bashing for the simple reason that the author wanted to criticise SF for SOMETHING, and this came in handy.
Sinn Féin’s response to brutal rape deplorable
(Susan McKay, Irish News)
A 15-year-old girl comes to Belfast for a holiday. Walking with friends after a night out, she is brutally raped in the forecourt of a garage, while her friends are humiliated and beaten with an iron bar by the rapist’s accomplice. Then the rapist drags the already hurt and traumatised girl up a laneway and rapes her again. He takes her mobile and calls her mother to boast about what he has done.
It is a horrific and terrifying story.
The girl, her friends, her mother and her family will need all the love and understanding their families and friends can provide, and will hopefully also get support and counselling from voluntary and professional services. The depth of their distress is too painful to imagine. Families of teenage girls just venturing out into the adult world must be particularly disturbed. The rape of any woman terrifies all women.
This rape happened in nationalist west Belfast and local politicians swiftly condemned it.
The SDLP’s Patricia Lewsley pointed out that it must have been planned and that “these sick criminals will strike again”. The safety of the community required that anyone with information should contact the police as quickly as possible, she said.
Sinn Féin MLA Michael Ferguson said: “I would urge local women not to travel home alone and for God’s sake to be vigilant. We have to find these depraved animals.”
Sinn Féin’s response is troubling. This young girl was not alone. Her friends, two young men and another young woman, were rendered powerless.
Putting the emphasis on what women should do to avoid rape ignores the reality, that rapists prey upon women in many situations. Babies are raped. So are elderly women. Women are raped by husbands, boyfriends, brothers, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and strangers. They are raped in their homes, in cars, in lanes, in parks, at parties and in workplaces.
Of course women can and must be careful but the truth is that the potential victims of rape can’t stop it.
Most women blame themselves for rape – agonising over what they could have done to prevent it. This is true when the victim is a young woman who dressed up, went to a party, had too much to drink and took a lift home with someone she fancied. It is also true of women raped at gunpoint and women raped by gangs. It is true of women raped during the genocide in Rwanda.
Rapists are not “depraved animals”. They are men and boys.
The men who carried out the attack on Friday night must, indeed, be caught, as they are clearly very dangerous. The only responsible advice from community leaders and politicians to anyone with any information in these circumstances is to give it to the police.
This is what the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre is urging people to do. The PSNI is investigating this rape – along with the 95 other alleged rapes reported to it since April. No other authority can do it. Third party reports are just not a viable option. This is urgent. Sinn Féin’s equivocal position is deplorable.
This rape was particularly shocking but, as Eileen Calder of the Belfast Rape Crisis Centre points out, rape is much less rare than people like to think.
There have been several other brutal attacks in west Belfast alone in recent times and the BRCC is aware of others of similar ferocity across the north which weren’t reported to the police and didn’t reach the public eye.
Most days, the women working at the centre hear from someone new who has been raped. Some have been raped recently, some many years ago. In 2003, the Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report – carried out in the Republic – found that almost six per cent of women and almost three per cent of men surveyed had been raped before they were 17. Overall, 42 per cent of women had experienced some sort of sexual abuse or assault in their lifetime and one-in-10 had been raped. Almost half of the 3,000 women and men surveyed had never told anyone.
Rape needs to be taken on at every level. We need to challenge the vicious sexism which underlies it. We need to back rape crisis centres. We need to change the laws. But right now, we need those who know who the rapists are, to tell the police, immediately. To do otherwise is to collude with them and to enable them to rape again.
August 10, 2005
________________
This article appeared first in the August 9, 2005 edition of the Irish News.
Ex-UDR soldiers ‘quizzed on GAA murder’
By Jonathan McCambridge
10 August 2005
Police today declined to comment on reports that a number of former UDR soldiers were among those questioned over the death of GAA official Sean Brown.
Father-of-six Sean Brown (61) was abducted and murdered by the LVF as he locked up the Wolfe Tone Gaelic Athletic Club on May 12, 1997.
He was shot several times and his body later recovered beside his burnt-out car in Randalstown.
Recently detectives investigating the murder and loyalist paramilitary activity launched more than 20 searches and made several arrests across counties Antrim, Armagh and Tyrone.
According to reports today, some of those questioned were ex-members of the UDR.
However, a police spokeswoman said they would not comment on the identities of people questioned.
During the searches, police arrested eight men and one woman under terrorist legislation. The also arrested three women and one man under Proceeds of Crime legislation.
All were later released.
Police working on the investigation last week also swooped on a number of addresses in England. Two men and two women were arrested and released pending inquiries.
Police launched a new investigation into the Brown murder after a damning 2003 Police Ombudsman investigation which said the RUC had made “no earnest effort” to catch the killers in their original investigation.
Harryville paint-bomb target
By Claire Regan
10 August 2005
click to view - photo by Martin Melaugh from CAIN
North Antrim’s Catholic community faced fresh anxiety today after the beleaguered Harryville church was paint-bombed in an overnight attack.
The frequently targeted Church of Our Lady, in the Harryville area of Ballymena, was peppered with paint bombs on a night of high tension in the town.
The attack came just hours after police announced that Catholic families in the predominantly Protestant village of Ahoghill have been issued with fire blankets and smoke alarms amid fears they could be the next victims of loyalist attacks.
The attack also happened as tension remained high following the first republican band parade in the nationalist Fisherwick estate which led to a Lambeg-drum protest involving hundreds of loyalists.
Ballymena’s DUP mayor Tommy Nicholl condemned the attack on the church.
“I have absolutely no time for this type of thing at all,” he said.
“Regardless of where we hang our hats on a Sunday, we are entitled to the freedom of worship. We can never forward our cause by attacking places of worship.
“I oppose this attack utterly and would call on the perpetrators to cease. The ordinary unionist people of Harryville want to live side-by-side in peace with their Catholic neighbours.”
Mr Nicholl said he was concerned by rising tensions in the north Antrim area in recent weeks.
“I would plead with both sides involved to stop,” he added.
Last night’s attack at the Harryville church is the latest in a wave of paintbomb and graffiti incidents in the past month, with the previous attack happening at the weekend.
Two weeks ago members from High Kirk Presbyterian church in Ballymena cleaned graffiti off the walls of the church in a gesture much appreciated by Catholic clergy and parishioners.
