SAOIRSE32

Gadsden Times

Published October 04. 2005 5:25PM
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Writer

One of Northern Ireland’s most high-profile Protestant militants was shot to death outside his home Tuesday night, more than six months after he was ousted by his outlawed group.

Two gunmen fired several shots at Jim Gray after he answered his door in Protestant east Belfast, his longtime power base, police said. Detectives covered his body with a white sheet as they searched outside his home for evidence.

No group claimed responsibility for his assassination, but a previous assassination attempt in 2002 came during a feud among Protestant militants involved in Belfast’s thriving drug trade.

Gray, 43, had been free on bail while awaiting trial on charges of money laundering, concealing stolen property and other offenses connected to his past ownership of two Belfast pubs and other property.

Gray had been one of the six regional commanders of the outlawed Ulster Defense Association, Northern Ireland’s largest outlawed group, until March 30, when colleagues ousted him. Police arrested him a week later in a car containing more than $60,000 in cash.

Gray was both a much-feared and much-lampooned figure. With his year-round tan, shock of bleach-blond hair and penchant for Hawaiian shirts, he was known widely - although rarely to his face - by the nickname “Doris Day.”

But those who crossed him could suffer severe beatings or death. While a UDA commander he often confronted personal enemies with his bodyguards; an Associated Press reporter witnessed one such attack in June 2002, when Gray and an underling bludgeoned a man in full view of thousands of Belfast concert-goers.

Gray was grazed in the head with a bullet, but didn’t suffer any serious injuries, in September 2002 during a feud between the UDA and another illegal Protestant gang, the Loyalist Volunteer Force.

The UDA, which has an estimated 2,000 members in this British territory of 1.7 million, was founded in 1971 as a loose umbrella for neighborhood vigilante groups in working-class Protestant areas. It was responsible for killing about 400 people, mostly Catholic civilians, before calling a 1994 cease-fire.

That truce has been repeatedly violated, partly because of UDA involvement in so many illegal schemes that fuel deadly feuds internally and with other Protestant gangs.

The UDA, like other armed groups with official truces, was supposed to have disarmed fully by mid-2000 under terms of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace accord of 1998. But the UDA refused, citing the continued existence of the much more sophisticated Irish Republican Army, the major illegal group in Catholic areas.

Despite its large membership, the UDA plays no meaningful role in on-again, off-again negotiations on Northern Ireland’s future. Its political wing disbanded in 2001 after failing to build a coherent electoral base.

BBC

Former UDA leader Jim Gray has been shot dead

Leading loyalist Jim Gray has been shot dead in east Belfast.

Mr Gray, a former leader of the Ulster Defence Association in the east of the city, was recently released on bail on charges of money laundering.

The 47-year-old was shot at a house in Knockwood Park on the Clarawood estate after answering the front door to two gunmen at about 2000 BST.

The murder scene has been cordoned off while scenes of crimes officers examine the area.

Mr Gray was expelled from the leadership of the UDA earlier this year.

The shooting has been condemned by the DUP’s Peter Robinson.

“Those who take the law into their own hands have nothing to contribute to society,” the East Belfast MP said.

“There is no excuse for acting as judge, jury and executioner.”

Ulster Unionist councillor Jim Rodgers has appealed for no retaliation for the shooting.

“Regardless of what the victim has been accused of doing, no-one has the right to take the law into their own hands,” he said.

SDLP MLA Alex Attwood condemned the killing.

He said he hoped the situation would not escalate to a point where others, including innocent people, might be killed or injured.

Irelandclick Archive

**This article was written in 2000. Please see the following post about Brian, as well as Sunday’s articles remembering his death.

Mural detail from the photo by CRAZYFENIAN

Continuing our series on victims, in conjunction with Relatives For Justice, Anthony Neeson speaks to the family of 13-year-old Brian Stewart who was murdered by the British Army in October 1976
With so few prosecutions of British Army/RUC personnel in connection with murder, inquests in the North of Ireland have often destroyed the expectations of a family looking for a legal remedy following the death of a loved one.
And with no legal culpability arrived at, relatives of the deceased are more often than not left deflated by the whole inquest system too, they feel cheated, with inquest findings usually being restricted to where and how a death took place.
That was the case with 13-year-old Brian Stewart. On October 4, 1976, he was shot by a British soldier who fired a plastic bullet at him at the corner of Monagh Crescent in Turf Lodge. Declared brain dead when he arrived at the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Gort na Mona student died six days later in hospital. While the British Army claimed that Brian was rioting alongside upwards of 500 people at the time of the shooting, residents strenuously denied the claims, countering that the area was quiet and that no rioting had taken place. With no soldier charged with his killing, and believing that the RUC had not investigated his murder, the family, like many others over the years, pinned their hopes on the inquest. They were to be sorely disappointed.
Last year Brian’s mother, Kathleen, died of cancer at the age of 70.
For the previous 23 years she had tirelessly campaigned to clear her son’s name and ban the use of plastic bullets in the North. Weeks before she died she was still looking for justice for Brian and went along to a sitting of the Patten Commission, even though she was in great pain, and spoke about the RUC’s handling of her son’s murder.
Although their mother is no longer alive, Brian’s three brothers and four sisters are still looking for justice for their brother, determined to continue where their mother left off. I met up with two of them, Kathleen and Gemma, in the Norglen Crescent home where Brian had been brought up and they told me about the events surrounding his murder. Even all these years later, it is something which they still find difficult to do.
“Brian had come home from school that day and, because he was dyslexic, my mother helped him with his homework. He always had problems with school, although he was bright,” recalls Kathleen.
“I was 18 at the time and had just come home from work and passed Brian on the Norglen Road. There was no rioting going on at the time, it was just a normal day.
“A minute later a wee girl came running down to our house in Norglen Crescent, shouting that Brian had been shot. I ran back up the street again and he was lying on a neighbour’s settee unconscious. He never regained consciousness.”
Kathleen got into the ambulance with Brian and in the hospital she was told that he was brain dead. Not understanding the gravity of the statement, when she saw him in intensive care with four stitches in his temple and his hair shaved on one side of his head, all she could think of was that Brian would go mad when he woke up and realised his beloved blonde hair had been shaved.
“He was a real joker, a loveable child,” says Kathleen. “After he died a classmate of his came to my mother and said that one day he had gone up the mountain and came back down with a bag of butterflies and released them in the classroom. He was a mischievous child but never malicious. He found school hard because of his dyslexia, but he always had to get you to laugh one way or another. He had these bright eyes, always smiling and he had just started going with a wee girl. He’d gone to a party in her house a week earlier and had bought her a box of chocolates .”
After Brian’s death the family went to pieces. There was no time for grieving. An endless stream of relatives and schoolfriends came and went from the house.
“Everyone was trying to be strong for everyone else and afraid to be emotional, all holding it in. But we grew apart because everyone was trying to be strong and closing everyone else out. Then we started to drift apart,” she says.
Gemma was only eight when Brian was murdered. Her most vivid memory is of the family receiving a birthday card for Brian on the day of his funeral from the regiment who killed him. He would have been 14. Two months after she buried her Brian, Kathleen was in the city centre shopping when she was arrested for no reason.
Constant harassment by the RUC and the British Army became a way of life for the Stewart family.
“My mother was just a housewife and in the beginning she didn’t know how to go about trying to find justice,” says Gemma. “But later she started to get advice and began to write letters to anyone she thought could help her. She kept a file on Brian’s case and there are piles and piles of newspaper cuttings and letters in it. She was also sent a lot of hate mail, from wives of serving soldiers and loyalists mostly.
“She went to the European Court in Strasbourg in 1982 to pursue a complaint against the British Government but astonishingly it was ruled that a plastic bullet wasn’t a lethal weapon.
“Last March she died, but even when she was sick and being treated for lymphoma cancer she still went along to the Patten Commission and told them that the RUC never investigated Brian’s murder as a normal police force would do.
“She told them how the RUC never interviewed any witnesses or gathered statements and that local people had to go to the RUC themselves to give statements. That really hurt her, it was as if they didn’t care about Brian.”
Gemma said her mother always believed that one of the soldiers serving that day would eventually come forward and admit that Brian had not been rioting when he was shot and that there was no rioting on the day in question. Any time she heard about another child being killed by a plastic bullet it would bring back Brian’s murder and she lapse into a silence from which she wouldn’t emerge for days.
“My mother felt that the justice system completely failed Brian – he was innocent of any crime but could be fatally shot. Those responsible for upholding law and order didn’t bother to seriously investigate his death. It all left her, and us, feeling that his death did not matter in the eyes of the law.
“She took that feeling with her to the grave.”
• Contact Relatives for Justice on 90 220100

Irelandclick Archive

**Please see the previous post from Sunday, marking Brian’s death. This article is from the 2001 archive of Irelandclick and concerns Brian Stewart, the 13 year old Turf Lodge boy who was murdered by the King’s Own Scottish Borderers.

This week marks the 25th anniversary of Brian Stewart’s death. On the eve of the unveiling of a memorial plaque, Brian’s sisters speak movingly of the brother who was taken from them

Brian Stewart (13) from Turf Lodge was killed by a plastic bullet on October 4 1976, fired by a soldier from the notorious King’s Own Scottish Borderers, or ‘Kosbies’ as they were known to terrified locals.

Brian was seriously injured and died six days later in the Royal Victoria Hospital on October 10.

The schoolboy died as a result of a fractured skull and massive brain damage. Brian came from a family of eight children – four girls and four boys.

His sister Gemma was only eight years old when her brother was shot just streets away from where she was playing. He was shot at the junction of Norglen Road, Norglen Parade and Monagh Crescent.

“He had just run past me into the next street,” remembers Gemma. “There was rioting after Brian was shot but nothing happened before that.”

Gemma’s sister Kate went in the ambulance with her injured brother.

“I didn’t really understand what was happening at the time,” she said. “Brian was in hospital and he never regained consciousness. Then one morning mammy called us downstairs and told us Brian was dead.

“The coffin looked really big, and I remember thinking, ‘that’s not him, the coffin’s too big.’

“The house was bunged, and dad was always shouting at the reporters to leave them alone.”

Even before Brian was buried loyalist hate letters were posted to the house mocking the family’s loss.

“There were letters from loyalists saying that he deserved to die and then the journalists told us the soldiers said we were lying.

“The police didn’t take any statements, and three months later people went down and gave them in themselves,” said Gemma.

Brian’s mother Kathleen died two years ago from cancer after a long and exhausting battle for justice.

“The soldier who shot him, admitted in court that he didn’t even know how a plastic bullet should be shot, but the judge overlooked that,” said Gemma.

Gemma went with Clara Reilly from Relatives For Justice to confront Secretary of State John Reid earlier this year at La Salle school.

“He didn’t seem interested. When we asked him why plastic bullets weren’t allowed to be used in England, he just said there weren’t 3,000 people killed there.

“It is still hard, Brian has never had justice, we just want to clear his name. We would just like them to admit they murdered him.

“It is still a sad day, his anniversary. He was buried on his birthday and it is strange that his death and birthday come together,” said Gemma.

Clara Reilly from Relatives For Justice was a witness to Brian’s murder and testified in court.

In 1976 Clara told the Andersonstown News: “This type of thing will not be allowed to happen again. Turf Lodge especially has had to put up with vicious harassment and murder. Our homes have been wrecked and our young people maimed and killed. We have had enough.”

Clara continues in her tireless work with Relatives For Justice and the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets to have plastic bullets banned from use here.
She is currently working towards a new judicial review of the issue with Jim McCabe, whose wife Nora was killed by a plastic bullet.

“The judicial review aims to show that the new plastic bullets introduced on June 1 are even more lethal. They have to be challenged, it is terrible that they were even introduced. According to their own scientific reports they are more lethal.”

Clara had tremendous admiration for Brian’s mother, Kathleen, who until the day she died fought to clear his name. Kathleen was a founder member of the United Campaign Against Plastic Bullets.

“A few weeks before she died, she got up from her sick bed and personally addressed Patten. She was fighting to clear her son’s name. She had two goals, to clear Brian’s name and to have plastic bullets banned. I firmly support the Stewart family’s fight to have Brian’s name cleared,” said Clara. Kathleen didn’t want revenge, she just wanted Brian’s name cleared,” said Clara.

Journalist:: Staff Reporter

TIME Europe Magazine

Letter From Northern Ireland: The Hard men of Northern Ireland are conducting tours of Belfast’s trouble spots

By CHRIS THORNTON / BELFAST
Tuesday, Oct. 04, 2005

MOVING PICTURES: Tourists snap a mural of I.R.A. hunger striker Bobby Sands - ALAN LEWIS / PHOTOPRESS BELFAST

The residents of divis Tower celebrated this summer when the British army closed the observation post that had taken up the top two floors of their drab apartment block in West Belfast for more than 30 years. Not Joe Lavelle. As his guided tour passed on the road below, soldiers used to wave on cue when passengers pointed their cameras from the open top of their double-decker bus. Now, as a mark of the peace that’s slowly settled over Northern Ireland, the troopers and their fortified outpost are gone. “It’s like going to Paris and not having the Eiffel Tower,” sighs Lavelle.

There’s more tourism than terrorism in Belfast these days. In parts of the city where even the army used to fear to tread, camera-toting visitors now arrive in a steady stream, and former combatants are among a range of people figuring out how to make a legitimate buck from the mayhem they once caused. Companies set up by ex-republican and ex-loyalist prisoners offer firsthand accounts of the bad old days in their warring neighborhoods. The onetime enemies will even — quietly — share clients. “Thousands of people are coming here every week,” says Caoimhín Mac Giolla Mhín from the Irish Republican Army prisoners’ group, Coiste, as another bus passes along the Catholic Falls Road. “They’re not coming here for fishing. Not everybody wants to lie on a beach.”

Onboard one of Lavelle’s buses last week, 40 people listened attentively to the quieter parts of Belfast’s history, like the building of the Titanic in a local shipyard. But their necks craned whenever they passed a temple of recent turbulence, like police stations surrounded by high walls and barbed wire, and the West Belfast peace line, a barrier that has separated Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods longer than Berlin was divided by its wall. Their guide, Bren-dan McKernan, laced fact with a heavy dose of blarney. He recited the alphabet soup of Irish paramilitary groups just as the bus passed a fast food restaurant. To the i.r.a., i.n.l.a., u.d.a. and u.v.f., he added kfc. “Their leader was known as the Colonel,” he deadpanned. “They were responsible for a lot of stomach injuries.” Another guide eases nerves by repeating that passengers have nothing to fear, then asks them to pick up their bulletproof vests at the back of bus. He always gets a laugh.

Real violence does some-times intrude. When the embers of the Troubles flare up, as they did during loyalist riots last month, the number of gawkers drops off. “But a week later we’re pointing out the burn marks on the walls to them,” says Lavelle. In that sense, the Troubles tourism mirrors the odd resilience of Northern Ireland’s stuttering peace process. Last week, after a panel of international witnesses confirmed that the i.r.a. had finally disposed of its immense arsenal as unionists had long demanded, the unionists’ leader, Ian Paisley, seemed unable to accept yes for an answer. He implied he would keep stalling efforts to revive a power-sharing government in Belfast, because he didn’t trust the i.r.a. Many other unionists fear his perpetual intransigence is losing them ground.

But the reality of Ulster today is that no matter what Paisley does, no one expects any more serious violence. Instead, people are planning more constructive ways to harness the power of the past: turning part of the Maze Prison, where 10 republican inmates starved themselves to death in 1981, into a museum; trying to build a hotel on the site of a recently demolished police station; perhaps erecting a visitors’ center where back-packers can come to write messages on the peace line. “This wall’s not coming down in the foreseeable future,” says William Smyth, a former loyalist prisoner.

“What we want to do is get something from it for the area.” He thinks Belfast can only benefit by making money out of making peace.

::: u.tv :::

The Conservatives will oppose moves to allow IRA fugitives from justice to return to Northern Ireland if the courts are unable to hold them to account for their crimes, the British government was warned today.

By:Press Association

Shadow Northern Ireland secretary David Lidington sounded the warning in Blackpool at the first ever Tory fringe event involving a Sinn Fein MP.

While welcoming recent moves by the IRA to boost their peace process credentials, the Aylesbury MP told a lunchtime fringe debate featuring Sinn Fein`s Conor Murphy the British government had to give the courts a role if so-called on-the-run paramilitaries were to be allowed to return to Northern Ireland.

While stressing his party would continue to give bipartisan support on the peace process to the British government where appropriate, he stated: “There are two matters, one definitely on the agenda, the other widely discussed in the media, where you cannot take our support for granted.

“First, on-the-runs. If the legislation you bring forward this autumn does not contain a proper judicial process that involves those returning to Northern Ireland appearing in court and being held accountable for their crimes in the normal way - we will oppose the legislation.

“Second, policing. We will not be party to any arrangement that effectively hands over the policing of republican or loyalist areas to those who have been active in paramilitary organisations.”

The issue of on-the-run IRA terror suspects has been a key negotiating issue for republicans.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams is expected to press British Prime Minister Tony Blair at a meeting in London later this week for them to be allowed to return to Northern Ireland without being imprisoned.

Mr Lidington said last week`s announcement that the IRA had fully disarmed and its July statement declaring an end to its armed campaign were significant steps.

However the Conservative spokesman insisted two more hurdles had to be cleared.

“First, people in Northern Ireland need to see clear evidence that all forms of paramilitary and other criminal activities, including intimidation, shootings, beatings, robberies, smuggling, money-laundering and exiling people from their homes, have ended for good and that the IRA has ceased to exist as an organised paramilitary force,” he told the CHAMP fringe meeting.

“We shall be looking to the Independent Monitoring Commission and others for evidence that the move from paramilitarism to peaceful politics is genuine, permanent and irreversible.

“Second, we expect republicans to accept the legitimacy of the police and criminal justice systems, north and south, and encourage full co-operation with them.

“I recognise that this would require an important ideological change from the republican movement but I do not see how it can be right to have people serving as ministers in Belfast, or for that matter in Dublin, if they refuse to support the police and the courts.”

Mr Lidington said it would be difficult for many in Northern Ireland who had suffered at the hands of the IRA and his party to come to terms with the latest developments.

He recalled the IRA attack on former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet during the 1984 Tory Party conference in Brighton which killed five people and also the murders by republicans of MPs Ian Gow and Airey Neave.

The Conservative spokesman said there could be no place for republican or loyalist paramilitarism and he condemned recent loyalist rioting.

He also said loyalist organisations should follow the IRA by decommissioning all their weapons.

Ulster Substitute Democratic Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson, who with Ulster Unionist Assembly member David Burnside also took part in the debate, said scepticism about recent IRA moves was understandable,

“There is only so much credit that can be given to an organisation for eventually, unwillingly giving up weapons, years after they had agreed to - weapons that they should never have had and could have rid themselves of at any point in our recent history,” he said.

“If it is the case that this is the IRA saying their violence is over for good, then there is no one in Northern Ireland who wouldn`t welcome this.

“However the whole community is sceptical because so often before republicans have promised so much but let everyone down.”

The Lagan Valley MP claimed an opportunity was missed last week when the announcement of full IRA disarmament was not accompanied by an inventory of the weapons destroyed.

“People worry why there has to be such secrecy,” he said.
“Does someone have something to hide?”

Mr Donaldson said the DUP would not be bounced into forming a devolved government featuring Sinn Fein on the back of the Provisionals` recent move.

The DUP, he insisted, would stick to its pledge to voters that paramilitarism would not be allowed to corrupt democracy at Stormont.

“If it transpires that the weapons are beyond use, those of us who have sought to maintain the decommissioning issue at the top of the agenda have been vindicated,” he said.

“The potential for a Northern Ireland free from the threat of the IRA may prove realisable but our recent history indicates why IRA words are of little value and why it is essential that we proceed towards a better future on the basis of absolute confidence and certainty.”

Daily Ireland

Maria McCourt (Editor)

Just when you think you’ve seen and heard it all, the hydra of sectarianism grows another head on its already corrupt body. The sight of so-called protesters who claim to be Christians of the Protestant denomination trying to blockade the Catholic grave-blessing ceremony and intimidate the relatives and friends of the deceased is quite simply a blatant exercise in bigotry and intimidation. It must be condemned by anyone who considers themselves to be a civilised human being of any or no religious persuasion.
One would imagine that any prayers said in remembrance of departed loved ones would be welcomed by all whose relatives lie buried at Carnmoney.
If dressing up your hatred in a spurious protest for civil rights wasn’t bad enough, threats were also made that graves would be desecrated.
Bereaved relatives were told the last resting places of their loved ones would be urinated on and bodies dug up. Past acts of desecration at the same cemetery leave us in no doubt that there are some individuals who are hate-filled and bigoted enough to carry out such threats. There is simply no excuse for such behaviour, no cause which can justify it and political, religious and community leaders everywhere must make that plain and stop indulging in mealy-mouthed excuses for this annual hate-fest.
There is nowhere in the world that would tolerate the scenes we saw on Sunday and people within the Protestant and unionist community must reject these bigots and tell them they do not speak on their behalf, otherwise what else can the rest of the world think.
It’s high time for clear leadership. But who is going to provide it? Or can we look forward to another round sectarian vitriol next year.

- Welcome coalition

While the disgusting scenes at Carnmoney show up the lack of intelligence needed to seize the chance of political progress in the North, there was one shaft of light in the darkness yesterday.
Every major political party declared its solid support for the campaign against water charges, and rightly so.
Not only will every household, have to pay hundreds of pounds every year, especially hitting the least well-off, there is no guarantee that the income raised will be spent on the North’s infrastructure. Judging on past experience it’s more likely the money will end up in the British Exchequer to buy more bombs to drop in Iraq.
If only the less progressive parties could analyse every issue with such logical clarity and realise the way to tackle them is to get the Assembly up and running. Now.

RTE

04 October 2005 17:02

Rafferty family seeking justice for brother

The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has said he will again raise with Sinn Féin the killing of 29-year-old Joseph Rafferty.

Mr Rafferty was shot dead after leaving his apartment in west Dublin last April.

His family believe he was shot dead by people connected to the IRA and that Sinn Féin could be helpful in solving the case.

Mr Ahern said the garda investigation was continuing to try to bring those responsible for the killing to justice.

BBC

The police want to question this man about a rape

The police have issued a photofit of a man they want to question about the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Belfast.

She had been at the shops on the Glen Road at about 2100 BST on 23 September, when a man in his 30s grabbed her.

He dragged her into bushes in the grounds of a nearby resource centre and sexually assaulted her.

Police revealed details of the attack after the victim confided in a relative. Paul Maskey of Sinn Fein said it was part of “a worrying trend”.

“There are some people out there within our society and it doesn’t matter what time of day or night, they will try and attack these young girls,” he said.

“Young girls, unfortunately, are very vulnerable. ”

Sean Lennon of Andersonstown Neighbourhood Project condemned the attack.

“They have destroyed that child, her family and her greater family circle,” he said.

She was dragged into bushes and assaulted

“And they have instilled fear within the local community by these type of actions.”

Detective Sergeant John McDermott said: “A young 15-year-old girl, a child in actual fact, who was walking from a house to the shops couldn’t do so in safety.

“It was a brutal attack and this person must be brought to justice.”

The attacker was described as being in his 30s, of chubby build with dark hair.

Police said he had a distinctive short, bushy moustache, bushy eyebrows and two dents on either side of his nose.

His right ear was pierced and he spoke with a local accent.

At the time of the attack, the man was dressed in blue jeans and a light coloured t-shirt.

Anyone with information about the attack is asked to contact the police.

BBC

The bombing of the Grand Hotel killed five people

A Sinn Fein MP has sparked controversy at the Conservative Party conference by telling delegates he did not regret the Brighton bombing.

Conor Murphy said the 1984 bombing of the Tory conference which left five people dead was “part of a war”.

He said his only regret was that people had been driven to violence.

Conor Murphy

David Burnside, UUP, told Mr Murphy to “lower his head”. Shadow NI secretary David Lidington said it showed how far republicans “still had to travel”.

Mr Murphy made the comments at a fringe meeting in Blackpool, almost 21 years after the IRA blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton. The prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher, had a narrow escape.

Asked if he regretted the bombing, Mr Murphy said: “At the time I certainly did not regret it, I will be honest with you. I think it was part of a war, which was a very difficult war between the people of the island of Ireland.

“I regret that it came to a situation where people felt they had to take on violence in order to pursue their political ends.”

Mr Murphy, the MP for Newry and Armagh, was the first member of his party to take part in a debate during a Conservative conference.

His comments were condemned by opponents.

Ulster Unionist assembly member David Burnside, who was in the Grand Hotel in Brighton at the time of the bombing, was outraged.

He told Mr Murphy: “You blew up the centre of the democratic movement in the UK, the elected government of this country, and you have no remorse or regret that these murders were carried out and you should lower your head.”

Shadow Northern Ireland secretary David Lidington said later: “These comments show the distance republicans still have to travel. Whatever grievance republicans have had in the past that does not justify taking a single human life.

“The thing that now would demonstrate they have put that terrorist past behind them would be a clear endorsement of the rule of law and the authority of the police. That they have yet to do.”

Patrick Magee was later convicted of planting the bomb which ripped through the hotel in the early hours of 12 October 1984.

The five people killed in the bombing were Sir Anthony Berry, 59, the MP for Enfield Southgate; Roberta Wakeham, 45, wife of the then Tory Chief Whip Lord Wakeham; The Tories’ North West Area Chairman Eric Taylor, 54; Muriel Maclean, 54, wife of Scottish Chairman Sir Donald Maclean; and Jeanne Shattock, 52, wife of the Western Area chairman.

One of the best-remembered images of the night was that of the former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Norman Tebbit, who had to be rescued from the rubble. His wife was paralysed in the blast.

BBC

A trial date has been set for a 31-year-old man arrested by Irish police as part of an investigation into IRA money laundering.

Don Bullman of Fernwood Crescent, Wilton, County Cork, will stand trial at the Special Criminal Court in Dublin next March accused of IRA membership.

The court heard gardai recovered £54,000 in a washing powder box when he was arrested in Dublin on 16 February.

Mr Bullman was remanded on continuing bail until the trial date.

A detective told the court that at the time of his arrest, Mr Bullman was seated in a Northern Ireland registered car at Heuston station with two men from the province.

He said he suspected “the £54,000 was a money laundering operation on behalf of the IRA.”

NEWSHOUND

(Seamus McKinney, Irish News)

Red, white and blue paint in a Co Derry village is to be allowed to fade away as part of efforts to change its image – after The Irish News asked if it was the most sectarian place in the north.

Community leaders in Newbuildings say they are also willing to meet the GAA in a bid to stop attacks on fans.

In May, The Irish News carried an in-depth report exploring the reasons behind continuing sectarian attacks in the almost-exclusively Protestant village on the outskirts of Derry city.

The feature followed attacks on Catholics attending Mass which forced the parish priest to drop the Saturday night vigil Mass.

It also came after years of attacks on GAA and Derry City soccer fans returning from away games along the main Dublin-Derry road through the village.

The story caused a furore and led to residents and politicians from the village demanding a retraction. The newspaper stood by its story.

Now, almost five months later, The Irish News has learned that a number of measures have been put in place to improve Newbuildings’ image.

These include a decision to allow paint on kerbstones to fade and to eventually paint them grey, as well as a number of cross-community projects.

Resident and community worker Jeanette Warke said: “To be honest, it was negative when you [The Irish News] did that article and we all tore into you, but I think you really did us a favour.

“I think you highlighted what was underlying and what we did not want to say.

“So then we took ownership of the problem and are doing something about it.”

Fr Aiden Mullan, parish priest in Derry’s Waterside, acknowledged that the situation in Newbuildings has improved, but said Catholics would still not feel safe returning to live there.

He said that while the summer was undoubtedly quieter than in previous years, there were some instances of low-level vandalism.

Trouble also returned last week following the Tyrone football team’s All-Ireland final victory.

In the three days after the Red Hand county’s win, six attacks on Tyrone supporters were reported.

All happened when cars bearing GAA emblems stopped at traffic lights on the main road through the village.

Alison Wallace, a Newbuildings community worker, said efforts were being made to prevent future attacks.

She said young people in the

village viewed the flying of GAA flags as sectarian and triumphalist, but community leaders say they have been patrolling areas where teenagers gather.

Seamus McCloy, chairman of Derry county GAA board, said he would be willing to meet anyone to discuss issues pertaining to the GAA as a sporting and non-sectarian organisation open to all.

October 3, 2005
________________

This article appeared first in the October 1, 2005 edition of the Irish News.

BBC

A primary seven classroom was destroyed in the fire

A Catholic primary school in County Antrim damaged in a sectarian attack in August has been visited by Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.

He was accompanied by the local MP, DUP leader Ian Paisley, on his visit to St Louis’s Primary School in Ballymena.

Arsonists had set fire to the school on 30 August, destroying one classroom and damaging 10 others.

Mr Hain called for loyalist paramilitaries to end violence in order to move the political process forward.

“Violence does not pay and political progress will only be made when paramilitaries leave the stage,” he said.

Extra police were put on guard outside Catholic churches and schools in the town, as sectarian attacks increased.

The school was attacked just one day after nearby St Mary’s Primary in the Harryville area was petrol bombed.

Thirty police officers were involved in Operation Striker, which covered 50 Catholic-owned properties, churches, schools and GAA sports grounds.

Vehicle checkpoints were set up in Ballymena, Ahoghill and Portglenone, while mobile patrols covered other locations.

Belfast Telegraph

By Eddie McIlwaine
04 October 2005

Is there a ghost in the old Crumlin Road Jail?

Broadcaster Gerry Anderson will try to find out in a new BBC Radio Ulster series called Gerry’s Ghost Hunt which starts on Saturday morning at 11.30.

In the four-parter, Gerry and a team of ghostbusters will stake out various locations where spirits are believed to lurk.

They include Richhill Castle in Co Armagh, the Grand Opera House in Belfast, the Workhouse Museum in Derry - and the prison on the Crumlin Road which has now been decommissioned…

“To everyone except the ghosts,” adds the Northern Ireland Paranormal Research Association as they take new recruit Anderson spectre hunting.

The team will be carrying electromagnetic meters and laser thermometers to record any paranormal activity.

Gerry says: “I’ve read up on all the facts, fiction and folklore of each location and spoken to the locals who claim to have experienced ghostly sightings.

“I have an open mind on the subject.”

And already in preparing the series Anderson admits he has been scared stiff.

“I’ve seen things I never though I would see, things that I couldn’t explain - things that scared me.”

And his advice as Halloween approaches is: “Never, ever spend a night in the Hanging Cell at the prison.”

Belfast Telegraph

By Chris Thornton and Noel McAdam
04 October 2005

Plans to allow IRA fugitives back into Northern Ireland face a rough ride today after the Tories said the proposals amount to “an amnesty” and announced they will oppose them in Parliament.

Shadow Secretary of State David Lidington told a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool that his party will oppose the plans as they currently stand - turning the House of Lords into a key battleground.

He made the pledge as Sinn Fein attended the Tory party conference for the first time - 21 years after the Brighton bomb.

Newry and Armagh MP Conor Murphy spoke at the same lunchtime meeting as Mr Lidington, along with Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP and the UUP’s David Burnside.

As part of the response to IRA decommissioning, the Government is due to unveil legislation dealing with the IRA’s “on the runs” - known as ‘OTRs’ - before the end of the month.

The DUP has already indicated that its members will fight the plans, but they do not have the votes to halt the legislation.

However, the Tory intervention introduces the prospect of the legislation being held up in the Lords if Liberal Democrats and cross-benchers join them.

Arrangements spelled out two years ago said that IRA suspects wanted by the security forces would be allowed back across the border if they applied to a quasi-judicial process.

The fugitives - including various Maze escapers, former MP Owen Carron and Sinn Fein’s US representative Rita O’Hare - would not have to appear in court, but the evidence against them would be recited. They would not serve any time in prison.

Mr Lidington told the Government today: “If the legislation you bring forward this autumn does not contain a proper judicial process that involves those returning to Northern Ireland appearing in court and being held accountable for their crimes in the normal way we will oppose the legislation.”

A Conservative spokesman said the party does not consider the current plans to include a “proper judicial process”.

Although the party appears ready to accept that the fugitives will not serve time in prison, the spokesman said the existing plan are, “let’s face it, an amnesty”.

“People who have caused grief to so many families deserve to be brought before the courts,” the spokesman said.

“Whatever happens after sentence is passed, they should at least go through the normal judicial process.”

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said his party would be vigorously opposing the legislation.

“The reality is this was a concession made to republicans in the form of a side-deal in 2003.

“The DUP had no part in it and will have no part in it,” the Lagan Valley MP said.

“But the Government said it would not deliver until the IRA had delivered acts of completion and the fact is we haven’t had completion in terms of criminality.

“So why is the Government introducing this legislation now? People will be entitled to be sceptical. There is no mention of this in the Belfast Agreement.

“It is a gross injustice to grant what is an effective amnesty to people who have committed some of the most heinous crimes here over the last 30 years.

“Given the Government’s majority they are likely to get this through the Commons but there is no guarantee they will get it through the Lords.”

RTE

04 October 2005 11:32

Police in Northern Ireland have arrested two men in connection with the murder in January of Belfast man Robert McCartney.

The 33-year-old’s family has repeatedly claimed that IRA members were involved in the murder of Mr McCartney, who was stabbed outside Magennis’s pub in Belfast city centre on 30 January.

The PSNI said the men were also being questioned about the attempted murder of Mr McCartney’s friend, Brendan Devine, in the same incident.
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In June, two men were remanded in custody charged in connection with the murder of Mr McCartney.

BreakingNews.ie

04/10/2005 - 07:35:54

Irish passengers flying to the United States will reportedly have to supply additional personal information in advance of their travel under new laws coming into force today.

Reports this morning said the US legislation required passengers to inform airlines in advance about their country of residence and the address they plan to stay at during their first night in the US.

Until now, such information was obtained by US immigration officials before passengers were allowed to board.

However, this morning’s reports said Aer Lingus had begun e-mailing passengers to notify them that they must now supply the details in advance.

Previous US laws had already required airlines to supply a range of other information in advance, including the passengers’ identity, gender, nationality, date of birth and passport details.

One Ireland

Irish Times
1 October 2005

The IRA provided sandwiches and cups of soup - and rooms full of Armalites and explosives. Mark Hennessy hears how the decomissioning of its arsenal was carried out

Picking up a box of IRA bullets late one night last week, Gen John de Chastelain turned to Fr Alec Reid, “Do you see these? They are very vicious. They spin when they are fired. When they hit the person, they rip them open. Every sixth one is a tracer. It tells you whether you are hitting the target, or not.”

The Canadian general, who has spent eight years of his life attempting to rid Northern Ireland of such weaponry, sighed and put the box down.

For more than a week up to last Saturday, de Chastelain had travelled hundreds of miles to IRA dumps in a blacked-out van.

Sitting in the van on the first day, driven by an IRA man, he turned to Fr Reid and said gently, “When you get the chance to sleep, sleep.” With that, the general turned away and closed his eyes.

The soldier’s advice was taken by the priest, a 35-year veteran of the Troubles and, for many, one of its symbols from the day when he gave the last rites to two British soldiers beaten and shot dead by the IRA after they blundered into a funeral cortege in Andersonstown in 1988.

“I spent a lot of the time on the road asleep. We could not see where we were going. We did not know where we were going. And we didn’t want to know,” Fr Reid says.

The journeys, shrouded in secrecy, to witness the IRA’s promise to completely decommission its weaponry almost certainly crossed the Border, though even high-level security sources in the Republic profess not to know where.

The theories abound. One says that much of the weaponry was moved into dumps in south Armagh where decommissioning work could be guaranteed to be interruption-free. Another places the dumps in the midlands, or north Tipperary. However, it is clear that weeks of work went into consolidating all of the organisation’s arsenal.

Accompanied by his Independent International Commission on Decommissioning colleagues - US diplomat Andrew Sens and Finnish brigadier general Tauno Nieminen - Gen de Chastelain was joined in the van by Fr Reid and the Methodist clergyman Rev Harold Good.

On the other side, a core IRA team, responding to orders from a “highly professional” leader, were present at each of the locations, joined by local “helpers”, said Fr Reid. “Many of the local people who came were in their 20s,” he added. The locations were varied. Some were in warehouses, some in outbuildings, some even in houses. “It was mostly covered buildings,” he said.

In each, the IRA’s arms, ranging from rifles, flame-throwers, surface-to-air missiles to deadly Semtex plastic explosives, were lined up neatly along walls. Pistols and revolvers lay on the floor.

Each was numbered with green tags of the type found in cloakrooms, with the numbers recorded in manifests supplied to de Chastelain.

“The IRA was absolutely meticulous, so was the general and his colleagues. So were we. Each time the general picked up a weapon its number was read out and Andrew Sens compared it with the list,” Fr Reid said. He watched as de Chastelain started removing bolts from rifles in the first phase of the decommissioning process.

Hundreds of rounds of ammunition, some still sealed in boxes, some in belts, some of it loose, had to be recorded by the IICD team.

“Usually, they picked up 10 or so rounds. They had a small weighing scales on which they weighed them and then they worked out the total amounts that were there,” he said.

The Semtex, part of the 1980s arms cache sent by Libya’s Col Gadaffi, was held in six inch by four inch brown sealed packets.

Once they had been properly recorded, the arms were “put beyond use”, to quote the decomissioning legislation - though the exact means used to achieve that remains highly secret.

Though intelligence reports vary, it is believed by Irish security sources that the IRA had between seven and 11 surface-to-air missiles; six to 11 rocketpropelled grenade launchers and 30 to 35 grenades for them; between three and five flame-throwers; 30 to 35 shotguns; one, two or three high-powered sniper rifles; 150 to 200 handguns; 420 to 620 assault rifles, including AK-47s; 40 machine-guns; between 11?2 and two tonnes of Semtex and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition.

Each night, De Chastelain, Sens and Nieminen pored over records gathered during the day, checking and cross-checking them against intelligence reports received from the Irish and British governments.

“I could hear the three of them going over the lists late into the night. They were absolutely meticulous about the way they did their work,” said the Clonard-based Redemptorist.

Remembering Danny Morrison’s call to republicans to take power in Ireland using “the Armalite, and the ballot box” as he held one of the US-made assault rifles, de Chastelain said wryly, “You know the political connotations of these, don’t you?” Later, he picked up a Sten sub-machine gun, the early version of which was used in the second World War, and said, “God, I haven’t handled one of these in a long time.”

After nearly 50 years in uniform, the general easily recognised each of the weapons in the IRA’s arsenal, and when he did not, as in the case of a home-made coffee jar bomb, the IRA man in charge was quick to offer an explanation for a weapon often used for car-bomb assassinations.

Despite Democratic Unionist Party doubts, Fr Reid remains certain that he and his colleagues last week witnessed a defining moment in Irish history.

“I have had 35 years of contact with republicans and the IRA. I know these people,” said Fr Reid.

“There was a good atmosphere during each of the days with the IRA people. They were very respectful towards Harold and myself.

“I know it causes problems when I say that, but you have to be honest. They wouldn’t be going through the preparation and the work that went into it while they were there otherwise.

“There was a 100% co-operation. It creates a spirit which convinces you that this is for real. You would know by being with them that this was the real thing, that they were dumping all their weapons, but it is hard to convey that to people who weren’t there, especially if they are unionists. There was no question of it.

“There was a little incident that struck me from the first conversation that I had with the IRA leader, the main organiser. He said, ‘We got worried yesterday. A man came to us yesterday with two guns. And we thought that we had got them all. We didn’t know that they were there.’ I thought that was a significant remark.

“We were very looked after, I can tell you that, very well looked after. We had two, or three picnics. We would be working away and one of the IRA people would shout, ‘Come on, we’ll get a few sandwiches.’ They had sandwiches, flasks of hot water, coffee and all kinds of bits and pieces, cups of soups. We might take 20 minutes. The general and his people didn’t hang around. They might take 10 minutes, but we would chat.”

Acknowledging the DUP complaints that unionists had no chance to nominate their own representative, Fr Reid pointed out that both he and Rev Good had been selected to witness last December’s planned decommissioning.

“I thought when that didn’t go ahead that we had lost our chance to witness history, and I told Harold that. But, then, we were contacted two, three weeks ago again. I thought we had been cleared with the Irish and British governments,” he said.

Despite the criticisms levelled at him by the DUP, the Clonard priest was complimentary of both them and the Ulster Unionists for their conduct during meetings on Thursday.

“I told Dr Paisley that if Harold Good had been in the Catholic Church that we would have had no problem making him pope. Dr Paisley laughed and said, ‘Well, he would be infallible then, wouldn’t he?’”

Though he believes his meetings with unionist politicians went well, Fr Reid remains worried: “I am concerned that people will miss the point, that they are going to get wrapped up in who appointed the witnesses and miss the bigger picture.”

“You remember the Thomas Hardy poem with the lines, “Blessings emblazoned that day/Everything glowed with a gleam/Yet we were looking away”? I am worried that we are looking away.”