SAOIRSE32

Belfast Telegraph

By Claire Regan
19 October 2005

Limavady Borough Council has become the latest local authority in Northern Ireland to sign up to a leading peace campaign.

The council now joins most other local authorities across the province which have already endorsed the One Small Step Campaign.

Former Ireland rugby international Trevor Ringland, who is chairman of the peace initiative, welcomed the move and said that the council was demonstrating “strong and bold leadership”.

“We are delighted that Limavady has thrown its weight behind what we are trying to do,” he said.

“The principles of One Small Step are committing to work for the common good and towards a peaceful future based on equality and mutual respect; taking an active role in one’s daily life to ensure society is inclusive, peaceful, just and fair and working towards reconciliation, tolerance, mutual trust and the upholding of human rights for all.

“Limavady council has decided to endorse these principles and this is an important message for the council to send out to its citizens and to the people of Northern Ireland.”

Mr Ringland recognised that Limavady “is a council area which has had its difficulties in terms of division and this move demonstrates real leadership by the council and a desire to work its problems out”.

Belfast Telegraph

Mother ‘has hurt enough’ - pastor

By Ashleigh Wallace
19 October 2005

A Shankill-based pastor has appealed to the UDA to end their campaign of intimidation against a local woman whose son was murdered by the organisation.

Pastor Jack McKee, from the New Life City Church, last night revealed the family of UDA murder victim Alan McCullough are still being harassed by loyalist paramilitaries - more than two years after he was killed.

It is understood the McCullough family were warned by police officers of threats which were issued against them ahead of the trial of Mo Courtney.

The Shankill loyalist has been charged with Mr McCullough’s murder.

The trial is due to start in Belfast Crown Court next week.

Mr McCullough,whose father ‘Bucky’ was shot dead by the INLA in 1981, was a member of Johnny Adair’s ‘C’ Company which was forced to flee to Bolton, Lancashire, in 2003.

However, he returned home to the lower Shankill area in May of that year and was murdered around a week after his return.

Since his death, the McCullough family have been the targets of an on-going campaign of intimidation at the hands of the UDA.

Urging those involved in the harassment to stop, Pastor McKee said Alan’s mother Barbara had “suffered enough” with the loss of a husband and a son.

He said: “It is time for the UDA to move with the changing times and to leave intimidation and victimisation behind once and for all.

“Most people know why the McCullough family is being victimised and most people would believe that the law should be permitted to take its course and to come up with its conclusions one way or the other.

“If those men being accused of the murder of Alan McCullough are innocent, them let them fight it out in the court and let the court decide,” added Pastor McKee.

Daily Ireland

Danny Morrison

Fr Alec Reid, a quiet, self-deprecating and normally circumspect man, was thrust into public life recently when it was announced that he and the Methodist Minister, the Reverend Harold Good, were the two independent witnesses to the IRA putting all of its weapons beyond use. Both clerics appeared at the same press conference as General John de Chastelain and his two commissioners on September 26, when the announcement was made.
Fr Reid, of course, is also the Redemptorist priest from Clonard Monastery who acted as a mediator in various republican feuds (and helped end those between the IRA and the Workers Party in 1975 and 1977). He also brought Sinn Féin and the SDLP together for talks in 1988, and acted as a conduit between Charles Haughey, when he was Taoiseach, and the republican leadership. He was famously photographed giving the kiss of life to the two plain-clothes British Army corporals who were killed after they inexplicably drove into the funeral of IRA Volunteer Kevin Brady in 1988.
He is not a supporter of armed struggle. In fact, he never gave up trying to persuade the IRA to abandon its campaign, but he is an Irishman who believes in Irish independence and would like to see his country reunited, as is his entitlement, but with the consent of the unionist community.
He and the Reverend Harold Good set out to persuade the sceptics about the historical importance and decisiveness of IRA decommissioning and came to address a public meeting of about 200 people at Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast last Wednesday night.
There were heated exchanges and some unionists, according to Fr Reid, slighted and insulted his faith and the Catholic Church. He was interrupted and he lost his temper. He said that there would have been no IRA but for the way unionists treated nationalists.
“They were treated almost like animals by the unionist community. They were not treated as human beings… they were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.”
There was shock in the audience and it triggered a shouting match and a bit of a walkout. Fr Reid apologised almost immediately, an apology that was accepted - albeit his remarks were regretted - by many of his friends in other denominations, including the Reverend Ken Newell whose church had hosted the meeting.
There was also an immediate outcry at his remarks from unionist leaders, including the leading party in unionism, the anti-Agreement DUP, which rubbished the affidavits of Reid and Good in regard to decommissioning and still seeks pretexts to avoid sharing power with Sinn Féin.
Father Reid’s remarks certainly smarted many unionists. He should not have demonised an entire community. You cannot compare the suffering of the Jews under the Nazis, and their genocide, to the nationalist experience in the North, however unpleasant that was.
Nevertheless, Fr Reid, a moderate, must have said what he said out of frustration and desperation – a natural human reaction. Prior to those remarks, the last person not of the republican physical-force tradition to have said something similar was President Mary McAleese earlier this year. During ceremonies to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp she suggested that Catholics in the North suffered like Jews during Hitler’s war on Europe. Of the Nazis she said: “They gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics – in the same way that people give their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of different colour.”
Within 24 hours she too apologised and said she was “deeply sorry”. McAleese’s and Reid’s comments represent something visceral which even most nationalists believe but only express in unguarded moments for fear of being regarded as sectarian, but the analogy with fascism is in fact legitimate and rooted in certain fact.
The evidence is that the traditional unionist establishment has strong anti-democratic and fascist tendencies.
Firstly, unionists, who had no problem with a united Ireland when they were in political ascendancy, opposed the extension of the franchise to the Irish working class and opposed a measure of devolution, Home Rule, because they would lose their sectarian supremacy. They opposed ‘lawful’ authority, organised the first right-wing paramilitary army of the 20th century, the UVF, threatened civil war, got their way and set up what was basically a state of one-party government.
To ensure they maintained control they used terror. They gerrymandered constituencies. They discriminated in employment and investment and reinforced the traditional ghettoes in which Catholics had gathered for safety. They used the Orange Order to keep nationalists in fear. At the foundation of the state they drove the few Catholics that had work in Protestant industries out of their workplace. In 1921 alone 9000 Catholics were driven from work, 30,000 were rendered destitute and thousands were rendered homeless. Catholics were in a minority but made up the majority of those who emigrated. Unionist newspapers regularly carried job advertisements with the unashamed pronouncement that ‘No Catholics Need Apply’.
Loyalist paramilitaries boast of their connection with neo-Nazi groups, including Combat 18. The ‘18’ in their name is derived from the initials of Adolf Hitler, A and H are the first and eighth letters of the Latin alphabet.
To this day Ian Paisley uses insulting and derogatory language when he refers to ‘Papishers’ and ‘Romanists’. His party displayed fascist tendencies in its Ulster Resistance mode, Third Force rallies and when it united with loyalist paramilitaries in the UWC strike. One of Paisley’s councillors, George Seawright, said of Catholics in 1984: “Taxpayers’ money would be better spent on an incinerator and burning the whole lot of them. The priests should be thrown in and burned as well.”
Former Home Affairs Minister, William Craig, set up the Vanguard Movement as a pressure group within the Unionist Party. At Vanguard rallies unionist leaders arrived flanked by motorcycle outriders. At one rally in Ormeau Park, Craig addressed 100,000 people, which included serried ranks of masked men carrying cudgels. He said: “We must build up a dossier of the men and the women who are a menace to this country… it may be our job to liquidate them.”
Commenting on these rallies, the veteran British journalist Peter Taylor wrote many years ago: “To nationalists they represented a menacing display reminiscent of Hitler’s Nuremburg rallies.”
So, yes, there is an analogy to be made, though not on the same scale as the Nazis. Unionists are genuinely appalled that nationalists should think this way of them and they reject such a view. They do so because they themselves are in denial about their part in the origins of the conflict. Certainly, the IRA’s campaign devastated them, led to a litany of loss, pain and bereavement, and a sense of great victimhood, but that sense of victimhood is also conveniently used to mask some of the real truths about their own ethos and their attitude to Catholics.
For them it’s more comforting to view the IRA as completely ruthless as to examine the darkness at the heart of unionist supremacist values.
Unwittingly, Fr Alec Reid’s outburst has done just that.

Danny Morrison’s play, ‘The Wrong Man’, is on at the Tivoli Theatre, Francis Street, Dublin, for another three weeks. Bookings: Tivoli [01] 4544472; Central Ticket Bureau – [01] 8721122 or email – admin@centralticketbureau.com

BBC

Rory Carroll has been in Iraq for nine months

A journalist for the Guardian newspaper is thought to have been kidnapped after going missing in Iraq.

It is believed Baghdad correspondent Rory Carroll may have been abducted by armed men while on assignment in the capital, a Guardian statement said.

The paper said it was urgently seeking information about the 33-year-old Republic of Ireland national.

Mr Carroll was coming to the end of a year-long assignment in Iraq. He was previously South Africa correspondent.

Dublin-born Mr Carroll was interviewed from Baghdad on Wednesday morning for RTE radio’s Pat Kenny Show, about the start of Saddam Hussein’s trial.

A few hours later, his family was informed by the editor of the Guardian that he had been “taken”.

Aid worker

His father, Joe, told the BBC: “It was something we had been secretly dreading. We were hoping it would never happen.”

Mr Carroll said his son had received specialised training for such situations.

“He knew we were worried but he used to reassure us and say it wasn’t as dangerous as people outside think and if you observed basic rules of security, you’d be okay,” he said.

“We knew he was playing it down for our sake. It was obvious danger.

“He did make it clear to us that he took all the precautions that he thought were necessary.”

A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, Rory Carroll started his career at the Irish News in Belfast, where he was named Northern Ireland young journalist of the year in 1997.

He later joined the Guardian as a home news reporter, and was made South Europe correspondent in 1999.

The leader of Fine Gael in the Republic of Ireland, Enda Kenny, said his disappearance was a “major cause of concern”.

“I assume the minster for foreign affairs will take a direct and personal interest in this.

“Obviously when anybody is kidnapped it is a cause of concern but as this is an Irish citizen it brings it in to sharper focus for us here.”

Mr Carroll has gone missing on the first anniversary of the abduction in Baghdad of Dublin-born aid work Margaret Hassan.

Sinn Féin

Published: 18 October, 2005

Sinn Féin MLA for North Antrim Philip McGuigan, has called on the Unionist paramilitaries in the Ballymena to cease their campaign of hatred and intimidation on the Catholic community in Ballymena before they end up killing someone. His calls come in light of the last nights two petrol bomb attacks on Catholic families in the north end of the town.

Mr McGuigan said:

“Honestly, this has got to a stage were it is no longer safe for a Catholic to live in their home, in their own area in Ballymena. Some of these days I await the news of a tragedy similar to that of the Quinn children in Ballymoney, carried out by the unionist paramilitaries.

“Last night we see again the hatred felt within the loyalist community in Ballymena. These attacks have to be described as nothing more than anti Catholic. This is a step up in their attempt to intimidate these families. Just three weeks ago they were both paint bombed but now its petrol.

“It is my believe that more needs to be done within the unionist community by their so called leaders to make these people see sense and to alleviate the problems that stare the Catholic community in the face. Ian Paisley claims himself to be the leader of Unionism. If so, lets see him use his power.

“There needs to be genuine engagement within his community to get these attacks stop. I look forward to the day when I can engage with all communities to work these kind of situations out. The day can’t come quick enough for the Catholic community.” ENDS

Independent Monitoring Commission

Click >>here for the 7th report of the IMC.

BBC

The IMC released its seventh report on paramilitary activity

The IRA move away from its armed campaign is showing encouraging signs, the paramilitary watchdog has said.

However, the Independent Monitoring Commission said it was too early to draw firm conclusions about the IRA ending all activities.

“Clearly we are looking for cumulative indications of changes in behaviour over a more sustained period of time,” it said.

NI Secretary Peter Hain said he would restore Sinn Fein assembly allowances.

Following the publication of the IMC report on Wednesday, he said he would also recommend to the House of Commons that its suspension of allowances to the party’s MPs should be lifted.

Mr Hain said there had been “positive signs of progress”.

But commission chairman Lord Alderdice said the decision to return Sinn Fein’s allowances was against the wishes of the IMC.

“While we do feel that something very significant happened potentially in the IRA statement and indeed in the decommissioning which was reported on, we felt it was too early to make a definitive judgement on the question of returning public funds to Sinn Fein at this time,” he said.

Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell said the IMC’s next report in January would offer a greater insight into whether the IRA had abandoned criminality.

“That report will provide a greater test over a longer period of the extent to which the Provisional movement has abandoned criminality in all its forms,” he said.

The report says that in the six months up to the end of August loyalists were responsible for much more violence than republicans.

Sinn Fein assembly members and MPs had allowances suspended after the IMC accused the IRA of involvement in the robbery of £26.5m from the Northern Bank in Belfast, and other paramilitary activity.

On the restoration of Sinn Fein’s assembly and parliamentary allowances, Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was a sensible step and hoped the DUP would share the objective to achieve a peaceful society.

However, DUP leader Ian Paisley said the decision was “outrageous and demeans the very name of parliament”.

‘Concessions’

“I have made the secretary of state aware of my outrage at this decision, that it has no basis in evidence, and have warned him that it will cripple unionist confidence to see the IRA rewarded for doing nothing.”

UUP assembly group deputy leader Danny Kennedy said the move was “part of the latest concession choreography to republicans”.

“It is important that the IMC remains independent at all costs and must not become manipulated by government as part of the on-going concession choreography,” he said.

Conservative shadow Northern Ireland Secretary David Liddington said it was too early to judge the actions of the IRA.

“Both the IMC and the Irish prime minister have referred to the ability of the IRA to turn violence and criminality on and off like a tap whenever it suits,” he said.

Sinn Fein Newry and Armagh MP Conor Murphy said the IRA had fulfilled all of the commitments made in its July statement.

“The DUP must now decide if they are to come on board the peace process and the two governments must urgently address the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, including the early restoration of the political institutions,” he said.

The IMC said the IRA had carried out an assault shortly after its July statement on an IRA member.

“We do not know the reason for the assault although it could reflect a concern in the organisation to curtail either unacceptable activities or support for dissident republicans,” said the watchdog.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan said the IMC’s report “painted an encouraging picture”.

“However, we share the IMC’s concern that there have been continued cases of extortion and intimidation,” he said.

British and Irish ministers are meeting in Dublin to consider the implications of the report on the political process.

The IMC reports on the activity of all of Northern Ireland’s paramilitaries.

The report was handed over to the British and Irish governments on Friday and covers both republican and loyalist paramilitary activity between March and the end of August.

In its seventh report, the IMC said before July’s statement, the IRA had continued to recruit and give briefings on personal security and counter-surveillance to new and existing members.

“We believe that in the early part of the period under review in this report training took place, including in the use of weapons.

“We have no evidence of training or recruitment after the 28 July statement,” said the IMC.

Mr Hain said: “It is essential that the IMC, as they state, are able to observe ‘cumulative changes in behaviour over a more sustained period of time’.

“I await the next report of the commission, due in January 2006.”

BreakingNews.ie

19/10/2005 - 12:54:17

Obsolete legislation from the 1920s is being used to inquire into the death of a schoolboy in garda custody, the Dáil heard today.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte said that the Commission of Investigation Act passed last year would be more suitable to probe the death of 14-year-old Brian Rossiter rather than the Dublin Metropolitan Police Act from 1924 which was recommended by the justice minister.

Brian, 14, died after he was held overnight in Clonmel Garda Station on September 10, 2002 with the consent of his father.

He was found to be in a coma the next morning and died two days later.

Mr Rabbitte reiterated that the State pathologist relied on information from the gardaí that Brian was drunk and drugged before his death but a toxicology report found no traces of either alcohol or drugs in his system.

“This is a matter of grave public concern and this piece of obsolete, ancient legislation…it has never been used before.”

“It is very odd and quite farcical,” Mr Rabbitte said.

He added: “The Commission of Investigations Act would seem to be tailor made for this inquiry.”

The Dublin TD said justice minister Michael McDowell had tried to apply the 1924 legislation to probe the circumstances of how Dublin drug addict Dean Lyons “confessed” to two murders while in custody in 1997. It later emerged he could not have committed either crime.

Mr Rabbitte said: “The minister is either so chuffed with his discovery of this Act that he wants to use it somewhere or else that the truth is deliberately being prevented from coming out.”

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said Mr McDowell was satisfied with the format of the inquiry and that it will uncover the truth.

The barrister carrying out the investigation, Hugh Harnett SC, will be able to summon serving and retired gardaí to give evidence on oath and later make findings in his published report.

Mr Ahern said the decision to hold the inquiry in private is to prevent proceedings becoming adversarial.

“Nobody can refuse to contribute to this or be investigated by it,” he said.

“It is the minister’s intention to make sure that this matter is dealt with fully and to the satisfaction of the family.”

Brian’s father, Pat has said that the family cannot afford to co-operate with the inquiry.

It was not that the family did not want to co-operate, but that they did not have a choice, he said.

The inquiry, which intends to sit in Dublin, will not pay expenses to the Rossiter family. Legal teams have complained that the proposed costs will not cover their preliminary work and involvement with the hearings.

The Rossiters and their solicitor, Cian O’Carroll, have also complained that the inquiry’s terms of reference are too narrow and will be unable to answer the question of why Brian died.

BreakingNews.ie

19/10/2005 - 12:59:26

Hardline republican terror groups tried to coax weapons from Provisional IRA members after the organisation announced an end to its armed campaign, it was claimed today.

The Independent Monitoring Commission revealed in its latest report on paramilitary activity: “Following the PIRA statement of July 28, and before decommissioning was announced on September 26, dissident republicans approached members of PIRA who they believed might be disgruntled as a result of that statement, hoping to obtain weapons from them, but there has been no evidence of any success.”

The commission also said the Continuity IRA and Real IRA had sought to recruit new members since the Provisionals’ statement.

However, the Real IRA, which carried out the 1998 Omagh bomb attack, had very limited success.

The report observed: “CIRA has remained intermittently active during the period under review.

“Elements of the organisation are recruiting and training new members; the recruitment is possibly an attempt to take advantage of the opportunities they perceived to be presented to them by the PIRA statement.

“Some existing CIRA members have received training. The organisation continues efforts to improve its capacities to use explosives and weapons, and to procure new weapons.”

The IMC said the Continuity IRA remained a dangerous organisation capable of mounting attacks and was involved in robberies.

In July it was responsible for hoaxes and bomb attacks and took part in disturbances during Orange Order celebrations on July 12, throwing blast and petrol bombs at the security forces.

While it remained dangerous, the commission concluded the Continuity IRA had not demonstrated recently it was capable of mounting a sustained campaign of violence.

The IMC said the Real IRA was seeking to improve its bomb making capability and remained violent, dangerous and determined.

It blamed the Real IRA for the savage beating last month of Northern Ireland Policing Board vice chairman Denis Bradley in a bar in Derry as he watched a football match on television with his son.

“We greatly deplore the violent RIRA attack in a public place on the deputy chair of the Policing Board,” the report said, accusing the organisation of other beatings.

The commission also stated: “RIRA, within which there are two factions, has sought to co-ordinate and reinforce itself since our fifth report in the Spring.

“Elements in RIRA are continuing to recruit and train new members, and existing members have received training.

“We believe that RIRA is trying to take advantage of the opportunities it thinks the PIRA statement offers to recruit, but with very limited success to date.”

The report said the organisation remained involved in organised crime, including smuggling fuel and tobacco.

The commission said the Real IRA also continued to target on and off-duty police officers and had used intimidation and violence against Protestant families as well as forcing one of its former members from his home.

The Irish National Liberation Army, the report said, was also recruiting and training members and was involved in attacks on the security forces during nationalist rioting over the July 12 Orange parades.

The organisation carried out so-called punishment attacks and considered at one stage attacking off-duty members of the security forces.

The IMC said: “Members of the INLA remain active in organised crime – for example, robberies, drugs and smuggling.

“The police seized substantial funds which we believe were raised by INLA from cigarette smuggling.

“INLA has also made efforts to ensure that it maintains its position in certain local communities.

“Overall, therefore, there has been some increase in INLA’s use of violence but the level of activity is not high. We believe that the threat of the organisation’s more active involvement remains.”

The report said there had also been a number of incidents between March 1 and August 31 which could not be attributed to specific groups but to dissident republicans generally.

These included plans in March to launch attacks in Britain, the planting of a device in a vehicle in Lisburn in April and the placing of a pipe bomb along the route of the Belfast Marathon in May which PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde was running in.

BreakingNews.ie

19/10/2005 - 13:06:26

Sinn Féin will have almost £120,000 (€176,417) in Stormont Assembly allowances restored by the British government following the latest report on paramilitary activity, it was confirmed today.

Following the release of a new report by the Independent Monitoring Commission, Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said the allowances would be restored to the party on November 1.

And he also said a recommendation would be made to MPs to restore the party’s Westminster allowances, which were also withdrawn following previous IMC reports which showed IRA members carried out the murder of Belfast father of two Robert McCartney and a number of robberies including last December’s Northern Bank heist.

In today’s report, the IMC said initial signs were encouraging that the IRA was honouring its July 28 pledge to end its armed campaign.

BreakingNews.ie

19/10/2005 - 13:11:47

William Stobie

**Please see also The Dirty War and Taking his secrets to the grave

Former paramilitary boss Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair was heavily investigated over the assassination of loyalist informer William Stobie, detectives said today.

Adair, the ex Ulster Defence Association commander, who was in jail when the organisation’s one time quartermaster was gunned down outside his North Belfast home, refused to co-operate with police, an inquest was told.

The inquest into Stobie’s death also heard from a secret witness who saw the suspected murder team patrol outside their victim’s home in a fake taxi for five days before he was killed.

Stobie, 51, was ambushed in December 2001 as he prepared to drive his partner to work.

The self-confessed police special branch informer was shot from behind four times in the head and back just weeks after being acquitted of plotting to murder Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

Former UDA associates, using the Red Hand Defenders’ pseudonym, claimed they murdered him for so-called crimes against the loyalist community because he had supported demands for an inquiry into the 1989 Finucane killing, which has been shrouded in allegations of major security force collusion.

At his inquest John Leckey, the coroner for Greater Belfast, read extracts from a biography of Adair, now exiled in Lancashire after being ousted by the organisation he once ruled.

Referring to a section that claimed the former terrorist chief gave his personal blessing to Stobie’s assassination, Mr Leckey asked Detective Chief Inspector Robert Lee if Adair was ever interviewed about the murder.

The officer said: “He wasn’t questioned as a suspect.

“We did try to speak to him in prison, but I could not get sufficient intelligence to support the arrest of Johnny Adair.”

Agreeing with the coroner’s assessment that the loyalist refused to co-operate, the detective added: “We did commit considerable resources and time into a line looking at Johnny Adair.

“I can’t be more specific than that, but that was a lengthy part of my inquiry.

“There was no intelligence to connect him to the murder of William Stobie.”

Although a number of suspects were questioned about the killing, no one has been charged.

The inquest was also told that the gun used, a .38 special magnum revolver, had also been used in other shootings and killings attributed to the UDA, according to police.

Ten days before he died, Stobie was warned by officers that he should move urgently from his home on the Forthriver Estate because of threats from loyalists.

But he refused to flee, trusting in assurances from a senior loyalist that he was safe.

Even though his partner, Lorraine Graham, alleged police did not do enough to protect him, an investigation by the Northern Ireland Police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan exonerated the force of any negligence.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE IRELAND

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

**The media would like you to think Community Restorative Justice is nothing more than thuggery, which is a grave injustice. I would like you to take a look at this website in order to gain an understanding of what the nationalist areas have done to keep order and balance in their own neighbourhoods when it was all too evident that the PSNI were and ARE unable to provide it. This is just one of many explanatory sections, and you are invited to contact the programme for further information.

Standards of Community Practice - Standards Pertaining to the Programme

1. Quality. The very structure of restorative justice programme embodies constructive processes, including open and frank discussion and dialogue, active involvement and participation of affected parties and opportunities for expressions of remorse forgiveness and change. Justice practitioners carefully prepare for each case and communicate effectively with all parties, working in teams to balance talent and representation in order to facilitate clear and realistic agreements and resolution.

Encounters between restorative justice practitioner and their communities are characterised by consistency, reliability, and genuineness.

2. Impartiality. Individuals affiliated with community restorative justice programmes strive for neutrality in their work, showing equal respect for all parties, not taking sides and being non-judgemental in the performance of their duties. While themselves members of the local community, Justice practitioners seek to maintain clear boundaries in their personal and professional relationship.

3. Non-violence. Community restorative justice provides alternatives to violence and punishment schemes, and itself excludes the use of violence, threats, coercion, verbal and physical force, and imposition of power or influence by restorative justice practitioners.

4. Fairness. Equal opportunity is afforded to all parties in a dispute. Each is provided with full information about the Proceedings, and given both adequate time to present their position and the necessary support to do so. Negotiations are balanced between the parties to achieve equitable outcome. Justice practitioners fully disclose and declare their personal interests in a particular dispute, if any. Equity in all aspects of programme design and practice, including the recruitment and assignment of justice workers, is intended to mitigate against favouritism and partiality.

5. Confidentiality. A respect for the privacy is paramount. Information about proceedings, agreement and resolution, as well as access to identifying information in records the files is severely restricted. Programmes acknowledge and embrace their statutory responsibility to report child abuse.

6. Justice. Community restorative justice initiatives conform to the standards and ideals of justice, including the proportionality of local responses to crime and antisocial behaviour to the harms caused, and due process guarantees for offenders.

7. Qualifications. Justice practitioners are carefully screened for their talents and background to ensure competence impartiality, and representativeness of the entire community. Empathy for individuals involved in conflict, the capacity to be non-judgemental, and a willingness to comply with standards of practice are minimal expectations for practitioners. Standard vetting practices for paid positions in programmes is routine. Practitioners undergo rigorous training appropriate for the specific tasks they will undertake, and may only participate in the programme when they achieve and maintain proficiency. On-going assessment, in service education, and even formal courses of study seek to enhance the performance of practitioners and the effectiveness of programmes.

8. Flexibility of approach. Given the diversity of communities, the needs of their residents, the availability of local resources, and the circumstances of individual disputes, restorative justice practies must be carefully tailored creative and appropriate interventions. They must balance resilience in the face of political winds with responsiveness to the changing needs of the local community.

9. Monitoring. Successful intervention in instances of crime and antisocial behaviour, and long term resolution of disputes are promoted though deliberate strategies of aftercare. Follow-up case review and revisitation may result in adjustment and correction of agreements that benefit all parties and enhance programme outcomes.

Belfast Telegraph

Concern grows over lack of suspensions

By David Gordon
19 October 2005

Police chiefs were today sinking into a deepening controversy over their response to alleged contract corruption within the PSNI.

The police service has been urged to follow the example of other public sector bodies and suspend any staff members under investigation in the affair.

The Telegraph has also learned that the UK’s foremost public spending watchdog has been officially briefed on the saga.

Fraud Squad detectives are now probing the cancellation of a 2001 police contract for the supply of armour plating for vehicles.

The PSNI has stayed silent on the issue of suspensions, but DUP Policing Board member Sammy Wilson today said: “I believe suspension would be normal practice in other public sector organisations in such circumstances.

“The fact that this doesn’t appear to have happened reinforces my concerns about the PSNI handling this investigation in-house.”

The Fraud Squad probe was ordered after a High Court judge voiced suspicions that “person or persons” within the police service may have deliberately undermined a Belfast company which had been providing the armour plating.

The firm, Northern Ireland Sheet Metal Works, received £400,000 in damages from the PSNI last week for being stripped of the 2001 contract.

It was estimated by the judge that around £1m of taxpayers’ money has been lost in the affair. The London-based National Audit Office (NAO) has been informed of developments by colleagues in the Northern Ireland Audit Office.

Meanwhile, information previously supplied to the NAO by PSNI appears to conflict with the conclusions of the judge on the quality of the steel provided by Northern Ireland Sheet Metal Works.

The National Audit Office received a complaint from the company about the contract cancellation.

It subsequently wrote to the firm in 2002 stating: “We understand that the steel supplied by your firm did not meet the requirements specified by the (PSNI) Procurement Unit.”

Last week, the judge stated that the PSNI’s objections to the steel in 2001 had been disproved by tests.

The Police Service declined to answer Belfast Telegraph questions on this issue.

The company is now making fresh representations to the National Audit Office.

It is also taking legal advice in relation to unsuccessful tenders which it submitted for two other PSNI contracts.

The Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee called in 2002 for immediate suspensions in alleged corruption cases in the public sector.

Belfast Telegraph

By Brian Walker
19 October 2005

Secretary of State Peter Hain has sought to quell SDLP fears that former members of IRA punishment squads could be given restorative justice roles.

After a meeting between Tony Blair and an SDLP team led by Mark Durkan, Mr Hain vowed that restorative justice schemes would have to be run through the police and not “outside the rule of law”.

The idea that paramilitaries could be allowed to use the system to police the community was “just not on, ” he said.

But SDLP leader Mark Durkan said his five-strong delegation had not been sufficiently reassured by what they were told.

“But we hope to be reassured by what emerges subsequently, he added.

“We can’t have local warlords being turned into local law lords.”

Both were commenting after a 45-minute meeting between the Prime Minister and an SDLP delegation of Mr Durkan, fellow MPs Alasdair McDonnell and Eddie McGrady and party chairwoman Patricia Lewsley.

Mr Hain said afterwards: “There is no way that this will be done outside the rule of law. The guidelines will be very, very tight and the idea that paramilitaries can give up their arms but still police the community through community restorative justice is just not on, full stop, end of story.”

Belfast Telegraph

By Chris Thornton
19 October 2005

The IRA was being given its first all-clear from sinister activity today, but the UVF received more stinging criticism in the Independent Monitoring Commission’s seventh report.

The report, due to be released before lunchtime, confirms early suggestions that throughout August the IRA kept to its pledge to end all activity.

But it describes the UVF as a dangerous organisation that has been involved in murder and other violence during the summer.

The report highlights UVF attacks during its feud with the LVF - a period in which the Government ignored an IMC recommendation to stop Assembly funding for the UVF associates in the PUP.

Funding for Sinn Fein was stopped at the same time because of IRA activity like the Northern Bank robbery.

Secretary of State, Peter Hain, and Irish Foreign Minister, Dermot Ahern, were due to meet in Dublin today to consider the report, which was handed to both governments on Friday.

The IMC report looks at paramilitary activity from March 1 to August 31.

According to well-placed sources, the report says that there was no IRA activity after the group’s July 28 announcement that its armed campaign had ended.

That includes an end to punishment beatings and shootings, intelligence gathering and targeting of the security forces.

Earlier this month, Mr Hain reported that intelligence agencies were telling him that the IRA was sticking to its pledge.

The report will help fuel Ministers’ hopes of bringing the DUP and Sinn Fein together in a Stormont government next year.

But the next report from the IMC - due in January - is considered more significant, since it will cover a greater period in which the IRA is expected to show no signs of activity.

The current report does not cover September, when the IRA carried out its major act of decommissioning.

The UVF feud with the LVF has entered a lull or has ended over the past few weeks, but the report released today concentrates on the violence over the summer.

Sinn Fein said the Government’s decision to continue payments to the PUP demonstrated that the Government views the body as a tool to be used primarily against republicans.