SAOIRSE32

Sunday Herald

24 March 2002

The break-in at Castlereagh barracks was carried out by British Army intelligence to preserve the identity of an army agent deep inside the IRA, writes Home Affairs Editor Neil Mackay

IT was around noon last Saturday when I received a phone call from a former British military intelligence officer which was to lead a day later to one of the most daring — and illegal — adventures by undercover army officers in the history of the Irish Troubles.

That phone call was part of a chain of events which would lead to the St Patrick’s Day break-in by British Army spies into the Special Branch offices of the RUC in Castlereagh in Belfast — supposedly the most secure security force barracks in western Europe. Their aim was simple: to steal secret documents relating to a spy they had been running within the ranks of the IRA. They pulled it off.

The military intelligence officer asked if I could help him . He was worried that the Irish Sunday Tribune newspaper — with which the Sunday Herald has a close working relationship — was about to ‘out’ a friend called Kevin Fulton (not his real name). Fulton is a British Army soldier sent deep under cover within the ranks of the IRA — a prize agent for Britain. The threat to expose him would have signed his death warrant. The Tribune had no intention of ‘outing’ Fulton.

It is unclear how the rumour started, but Fulton is no longer a friend of the British state, so the claims could have been a nasty piece of black propaganda put about to frighten him. He has recently turned whistleblower and has been co-operating with investigations into some of the biggest intelligence scandals in the history of Northern Ireland’s ‘dirty war’. This included devastating claims that the RUC effectively allowed the Omagh bomb to go off in 1999, killing 29 people, despite receiving warnings from him that the atrocity was planned. The RUC’s motive was allegedly to preserve the cover of a highly placed double-agent within the Real IRA.

Late last Saturday I spoke to Fulton and reassured him that the Tribune had no plans to ‘out’ him. But a few hours later other rumours began to circulate that Fulton was planning to ‘out’ the British Army’s star agent within the IRA in revenge for his cover being put in jeopardy. It was this that led directly to the raid on Castlereagh a night later. The rumours filtered all the way up to the very highest echelons within the Ministry of Defence even though Fulton had no intention of ‘outing’ the agent.

The agent who Fulton was thought to be about to ‘out’ is a senior IRA man code-named Stakeknife. Unlike Fulton, he is not ‘one of the good guys’. He isn’t a British agent inserted into the IRA, he is a IRA gunman who turned double-agent for an estimated £75,000 a year from the army through a bank account in Gibraltar. And he’s been in the pay of the British for around 30 years.

Stakeknife’s role has been intensely scrutinised over the past 18 months. The Scotland Yard inquiry team investigating alleged collusion between British security forces, police and terrorists, led by Met Commissioner Sir John Stevens, has been unofficially sniffing around this shadowy character, and has spoken to former British Army personnel who know of his activities.

The Stevens team are about to complete their mammoth investigation, due out around the end of April, and there has already been jittery speculation that some element of the Stevens report might refer to Stakeknife. No one in British intelligence wants that kind of information to come out. So the thought that the whole house of cards could have come tumbling down even before the Stevens Inquiry wrapped up — if Fulton opened his mouth — appears to have been too much to take. Hence the break-in at Castlereagh barracks at 10.11pm last Sunday to remove all traces of Stakeknife from Special Branch files.

At the barrack’s checkpoint, the Covert Methods of Entry (CME) team flashed army passes and went to room 220 on the building’s first floor which houses branch files. CME teams are trained in lock- picking, safe-cracking, burglary, by-passing alarm systems and unarmed combat.

One of the three-man team punched the branch officer guarding the room in the mouth, put a hood over him and played music to drown out the noise of their activities . The officer was threatened that they’d ’stick him with a syringe’ if he caused any trouble. Only one of the team spoke — he had an English accent. They took a notebook, some files and a few other documents and were out of the building within 16 minutes. Military intelligence sources say the raid and the documents could only have related to Stakeknife.

The CME teams are trained by the Intelligence Corps, based at Ashford in Kent. The Intelligence Corps also runs the ultra-secret counter-intelligence outfit the FRU, the Force Research Unit. It is the FRU — the intelligence agency which runs Stakeknife as an agent — which is at the centre of the Stevens Inquiry over claims that it used paramilitary groups as proxy assassination teams. The FRU was headed by Brigadier Gordon Kerr, from Aberdeen. He is now the British embassy’s military attachŽ in Beijing.

His unit is supposed to have colluded with the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association in the murder of at least 14 Catholic civilians in Northern Ireland by handing intelligence on republican targets to Brian Nelson, the loyalist group’s chief intelligence officer. It subsequently transpired that Nelson, a former soldier in the Black Watch , had infiltrated the UDA for intelligence chiefs in order to facilitate this ’state-sanctioned murder campaign’.

The principal killing that Stevens is investigating is the gunning down in 1989 of solicitor Pat Finucane by loyalists . Former FRU members have co-operated with the Stevens Inquiry in the past about the role the unit played in the murder.

According to FRU sources, Brian Nelson would ‘look like a pussycat’ compared to the activities of Stakeknife. That’s why military intelligence are so desperate to protect him. ‘It would be tantamount to being exposed as running a Latin American-style murder squad if the truth came out,’ one said. Unlike Nelson, Stakeknife sometimes did the killings himself. He is also supposed to have arranged for republican targets to be in the wrong place at the wrong time so loyalist hit teams could ‘take them out’. An intelligence source added: ‘This guy was licensed to kill and he killed very many people — or arranged their deaths.’

The CME team knew exactly what to do to extract all details on Stakeknife from Castlereagh. Until the middle of last week the Special Branch files had been contained in an annexe in the grounds of the police complex. The documents were moved by branch officers to room 220 when workmen arrived last week to start refurbishing the annexe.

The fact that the three-man team knew to go to room 220 immediately implies that there may be some inside knowledge being fed to them from the branch. The men made no attempt to disguise their identities and didn’t care that they had to go past CCTV cameras before entering room 220. Either they knew they’d be out of Northern Ireland within a few hours of the job being done or they were aware that none of the CCTV cameras records images on tape — again this implies inside knowledge. The military passes carried by the men would also have given them clearance to get into the Special Branch section of Castlereagh — again implying inside help from the police.

One former FRU source said: ‘There was no way it was paramilitaries — they couldn’t pull it off. The branch couldn’t do it as they’d get spotted by their own pals in the RUC and MI5 just don’t do rough stuff like this. There’s no one except an intelligence corps CME team who could do this and there is no other motive for them doing it than protecting Stakeknife.’

Although RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan says no informers’ names were among the documents, intelligence sources claim it’s what Flanagan doesn’t say that is more telling. ‘He doesn’t say there was nothing to do with the activities of informers — and if we are talking about Stakeknife that’s crucial,’ said one.

An FRU source who used to handle republican informers described Stake knife as a ‘vile character’, adding: ‘If what he was doing came out it would cause massive problems. He’d put the activities of people like Brian Nelson in the shade. He was being directed by the state. He caused the deaths of active republicans and was also allowed to carry on acting as a conventional terrorist — doing shootings — with the complicity of his handlers in order to keep his cover.’

Crucially, the FRU’s ‘east detachment’ is based in the so-called ‘Green Hut’ within the grounds of Castlereagh — a good source of support and information for the CME team which would have been dropped into Ulster from England shortly before the raid to ‘recce’ the barracks. Once they’d completed the operation they’d have made their way to a ‘clean house’ probably on the outskirts of Belfast and headed back to Ashford in Kent, most likely on board a military helicopter from RAF Aldergrove.

This isn’t the first time that an army intelligence CME team has tampered with police operations. At the very start of Sir John Stevens’ investigations in Ulster — on January 10, 1990 — a CME team broke into his Carrickfergus offices and torched the premises. The fire was started at 10.30pm under a table next to a cabinet containing exhibits and statements prepared for the forthcoming arrest of Brian Nelson. The fire alarms had been disabled and telephone lines were dead. A few hours earlier Nelson had fled Northern Ireland on a tip-off from the FRU. FRU whistleblower Martin Ingram (a cover name) says he saw CME specialists celebrating their arson success later in an army bar.

There has even been speculation that some rogue elements within the British Army tried to sabotage Stevens’ light aircraft last year. It crash-landed after the undercarriage and air instruments failed in mid-flight — a situation the manufacturers said was unheard of. An investigation into the incident was hampered when a fire destroyed evidence.

Two separate investigations into the Castlereagh break-in are now under way — one by the police and one by Sir John Chilcot, a former Whitehall mandarin and an expert on Northern Ireland, who will be assisted by Sir Colin Smith, a former Thames Valley chief constable. Their inquiry will endeavour to find out if rogue security forces were involved. Nuala O’Loan, the Northern Irish police ombudsman, will also launch an investigation if it becomes clear any police officers were involved in the case.

Last night, intelligence sources and former British agents were sure nobody would ever be called to account for ‘Branchgate’ as the break-in has been dubbed. One could barely conceal his contempt as he described his view of the vow by John Reid, the Ulster secretary, to not rest until he got to the bottom of the ‘national security’ breach.

‘How can this be a breach of national security,’ he said, ‘when it’s obvious that the men who did it are at the very heart of British national security? It leaves you with the feeling that we’re living in the biggest sham of a democracy in the world.’

Sunday Herald

04 March 2001

Brian Nelson

“IT IS as simple as this,” the former intelligence officer says. “The British Army took an honest soldier, paid him to become a terrorist and then fed him the information he needed to set up Catholics for assassination. We turned an ordinary man into a monster.”

The honest soldier is Brian Nelson - perhaps the army’s most infamous agent ever to operate in Ulster. His journey from ordinary man to monster begins at the fag-end of a five-year stint in the Black Watch regiment. It was then that the call came through from the shadowy Force Research Unit, the army’s ultra-secret intelligence outfit in Northern Ireland.

They wanted to see Nelson. They had a proposition for him. It was 1977 and FRU officers asked him one question: would he be prepared to give up his career in the prestigious Scots regiment and return to his home on the Shankill Road in Belfast?

There was only one catch - he had to go back as a terrorist. The FRU wanted Nelson to accept a discharge from the army and join the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association. They had big plans for him.

Nelson was handled by Colonel Gordon Kerr, an Aberdeen man and former Gordon Highlander who came to command the FRU. Over the years, the FRU passed Nelson the names, addresses and photographs of nationalists and Catholics. Nelson took this information and passed it to loyalist murder gangs, who used it to carry out assassinations on at least 14 people.

Until now it was thought that Nelson was recruited after he left the army. But the Sunday Herald has discovered that he was recruited and encouraged into his criminal and terrorist career, while still a soldier, by senior officers in the army.

As FRU sources told the Sunday Herald: “If Nelson had been recruited when he was in the UDA, all that would have happened is that the army turned a terrorist, who once happened to be a soldier, into a double agent. That happens all the time.

“However, the truth is much worse. We took an ordinary soldier and turned him into a criminal. We took a man, told him to become a terrorist and then supplied him with the information he needed to be a good terrorist - namely intelligence used to take out Catholics.

“This is probably the worst case of the use of an agent provocateur ever undertaken by the army - and there were actually anywhere between 16 and 20 agents similar to Nelson operating in Ulster. That means we put at least 16 decent soldiers into Northern Ireland and told them to commit terrorist crimes.”

Over the past five months the Sunday Herald has investigated the actions of the FRU in Northern Ireland under the command of Colonel Kerr, who is now both a brigadier in the Intelligence Corps and the British military attachŽ in Beijing.

Our investigations, which have earned us two threats of being gagged by the Ministry of Defence on the grounds of national security, show how Nelson was passed information by a female FRU officer about the nationalist solicitor Pat Finucane, who was shot dead in front of his wife and children by a loyalist murder gang in 1991.

The most disturbing evidence surrounds the use of British soldiers as agents provocateurs. Between eight and 10 soldiers with Irish Catholic backgrounds were discharged from the army and told to join the IRA at the request of the FRU. The same number were recruited into loyalist para military organisations.

A number of these agents carried out terrorist actions in order to preserve their own cover, in which they both injured and killed civilians, RUC officers and army personnel with the fore-knowledge of their FRU handlers.

“It is hard to get your head around”, said one FRU source. “To ordinary punters it is inconceivable, because it shows that the British were actually fighting the British. We were putting our agents into terrorist organisations in an attempt to beat terrorists, but then allowing them, and encouraging them, to carry out the crimes we wanted to stop in the first place. We were allowing them to kill - even allowing them to kill our own - and helping them work as terrorists. It’s through-the-looking-glass stuff. It seems the army are the terrorists and the terrorists are the army. It is a policy without any morality.”

The Sunday Herald has also spoken to British soldiers who were discharged from the army and then joined the ranks of the republican movement. One such man was Willie Carlin, who rose high in Sinn Fein. Another, whom we can name only as Kevin, was a leading Provisional.

Both, like Nelson, were passed information by the British so they could rise through the ranks. The details on prominent Catholics and nationalists that were passed to Nelson allowed him to become the UDA’s chief intelligence officer, and Carlin was manoeuvred, with the help of information passed to him by military intelligence, into the position of Martin McGuinness’s right- hand man.

As one FRU source put it: “It’s about total penetration of your target. To be able to beat the enemy, you actually need to be the enemy.”

The FRU is currently under investigation by Sir John Stevens, the Scotland Yard commissioner, over collusion with loyalist terrorists. Kerr and the female agent- handler are to be questioned by the Stevens team.

In 1991, Nelson was arrested for a catalogue of crimes and eventually served eight years of a 10-year prison sentence for terrorist offences, including five charges of conspiracy to murder.

During Nelson’s trial, Kerr - who gave evidence under the name Colonel J - praised Nelson for his bravery. Nelson revealed nothing about his collusion with the army during the trial and was given more than £200,000 by the army to re-start his life on release. He is now thought to be in hiding in New Zealand.

Sunday Herald

**Today as I was posting, I ran across a lot of old articles that many of you have already read, but they are of such historical and political value that I wanted to post them here for people who haven’t seen them and to archive for free use. I will be posting many of these and will mark the headlines ‘History’. Those of you who are familiar with them can skip over, but I think many people will enjoy seeing them again. I have mentioned it before, but the easiest way to look up a subject on the site is to use the Google site search. If you will go to the Livejournal location of this blog, you can also use the archive link to easily view the post titles for each day of every month.

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The Scot behind Ulster’s dirty war

19 November 2000

Brigadier Gordon Kerr

The Sunday Herald today names for the first time the Scottish military intelligence officer who controlled an ultra-secret covert army unit in Northern Ireland that colluded with loyalist terror gangs to murder at least 14 Catholics.

Brigadier Gordon Kerr ran the counter-intelligence Force Research Unit (FRU) in Northern Ireland between 1987 and 1991. He is to be questioned by Sir John Stevens, the Scotland Yard commissioner, over allegations that his unit aided and abetted loyalist killers as part of a state-sanctioned murder campaign.

Thumbnail of FRU with faces blurred. Click to view this, BUT for the whole photo, see below

Photographs and intelligence reports on republican targets were deliberately passed by the FRU to members of the outlawed Ulster Defence Association, which then passed the information to its gunmen to carry out sectarian and political executions. One of the FRU’s key agents was Brian Nelson, the UDA’s chief intelligence officer.

Click to view clear and very large FRU portrait (you must click on it again when Imageshack opens it because it is so big), an even larger version of which is stored here: Cryptome

Two of Nelson’s FRU handlers were Scottish soldiers, and one of his RUC handlers was also Scottish. Before he was recruited as an army agent, Nelson had been a private in the Black Watch regiment. He was later jailed but now lives in hiding in Germany.

Kerr, who comes from the Aberdeen area, served with the Gordon Highlanders before moving to Northern Ireland.

One FRU source, who spoke to the Sunday Herald under guarantee of anonymity, said: “We were able to take out leading Provos with the help of the UDA. It was a great military move.”

Kerr, who is currently the military attaché to the British embassy in Beijing, will be interrogated by members of the Stevens’ inquiry team within the next three months, as will at least two other high-ranking FRU members. The Sunday Herald understands that Stevens plans to arrest a number of FRU officers shortly.

The principal killing that Stevens is investigating is the 1989 murder of the solicitor Pat Finucane, whose clients included many leading nationalists. He was gunned down by loyalists in front of his wife and children at his Belfast home.

A former FRU member who served under Kerr, Philip Campbell Smith, was arrested by detectives from the Stevens team early last week for threatening witnesses. Smith, a 41-year-old security consultant from Northamptonshire allegedly intimidated a former military intelligence agent, who uses the cover name Martin Ingram.

Ingram has voluntarily co-operated with the Stevens inquiry by giving a detailed statement about the covert activities of the FRU in Ulster. Smith allegedly threatened Ingram by sending e-mails revealing his address. This could have led to republicans trying to kill Ingram.

Smith is the author of a Ministry of Defence-approved book, The Fishers of Men. It was written under the pseudonym Rob Lewis and details the FRU role in Northern Ireland. The Sunday Herald’s FRU source described Smith’s book as being “riddled with disinformation and lies”.

The Ministry of Defence said it had “full confidence in the suitability and capability” of Kerr to continue working as the British military attaché in Beijing. The MoD said it had no intention of launching an inquiry into Kerr and his role as FRU commander following information that the Stevens inquiry wanted to interrogate him.

At the time of the Finucane murder, the Tory government was under pressure from its back benches to take a strong hand with the IRA. It was often said that the army should “eliminate” known paramilitaries, given the extent of high-level intelligence on IRA volunteers.

The role of Kerr and the FRU in the dirty war is not a story that the British government nor establishment want to be revealed. The government has already gagged the Sunday People newspaper for trying to publish a story similar to today’s investigation in the Sunday Herald. Probing the activities of the FRU has also led to the Sunday Times and Ireland’s Sunday Tribune being hounded under the Official Secrets Act.

Daily Ireland

Letters to the editor

An Fhirinne - the campaign to uncover the truth about collusion between unionist death squads and the British government - warmly welcomes the truly historic decision by one of the main armed groups to the political conflict in Ireland, the IRA, to put all its weapons beyond use.
Secondly, this decision focuses attention on the other armed groups that have not yet disarmed, the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance.
These groups were reorganised and re-armed by the British government and its agents in the RUC Special Branch and British military intelligence in the late 1980’s with weapons from South Africa.
Specifically, British agent Brian Nelson, was sent by the Force Research Unit (FRU) in late 1987 to South Africa to bring weapons back to the North of Ireland.

Brian Nelson

These included: 200 AK47 assault rifles; 90 Browning semi-automatic pistols; 12 RPG7 Rocket launchers; 500 fragmentation grenades and 30,000 rounds of ammunition.
In December 1987, these weapons were distributed among the UVF, UDA and Ulster Resistance.
Within six years of their arrival 229 nationalists, republicans and others were murdered by these death squads.
In many cases the death squads had a clear run to and from their targets by their RUC/FRU handlers.
The question now is: Where are those weapons now?
The UDA and UVF lost many of their weapons yet Ulster Resistance, set up and given political cover by Ian Paisley, has managed to maintain most if not all of its weapons.
Given that British military intelligence and PSNI Special Branch have been in control of these weapons through their agents in the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance can we not now expect these weapons to be also “put beyond use”?
Those weapons murdered our relatives, friends and loved ones. Natural justice now cries out for them to join the weapons of the IRA and be put permanently beyond use before they are used to kill again.
Or are these weapons still being used in the ongoing UVF/LVF feud or in the recent murder of former UDA leader Jim Gray?
We the families of those murdered as a result of the policy of collusion, await with interest the outcome of the British government’s call for the unionist death squads to join the decommissioning process and put their weapons beyond use.

Robert McClenaghan
An Fhirinne

Sinn Féin

Published: 26 October, 2005

Sinn Féin Assembly member Alex Maskey today joined members of the Relatives for Justice group and members of the campaign group An Fhirnne to meet with the South African Minister for Intelligence Ronnie Kassrils to discuss the issue of British State violence.

Mr Maskey said:

“This mornings meeting between those groups representing families who have suffered greatly through collusion, shoot to kill and other British State policies which resulted in the deaths of their loved ones provided an opportunity both to listen to Mr Kassrils and also deal with issues surrounding the importation into the north of large quantities of weapons from the old South African apartheid regime through the DUP inspired Ulster Resistance.

“People need to remember that the killing campaign controlled and directed by British State agencies through the loyalist death squads in the late 1980s and early 1990s was in the main carried out with these weapons. Given this and the fact that the DUP were central to the formation of Ulster Resistance in the first place Ian Paisley has a particular responsibility to address the issue of the arms imported by this group from South Africa.

“The DUP to this point have singularly failed to address the legacy of their involvement in forming Ulster Resistance and have failed to acknowledge the role which that organisation played in rearming loyalist death squads to attack and kill innocent nationalists, republicans and catholics.

“Republicans have taken brave and courageous steps to try and advance the peace process in recent times. The IRA have dealt with the issue of arms. We now need to hear from the DUP how they are going to tackle the legacy of Ulster Resistance and the stockpiles of weapons we can only presume are still under their control. In the case of Ulster Resistance the DUP cannot claim with any credibility not to have influence over an organisation which they actually helped to establish in the first instance.” ENDS

Daily Ireland

Connla Young

An Eritrean woman who tried to take her own life while being deported last week will be returned to the North tomorrow.
The woman and her two children were detained in an early-morning raid on their Belfast home on Tuesday last week. The children and their mother were taken separately to Larne harbour for transport to Scotland.
Immigration chiefs finally relented last week and returned both children to the care of their stepfather in Belfast. It is understood the children’s mother will be returned to the North tomorrow in compliance with a High Court instruction issued last Wednesday.
Human rights campaigners had feared that the woman would be detained at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in Belfast on her return to the North.
However, a Scottish court yesterday granted her bail.
Daily Ireland understands that sureties of £500 and £1,000 (€740 and €1,470) were paid by a neighbour and the woman’s parish priest. She will be required to attend a PSNI station twice a week.
During the trip to Larne, the distressed mother tried to take her own life in the back of a Home Office immigration service vehicle.
Despite the woman’s obvious distress, she was neither taken to hospital nor given a psychiatric assessment. On arriving in Scotland, the woman was locked up at Dungavel Immigration Removal Centre. Her children were put into the care of Scottish social services. Immigration officials had planned to fly the family to Malta last Thursday but this plan was scrapped after details of their ordeal were made public.
Both the Human Rights Commission and Nigel Williams, the North’s children’s commissioner, have voiced deep concern about the treatment meted out to the family by immigration officers.
The family’s legal representative, Buster Cox, said he was delighted that his client was returning to her family.
“I am relieved that she is going to be reunited with her family.
“When I last spoke to her, she was still finding the whole experience difficult but she will be glad to be back and reunited with her family. Equally, her family will be glad to have her back,” he said.

Daily Ireland

Viewpoint: Danny Morrison

On an autumn afternoon staring into the waters of the Vltava from the 700-year-old Charles Bridge and imagining the history of Prague, its Old Town, the Lesser Town, the Old Jewish Ghetto, the confluence of its religions, its politics and literature.
“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”
So wrote Franz Kafka, a Czech Jew, who died in 1924, aged just 41, sounding life-affirmative in contrast to the usual depression and existentialist alienation he displayed in life and in his posthumously published novels.
Had he lived he would probably have been murdered by the Nazis who annexed Czechoslovakia in 1939, and ultimately put 80,000 Jews from Bohemia and Moravia to death. You can see their names inscribed on the interior of Prague’s Pinkas Synagogue, alongside drawings made by the children prisoners in Terezin concentration camp who thought they were moving to a new town.

Kafka’s best book is The Trial, where a man called Joseph K, a bank official, is arrested on suspicion. Suspicion of what? He and we never know. It is an unnerving book. One warder tells him that the authorities “must be quite well informed about the reasons for his arrest,” and he goes along with the assumption. He goes along with the assumption because underneath everything we all feel guilty about something and nothing. The things we are truly guilty of we can do something about: that is accept, reject or make amends. The things we are impalpably guilty of are of a different order. They menace us forever. There is no resolution of this human condition.
And so Joseph K (almost a representative of the Jews, historically subject to especially Christian persecution) accepts the futility of resistance and eventually goes submissively with his killers to a quarry where they stab him to death.
Kafkaesque has entered the lexicon as a state of affairs which are nightmarishly complex, bizarre or of an illogical quality. Enter SS-General Reinhard Heydrich, one of Hitler’s closest and most ruthless loyal lieutenants and principle planner of the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’. He chaired the secret Wannsee conference in 1942 to coordinate the massive efforts required to kill on an industrial scale Europe’s estimated 11,000,000 Jews.
He was chillingly portrayed by Kenneth Branagh in one of the best depictions of evil on film, Conspiracy. At the meeting of 15 high-ranking members of the Nazi government - military representatives, economists, administrators and lawyers - Heydrich systematically recruits and intimidates the very small number of waverers.
“From Lapland to Libya, from Vladivostok to Belfast, no Jews. Not one,” smirks Heydrich.
“Look at the world and tell me the pleasures of sanity,” said the madman, who took cynical delight in forcing the Jews themselves to partially organize, administer, and finance the Final Solution.
Hitler appointed Heydrich Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (Czechoslovakia). Heydrich regularly drove to his headquarters in Prague in an open top Mercedes without an armed escort, confident that he had cowed the people. But in 1942 British-trained Czech partisans attacked him with firearms and a grenade. He survived the assassination bid only to die a few days later of septicaemia from fragments of the car’s leather upholstery which lodged in his spleen. The partisans were later tracked down to a nearby church in Prague and after a gunbattle they committed suicide to avoid arrest. The Nazis retaliated by razing the villages of Lidice and Lezaky and murdering the entire male population of both.
During the last days of the war the Czech uprising ended with the arrival of the victorious Red Army, followed in 1948 by the communist takeover of power.
The dramatist Vaclav Havel, was chairman of the Writers’ Union in 1968 when Russia invaded to crush reformist elements within the Czech communist party led by Alexander Dubcek. Havel was imprisoned several times because his work was considered to be subversive. But after the overthrow of communism (the Velvet Revolution in 1989) he was reluctantly propelled into politics and became President of Czechoslovakia from 1990-1993.
When he was an essayist Vaclav Havel described Czechoslovakia’s lucrative arms-exporting industry as simple ‘blood money’ which should be rejected. But when he became president he realized that ending the arms industry would produce high levels of unemployment, particularly in Slovakia and this would only strengthen the hand of the separatist movement and threaten the unity of the state. So, he quietly agreed to sales of tanks to Syria and Iran.
But Slovakia still broke away. The Czech Republic is now a member of NATO.
Havel features prominently in the Museum of Communism in Prague. The museum is, from beginning-to-end, a dedicated, unrelenting attack on the values and failures of communism. It is situated, probably deliberately, above a McDonald’s takeaway and on the same floor as a casino. At the museum they sell candle busts of Lenin and Stalin.
The various rooms are called, ‘Dream’, ‘Reality’ and ‘Nightmare’, and it makes you consider if all dreams, all attempts at utopia, all altruistic projects, are ultimately doomed to founder because of the corruptive nature of humankind.
I found myself thinking the same when I stood in the voluptuous surroundings of St Vitus Cathedral in the grounds of Prague Castle. This building, begun in the 10th century, has a rich exterior mosaic made up of one million glass and stone chunks. You enter through the Golden Portal. Inside, it is vast and beautiful and magnificently decorated.
The cathedral is filled with marble chapels and naves and large stain glass windows. Huge gold and silver tabernacles hang from the ceilings. The Bohemian crown jewels are stored within the cathedral. One crypt contains a 3,700 pound silver tomb, surrounded by angels and cherubim. There are wooden reliefs. There are busts of royalty and royalty’s contemporary VIPs.
I have been overwhelmed by many cathedrals. The haunting bareness and vastness of Cologne took my breath away. All of them, especially the more ornate, required huge labour, dedication, diligence, creativity, the availability of vast wealth but essentially an authoritarian power for direction. The same applies to the architectural tributes to the Gods of other religions
But at the end of the day, in relation to Christianity at least, there remains the predominant question: what have these temples to do with the Man from Nazareth and his simple message in the New Testament about loving one’s neighbour as oneself and not killing? The Sistine Chapel, I understand, is also beautiful. But even though it (and similar marvels) was designed by ingenious and creative architects, those who sponsored it did it for their own glory rather than for the glory of God. Why would God need proof of God’s glory when – if God exists – the glory of God’s creation (the universe) is everywhere and felt most acutely in the mystery of life?
Once the Christian religion (like many others) flourished and became established it became institutionalised and took on another life over and above the spiritual. It entered into the life of politics: its popes, cardinals and bishops becoming earthly governors. It entered into trade and commerce. It aggrandised wealth. It became oligarchic, expansionist, imperialist, sectarian and intolerant. It became paranoid, ruthless and corrupt. In the old town square of Prague there is a statue to Jan Hus who in the fifteenth century became the pope’s enemy by calling for communicants to be allowed to share the wine in the chalice with the priest.
Hus was also influenced by the writings of John Wyclif, an English theologian critical of the papacy. Wyclif’s books were ordered burned by the authorities and his body was ordered to be dug up and cast out of consecrated grounds. Wyclif and Hus believed that no pope or bishop had the right to take up the sword in the name of the church. The ‘main’ pope (there were two other rivals at this time) ordered that Hus’s church, Bethlehem chapel, be destroyed, that ‘free’ preaching be banned and Hus be arrested and charged with heresy. He was found guilty and burnt at the stake in 1415. His ashes were thrown into the Rhine.
In December 1999 Pope John Paul II apologized for the execution of Jan Hus, in whose theological footsteps Martin Luther was to follow and usher in the Reformation, followed later again by the fairly smooth conversion of Catholic England to Protestantism.
What a Kafkaesque world this surely is.

Danny Morrison is a regular media commentator on Irish politics. He is the author of three novels and three works of non-fiction.

Sinn Féin

Published: 26 October, 2005

Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghin Ó Caoláin has described the Report into child abuse in the Ferns dioceses, by members of the clergy, and the subsequent failure of both the church and the various arms of the state to deal with the issue as “a grotesque catalogue of church and state delinquency that casts a dark shadow over not only the lives of those directly affected by the abuse but also over the entire country.”

Deputy Ó Caoláin went on to say “it is long past the time to enshrine the rights of children as individuals in to the Constitution”. He said:

“The Ferns Report is a grotesque catalogue of church and state delinquency that casts a dark shadow over not only the lives of those directly affected by the abuse but also over the entire country. While those who were directly involved in this systematic abuse of young children over many, many years are ultimately responsible for their own actions and should be punished accordingly there has been serious criminal neglect on behalf of both church and state authorities, which allowed this abuse go unchecked and unpunished, and which must be dealt with urgently and robustly. The cavalier and dismissive approach adopted by the Church and indeed the Gardai at senior management level, including the office of the Commissioner, and the Health Board to the allegations of abuse made by children in Wexford and beyond indicates a mindset corrupted by its own sense of infallibility.

“This shocking report highlights that fact that it is long past time to enshrine the rights of children as individuals in to the Constitution. It is time that we dealt with the issue of child abuse in a coherent, strategic and honest manner, so as to limit if not eliminate the risks posed to vulnerable children in our society.” ENDS

Sinn Fein proposal for new Constitutional article on the rights of children as submitted to All-Party Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution

1. The State guarantees to cherish all the children of the nation equally. All children, in addition to the individual rights guaranteed to all persons in this Constitution, are entitled to the special care and assistance essential to childhood. Each child has the right to reach his or her potential as an individual and as a member of the community.

2. The State shall ensure, as far as is possible, that every child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, shall grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding.

3. The State shall ensure the child such protection and care as is necessary for his or her well-being, taking into account the rights and duties of his or her parents, legal guardians, or other individuals responsible for him or her, and, to this end, shall take all appropriate legislative and administrative measures.

4. Children have the right to be heard, to be consulted in all matters affecting them and to access information about their person.
In all actions concerning children undertaken by or on behalf of the State the best interests of the child shall be the primary consideration.

Irish Examiner

Pope faced claims of obstructing justice

26 October 2005
By Dan Buckley

BARELY a week after Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he faced claims of obstructing justice after it emerged he issued an order ensuring the Church’s own investigations into child sex abuse claims be carried out in secret.

The order was made in a confidential letter which was sent to every Catholic bishop in May 2001.

It asserted the Church’s right to hold inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.

The letter, ‘concerning very grave sins’, was sent from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office that was overseen by Ratzinger.

It spelt out to bishops the Church’s position on a number of matters including sexual abuse by a cleric ‘with a minor below the age of 18 years’.

Ratzinger’s letter stated that the Church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been ‘perpetrated with a minor by a cleric’.

The letter states that the Church’s jurisdiction ‘begins to run from the day when the minor has completed the 18th year of age’ and lasts for 10 years.

It ordered that ‘preliminary investigations’ into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger’s office, which had the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the ‘functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests’.

“Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,” Ratzinger’s letter concluded.

Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating still carries penalties, including excommunication.

The letter is referred to in documents relating to a lawsuit filed earlier this year against a church in Texas on behalf of two alleged abuse victims.

By sending the letter, lawyers acting for the alleged victims claim the Pope, as cardinal, conspired to obstruct justice.

Ratzinger was originally named as a defendant in the case but, when he became Pope Benedict he succeeded, as Vatican head of state, in being granted immunity from being sued in the US.

Belfast Telegraph

Legal summit fails to break inquiry logjam

By Chris Thornton
26 October 2005

Pat Finucane

The law partner of murdered solicitor Pat Finucane has held a meeting with the Lord Chancellor in a bid to break the deadlock over the inquiry into the solicitor’s murder.

But the private meeting so far appears to have failed to close the gap between the Government’s insistence on using a new secrecy law and the Finucane family’s objections.

Solicitor Peter Madden, Mr Finucane’s law partner and the family’s legal representative, told Lord Falconer that an inquiry would be “a farce” without the family’s support.

But he underlined that the family still want an inquiry to go ahead - so long as it is given independent powers over the use of evidence.

At the heart of the deadlock is the new Inquiries Act, which the Government brought in for the Finucane investigation. It allows Ministers to order the inquiry to keep material secret.

An inquiry into the murder of Mr Finucane was officially recommended two years ago by retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice Peter Cory, who said there was collusion between the UDA killers and the security forces.

The Government held back on the inquiry until the Inquiries Act was passed six months ago, but since then officials have been unable to find a judge to chair it.

Some sources have said the search for a judge is running into trouble because the Finucane family, senior legal figures and human rights groups have launched an international campaign to tell judges about the restrictions they would operate under.

The Irish Government has also criticised the basis for the inquiry.

The Government insists that preparations for the inquiry are continuing.

During their meeting earlier this month, Mr Madden told Lord Falconer, that if the inquiry “proceeds in these particular circumstances, we will not be part of it”.

“The family have always made it clear that they want a public inquiry with all the power to get at the truth,” he said.

“If the family are not in there with the ability to examine, scrutinise, and challenge, it would be a farce.”

Mr Madden said the Finucane family has always accepted that some material examined by the inquiry might have to be kept out of the public eye and some hearings might be held behind closed doors.

“That’s the way inquiries are run,” he said. “We’re talking about who should make the decision on what’s made public? We say the tribunal should make that decision.”

Mr Madden said the family will consider proposals from the Government, but are concerned that the inquiry could be dropped if London does not change its position.

Belfast Telegraph

By Nevin Farrell
26 October 2005

The way has been paved for the erection of Irish street signs in the heart of DUP leader Ian Paisley’s North Antrim constituency.

Nationalist controlled Moyle District Council has agreed to adopt a street naming policy which, in addition to street names being in English, will allow the erection of street name plates in a language other than English.

The change was prompted when the council received a request from a resident in the mainly nationalist Altanaman estate in Ballycastle for the nameplate to include Irish.

Under the policy either the council and/or the occupiers of premises in a street may initiate procedures for the erection of a non-English street name. The council will then write to residents whose names are on the Electoral Register and if two-thirds on a street agree then the council will consider erecting such signs.

Moyle Sinn Fein Councillor Cara McShane has welcomed the decision on the street name policy.

Speaking after the council meeting, Ms McShane said: “This is a welcome development within Moyle District Council.

“Irish is again becoming more and more popular within the Glens and Ballycastle and has recently received a degree of formal recognition under the Good Friday Agreement.

“The Irish language has also been accorded the status of an official working language of the European Union. This puts a requirement on us to put forward public information in Irish as well as English.

“The display of street nameplates is a starting point.

“It is therefore welcoming that Moyle Council has taken the lead in North Antrim in this regard.”

Cllr McShane said forms will now be sent out to residents in Altanaman Park for completion.

The decision to adopt the policy was passed by a seven-six vote, with DUP representative Robert McIlroy unsuccessfully asking for the adoption to be delayed until items in the report could be viewed more closely.

It remains yet to be seen if people in the mainly unionist Bushmills area will want street names to be erected in the Ulster-Scots dialect.

BreakingNews.ie

26/10/2005 - 07:41:31

Pressure is mounting today for a Ferns-style investigation into allegations of child sex abuse in the sprawling Dublin archdiocese.

A major state inquiry into the Ferns diocese yesterday revealed that 21 Catholic priests savagely sexually assaulted young boys and girls in parishes across Co Wexford over the past 40 years.

The Government vowed immediately to implement the recommendations of the scathing 300-page report, which was hailed by abuse victims.

But the most outspoken Ferns victim, Colm O’Gorman, has called for a similar sweeping investigation into abuse allegations in the Dublin archdiocese where, he claimed, priests use clerical teaching schools to access children.

A number of abuse scandals involving clerics in the capital in the 1990s led to Cardinal Desmond Connell being criticised for not acting against the problem.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell promised in the Dáil in 2003 that an inquiry into the capital’s priests would be carried out.

Mr O’Gorman, the director of the One In Four survivors’ group, said: “In relation to the Dublin archdiocese we would be aware of concerns about cases that differ significantly from Ferns.

“We are aware of the role of education in Dublin, the way in which many priests use schools to access children, very directly and in a very dogged and blatant way at times.

“We would be appalled if that investigation, which has been promised for three years, is not delivered.

“There is an absolute need for that investigation and it would be extraordinary if Mr McDowell backtracks on that promise.”

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said last night that priests had traditionally enjoyed very privileged levels of trust in their communities.

But he added: “It is clear that in many cases that trust has been betrayed by those priests who abused and by the failure of church authorities to act when they should have.”

Tánaiste and Minister for Health Mary Harney dubbed the Ferns Report a major watershed, which would spark reforms “aimed at ending the scourge of child abuse in our society”.

She added: “We must all work together to put in place the kind of reforms which will quickly expose abuse where it happens, and engender a culture where it is much less likely to happen in the first place.”

BreakingNews.ie

26/10/2005 - 08:15:42

New statistics reported this morning have revealed that the average pay for TDs is set to rise to €100,000 next year.

According to the figures reported in The Irish Independent, this is a €5,000 increase on the current salary of €95,000.

Dáil deputies will be able to access a further €67,000 in expenses and allowances in 2006.

The newspaper also reported that senators’ pay will increase from €65,800 to just over €68,000.

On top of his basic salary of €100,000, the Taoiseach will get a further €150,000 while the Tánaiste will receive an extra €118,000.

This brings the total pay bill for senators, TDs and MEPs to €22,500,000, while the running of the houses of the Oireachtas will cost taxpayers more than €100,000,000 next year.

Irish Times

The link from the Irish Times came from this Indymedia.ie story: Just say sorry

The Government is to introduce new legislation to give children greater protection after an official report detailed a wave of sex abuse cases in the Catholic diocese of Ferns. Liam Reid and Patsy McGarry report

The report of the inquiry into clerical sex abuse in Ferns over nearly 40 years, which was published yesterday, strongly criticised the Catholic Church’s handling of the cases, particularly by the former bishops of Ferns, Donal Herlihy and Brendan Comiskey.

The Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All-Ireland, Dr Seán Brady, last night apologised to all who had suffered lasting hurt at the hands of abusers in the church. “The betrayal of trust is horrendous,” he said.

The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, said sexual abuse by priests had devastated the lives of those abused and their families.

Criticising the Ferns bishops, the report said: “Bishop Herlihy’s failure to take even basic precautions to protect children from men known to have abused in the past must be seen as inadequate and inappropriate.

“Clearly Bishop Herlihy regarded priests who abused children as guilty of moral misconduct. He does not appear to have recognised that the wrongdoing was a serious criminal offence.”

Dr Herlihy was bishop of Ferns from 1964 until his death in 1983. He was succeeded by Dr Comiskey, who served until his resignation in 2002.

In relation to Dr Comiskey, the report said his investigations into allegations of abuse in his diocese were “an inappropriate and inadequate response”. It said he “failed to recognise the paramount need to protect children, as a matter or urgency, from potential abusers”.

However, the report stated that Bishop Eamonn Walsh, the apostolic administrator of Ferns since 2002, “has taken steps to overcome most, if not all, of the factors militating against an appropriate response to allegations or suspicions of abuse”.

The inquiry said it had been assured by Bishop Walsh that no priest against whom an allegation of child sexual abuse had been made was now in active ministry in the diocese.

The three-person inquiry team held a two-day consultation with an expert group of therapists experienced in dealing with clerical sex abusers. The report said the expert group “was unanimous in its view that the vow of celibacy contributed to the problem of child sexual abuse within the church”.

The report, which was ordered by the Minister for Health in 2003 following widespread publicity in relation to allegations of clerical abuse in the diocese, has been forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions by the Minister of State for Children, Brian Lenihan.

Bishop Comiskey may face the possibility of a criminal investigation over providing “erroneous information” to gardaí in one investigation.

The Government indicated last night that it was intending to make it a criminal offence for someone to fail to protect children against child abuse risks.

The report details, often in explicit terms, the allegations made by more than 100 individuals against 21 priests. Allegations against another five priests only came to light in recent months - too late for the inquiry to examine fully.

Dr Comiskey last night again apologised for his handling of allegations. In a statement, he acknowledged his failings but said they had not been deliberate. The bishop, who is believed to be in Dublin, said he would be making no further comment on the report.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said last night he was “appalled and overwhelmed at the nature and extent of the abuse” and promised that the Government would move quickly to implement the recommendations of the report.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said he would introduce amendments to the current Criminal Justice Bill to reflect one of the key recommendations in the report, advising that a law on “reckless endangerment” should be considered. The law, which is in place in the state of Massachusetts in the US, would make it a criminal offence for professionals to fail to take action to protect children if they become aware of a potential risk from sexual or physical abuse.

The report has been welcomed by victim representative groups. Colm O’Gorman of One in Four said he was he was “delighted” that the Government would be introducing a “reckless endangerment” law.

The inquiry, which was headed by retired Supreme Court judge Frank Murphy, was established by the then minister for health Micheal Martin in 2003 to investigate the handling by Church and State authorities of sex abuse allegations against priests of the Diocese of Ferns.

Balrog

By Chris Gaskin

“I see that 17 Republican and Nationalist councillors in Newry and Mourne District Council are facing a 5 year ban from holding Public Office”.

>>Read about it