SAOIRSE32

BreakingNews.ie

21/12/2005 - 10:51:50

**For some excellent photography and an explanation about Newgrange, go >>here

Cloud cover has prevented the sun from shining into the ancient passage tomb at Newgrange in Co Meath today.

Around 30 lucky people had secured access to the monument to watch the rising sun illuminating the central chamber on the shortest day of the year.

The sun will be in a similar position in the sky for a few days, so some may get an opportunity to see the phenomenon until the end of the week.

BBC

Sir Reg Empey said he did not want “any more meddling”

The government should scrap the “on-the-run” legislation and not agree to any Sinn Fein proposed changes, the Ulster Unionist Party has said.

Sinn Fein wants the bill scrapped after saying that allowing anyone involved in Troubles-related crime to avoid prison was not what they had agreed.

But UUP leader Sir Reg Empey said he did not want “any more meddling”.

The Northern Ireland Office has said there is no other vehicle for dealing with the “on-the-run” issue.

On Tuesday, Sinn Fein vice-president Pat Doherty said the legislation was “far removed” from what had been agreed during 2001 talks with the government at Weston Park.

He also accused the government of “sleight of hand” in that the law would grant amnesty to security forces who committed murder during the Troubles.

However, a Northern Ireland Office spokesman said Sinn Fein were “deluding themselves”, if they thought that there was an alternative to the bill.

Mr Doherty met Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain at Stormont on Tuesday and urged him to withdraw the legislation.

“We are now calling for it (the legislation) to be rejected and we are withdrawing from anything to do with it,” he said.

Advice

Mr Doherty said Sinn Fein would also be advising republicans “on the run” not to seek registration under the legislation should it go through.

The plans cover up to 150 people wanted for crimes committed before 1998.

They would have their cases heard by a special tribunal and, if found guilty, would be freed on licence without having to go to jail.

Mr Doherty led a delegation of party members and victims’ groups to meet Mr Hain on Tuesday to give their views on the Northern Ireland (Offences) Bill which is currently going through Parliament.

Sinn Fein initially welcomed it, but now realise it will not only give an amnesty to IRA members but also to any soldiers or police officers who committed murder during 30 years of violence.

DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson said there was now no reason for the government to proceed with the “obnoxious and obscene” bill.

“Democratic representatives from Northern Ireland who sat on the committee scrutinising the on-the-run bill have been completely united in their opposition to this judicial farce,” he said.

“Now is the time to scrap this sickening legislation and for the government to make sure it never again gets into such a mess,” he said.

Sir Reg said: “The legislation should indeed be scrapped, but government must not enter into any future negotiation with republicans that will result in even worse legislation.

“This distasteful side-deal which should never have seen the light of day in the first place must now be consigned to the dustbin where it belongs, never to be resurrected.”

Conservative NI spokesman David Liddington said he believed the government was “stuck” with the bill.

“I hope they will think again. They have given some indications that they are prepared to look at amendments to this bill as it continues through Parliament,” he told BBC News on Wednesday.

Two stages

The Police Federation for Northern Ireland urged the prime minister to “take Sinn Fein at its word” and withdraw the legislation.

Federation Chairman Irwin Montgomery said: “Now is the opportunity to do the right thing - even if it is for the wrong reason of Sinn Fein hypocrisy in not wanting the legislation to apply to military or police personnel.

“Withdrawing the legislation will also preserve the integrity of the historic case review process. I urge this government to do the decent thing and abandon the bill.”

The proposed law would set up a two-stage process. First someone who will be known as the certification officer will decide if someone is eligible for the scheme.

This could be a paramilitary on-the-run, someone living in Northern Ireland who is charged with an offence before 1998 or a member of the security forces accused of an offence committed when they were combating terrorism.

The case would then go to a special tribunal, consisting of a retired judge sitting without a jury. The tribunal would have all the normal powers of the Crown Court but accused would not have to appear for their trial.

If found guilty they would get a criminal record but would be freed on licence. They would have to provide fingerprints and DNA samples to be granted their licence.

The scheme will be temporary but a precise cut-off period is not specified in the bill - instead its expiry is linked to the lifetime of the chief constable’s historic cases review team, which is looking at unsolved murders during the Troubles.

Daily Ireland

Danny Morrison

A rally in west Belfast in support of the H-Block prisoners during the 1980s. Photo: Andersonstown News/Archive

Who’s next, has been the line adopted by gloating republican critics in the media and by Sinn Féin’s political opponents. As I look among them I’m thinking, well, that one’s probably in the Brits, that one is definitely a mouthpiece for the Brits, and that smartass former activist over there is probably an agent or a lunatic, given that his sole objective in life is to publicly undermine the republican struggle whereas Denis Donaldson’s objective was to do the same thing covertly.
I jest, of course. But wouldn’t I be justified in thinking that way? I mean, are agents only inside Sinn Féin or the IRA? I think not.
There is an old saying that all’s fair in love and war. However, the latter part of that proverb applies only to the extraordinary circumstances of war and conflict. In peacetime different standards are meant to apply. The open palm of a handshake is meant to show that you have no concealed weapon.
From around about 1992 I was of the private view that the republican leadership should consider a ceasefire but I was in jail and had no idea how the debate could begin (without debilitating the armed struggle) and how the transition could be smoothly made given how badly ceasefires had turned out in the past.
I was not a victim of subliminal suggestion by British intelligence. Like many others, inside and outside the jail, I reached that conclusion through my own reasoning and mainly because there was a military stalemate that conceivably could have lasted for 20 years or more without necessarily improving the negotiating muscle of the movement or the nationalist people. I was unaware – until 1993 when the Mayhew/Sinn Féin correspondence was revealed – that tentative contacts had been made between republicans and the British.
Since 1994 the peaceful moves of the republican movement have often divided its opponents. Albert Reynolds read the Sinn Féin position more accurately than most other leaders, next to John Hume. In the run-up to all-party talks David Trimble kept going on about Sinn Féin having “an exit strategy” when in fact Sinn Féin’s policy was one of engagement, negotiation and eventual compromise.
The continued existence of the IRA and actual or perceived IRA activity was used by opponents of the peace process to try and justify their scepticism or mask their outright opposition to a just settlement. For many reasons, but also because of the actions and tardiness of its opponents, it wasn’t easy for the IRA to reach the position it did earlier this year, announcing an end to armed struggle and a commitment to peaceful means of struggle.
A political agreement has not replaced conflict and is not within palpable reach. The only people to gain from this situation are those opposed to agreement – and they are not in the nationalist community.
The war, in fact, is still being fought, though on one side only.
From 1994 the frustration of the peace process by unionists and the Major government was aimed at undermining the leadership of Adams and McGuinness. The aim was to create a split in republicanism, provoke a reduced/divided IRA into a return to armed struggle and then smash it. Unfortunately for them the bulk of the republican movement did not join the Real IRA but stayed in the peace process.
There are those who doubt that British securocrats would have brought down the power-sharing executive.
This is what Martin McGuinness said: “It is now time for the British to answer questions about their agents, about their agencies, and about their approach to the process.”
This is what secretary of state Peter Hain had to say: “If there were some giant political conspiracy, how would it have been that this political conspiracy would have robbed this office of its own information, of the most sensitive kind - this just beggars belief, it would be a complete fantasy.”
In 1974 Peter Hain was arrested and charged with a London bank robbery. He claimed that he had been set up by South African intelligence agents because of his anti-apartheid work. His sceptics said that such a scenario beggared belief. He was imprisoned, the case went to trial in 1976 and he was acquitted because what sounded like a complete fantasy was actually true.
There are many things that seem complete fantasies and among the 2,083 pages of the unpublished Stephens Report into collusion there must be many things that beggar belief, including the probability of a paper trail leading to No 10 Downing Street.
What else once beggared belief when first mooted?
British agents reorganising, rearming loyalists and directing them to kill nationalists and republicans and the solicitor Pat Finucane.
British involvement in the Dublin/Monaghan bombings.
British intelligence agents burning down the offices of the Stephens’ inquiry team.
British intelligence running an agent or agents inside the IRA’s internal security unit and directing its chief agent, in order to aggrandize himself within the IRA, to select for execution informers who had outlived their usefulness to the Brits.
The Special Branch allowing its agents within the IRA to maintain their cover by killing British soldiers and police.
The same Special Branch allowing its informers within the UVF and UDA to kill other loyalists and fellow Protestants.
The same Special Branch which is still operating within the PSNI.
Does Denis Donaldson being at the heart of Stormontgate at the prompting of his handlers really beggar belief?
Republican morale has been shaken by the actions of a traitor. I do not know the detail of what damage Donaldson did or his selfish motivation. Often financial reward is not top of the list and most touts usually act chiefly out of self-preservation (after being compromised), become increasingly ensnared by each successive piece of information they give, and then become perversely addicted to the excitement of their secret life.
An informer only admits being ashamed after being caught; then, in the words of Maxim Gorky, he begins living “the life of a useless man”.
Undoubtedly, the detail will emerge; Donaldson’s story will come out.
If Sinn Féin has got it wrong and Stormontgate was not a malicious securocrat operation to bring down the institutions then what of the other explanation that has been proffered? Did the Public Prosecutions Office collapse the Stormontgate trial to protect an agent or agents? And to keep secret the embarrassing details of ‘Operation Torsion’? This operation allegedly involved the Special Branch and MI5, months before the arrests of Donaldson and others in October 2002, breaking into an IRA dump which they had under surveillance, removing and photocopying documents and then replacing these documents in the hope that they would later catch senior IRA figures with them.
According to PSNI Chief Constable, the documents in question contained the names and addresses of hundreds of prison officers and PSNI officers. But they were not informed at the time that it was the Special Branch who handed their details back to the IRA!
No one in the media has asked the Chief Constable or Peter Hain or Tony Blair if this is really what happened – even though it, like the Brian Nelson affair and the burning of Stephens’ offices, beggars belief and sounds like a complete fantasy.

Danny Morrison is a regular media commentator on Irish politics. He is the author of three novels and three works of non-fiction and a play about the IRA, The Wrong Man.

Belfast Telegraph

**Several key terms here: ‘political theatre’ and ‘more embedded’ (as in touts, for instance), plus I find it interesting that when it is clear that Sinn Féin should be concerned with its own vulnerability from within, it is busy pointing the finger at the other slimy entity and laying blame. I would say this is to detract from anyone looking more closely at the SF leadership, but then, that’s just my opinion. Both Gerrys know full well that the best defence is is to go on the attack.

‘Coup’ bid set progress back three years: Kelly

By Noel McAdam, Political Correspondent
nmcadam@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
21 December 2005

THE attempted “coup d’etat” of Stormontgate had cost Northern Ireland three years of political progress, Sinn Fein has claimed.

Policing spokesman Gerry Kelly said the “political vacuum” which had followed the collapse of the Assembly and Executive had come from “somewhere deep in the British system.

“We could have had three to four years when the institutions would have become more embedded and we would have had political control over education, health and the things that affect people in their daily lives,” he said.

But he added the party did not seek an inquiry which would put off political progress perhaps for another three to five years.

The North Belfast Assembly member also said he would not allow the revelation that former senior party administrator Denis Donaldson had been a British spy for 20 years to prevent him meeting Tony Blair or Secretary of State Peter Hain.

As the ramifications of the Stormontgate affair continued to reverberate, Mr Kelly said it had been shown to be the result of “political policing” at its worst.

“It is clear that the British state agencies who mounted this operation knew that there was no value other than political theatre to raid the Sinn Fein offices in Stormont,” he said.

“No documents or evidence were recovered in that raid. The two discs removed were returned to the party within days.

“Hugh Orde is unable to justify the raid because it was unjustifiable. It was politically motivated and intended to cause maximum political damage, a result which was achieved.”

North Belfast DUP MP Nigel Dodds said, however, that any attempt by republicans to paint themselves as the victims in the affair is “clearly ludicrous.

“The real victims are the hundreds of innocent people forced to move or take security measures because information about them fell into the wrong hands.”

But he also said PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde had failed to explain why no one was to be prosecuted.

“The Chief Constable has made it clear that any wrongdoing by an informant is not excusable and will be punished.

“If so the exposure of Donaldson’s life as an informant cannot have been reason enough to drop the charges,” the DUP secretary added.

” The chief’s remarks only strengthen the case for a full statement from government ministers about the whole affair.”

Daily Ireland

Denis Donaldson’s role as a Sinn Féin spy may have been hidden from the Police Ombudsman during her investigation into the collapse of the Assembly, Daily Ireland can reveal.
Nuala O’Loan’s office has refused to comment on whether her investigators were told of the senior Sinn Féin official’s life as a Special Branch agent.
The ombudsman’s investigation found no evidence to suggest Special Branch raids on Sinn Féin offices at Stormont and the homes of republicans in October 2002 were politically-motivated.
The raids led to the collapse of the powersharing government. However, the ombudsman’s silence on whether her investigators knew of Donaldson’s role as a informant has raised questions about the credibility of the investigation.
The Northern Ireland Policing Board last night also said it was satisfied that the Stormont raids were not politically-motivated, but revealed its evidence for this relied solely on the ombudsman’s report, where she refused to confirm or deny whether her investigators were aware of the existence of a British agent in a top position within the Sinn Féin hierarchy.
The board’s reliance on what could now be seen as a questionable report also places another question mark over the validity of its own conclusions, possibly made without a vital piece of evidence to complete the picture of what was actually going on at Stormont.
Republicans are now asking was Nuala O’Loan kept deliberately in the dark about Donaldson in order for her office to justify the Stormont raids.
Sinn Féin Assemblyman Gerry Kelly believes Donaldson was working to an agenda set by his Special Branch paymasters. He said: “It is clear that the British State agencies who mounted this entire operation knew that there was no value other than political theatre to raid the Sinn Féin offices in Stormont.
“No documents or evidence were recovered in that raid. The two (computer) disks taken at random and removed were returned to the party within days.
“Hugh Orde is unable to justify the raid on Stormont because it was unjustifiable. It was politically motivated and intended to cause maximum political damage, a result which was achieved.”
Defending the raids yesterday, Chief Constable Hugh Orde said that “documents” were recovered during searches of republicans’ homes.
What he failed to mention was that the documents were found at the home of Special Branch agent Denis Donaldson.
A spokesman for the Police Ombudsman refused to comment on whether investigators were made aware of Donaldson’s role during its Stormont raid investigation.
He said: “The Police Ombudsman is making no comment on spy-rings at Stormont and no comment on political involvement in what happened.
“It is simply saying that on the day the raids were justified in policing terms, no more and no less.”
Meanwhile, recent reports that “several” republicans had been visited by the PSNI and warned that they were about to be “outed” as British agents in the press appeared to be without foundation.
Daily Ireland enquiries indicate that no such visits had taken place since Denis Donaldson came forward with his explosive revelations.

Daily Ireland

Former chef at Castlereagh base accuses PSNI Special Branch of ‘subterfuge and chicanery’

Jim Dee

Click to view

An American chef linked to an alleged break-in at the PSNI’s headquarters in Belfast said yesterday it was ‘very possible’ he had been set up by British agent Denis Donaldson and Special Branch detectives.
In an exclusive interview with Daily Ireland’’s US correspondent Jim Dee, Larry Zaitschek denies any involvement in the 2002 incident at the Castlereagh police complex and claims he has been made a scapegoat by the PSNI.

‘I last met Donaldson five years before the break-in’

The American chef who has been repeatedly cited in press reports as having assisted in the 2002 Castlereagh break-in yesterday vehemently denied having any role in the burglary or any substantial association with British agent Denis Donaldson.
During a wide-ranging interview with Daily Ireland, Larry Zaitschek said: “I have not spoken to Denis Donaldson in many years – and even then I only knew him for a brief period of time. Personally, I liked him very much, but really have no feelings at this time about what has happened to him recently. It’s irrelevant to me.”
Zaitschek, who has lived in New York since returning to the US three days after the Castlereagh burglary, said that he never understood why his casual acquaintance with Donaldson was initially exposed in the media, “and I still don’t understand it today in 2005”.
The former Castlereagh chef said that one unseen victim in the whole break-in saga has been his seven-year-old son Pearse, whom he hasn’t seen since Zaitschek’s estranged wife entered a police witness protection programme in the summer of 2002.
“He is being used as a political pawn by people whose credibility is both none- existent and laughable,” said Zaitschek.
“I wonder why the life and development of my beautiful young son, and the denial of his human right to family life, is not a bigger consideration to the general media than these bogus claims that have been made against me – claims that four years on now remain totally unsubstantiated.”
Zaitschek told Daily Ireland that he can’t recall the exact date on which he met Denis Donaldson, but that it was sometime “in the early ‘90s” in New York city. He said he likely met him at an Irish-related function, and that since Donaldson’s espousal of Irish republican views was his legal and legitimate right, he just took Donaldson at face-value – as a Sinn Féin representative in the US.
He said that, during the brief time that he knew Donaldson, he never felt he was being manipulated.
“I am not malleable, the way people think I am malleable. I’m a very strong-minded and well-read individual. I was not a dupe,” insisted Zaitschek.

Social meeting
After Zaitschek moved to Ireland in late 1995, he said he did initially meet Denis Donaldson again socially on a few occasions.
“When I first got there, I had few friends. So it was brief. I would have called Denis up for a drink, to say ‘hello’, I had met his wife, just to make friends. Eventually I fell out of touch with him completely. That was well before I started working at Castlereagh. I didn’t know a lot of people. I was just starting to meet people – from all walks of life.”

All contact ends
Zaitschek said that when he and the Irishwoman he was seeing decided to get married, he sent Donaldson a wedding invitation. Donaldson never replied.
“He didn’t go to the wedding. He didn’t even respond to the invitation. That was the end of it,” said Zaitschek
“The last I heard from Denis Donaldson was back in ‘97, long before I started working in Castlereagh. And the next time I heard about him was in October of 2002, when I heard he was accused of Stormont.”
Zaitschek insisted that all the stories that ran about him immediately after the Castlereagh break-in were complete fabrications. He said he only ended up at Castlereagh after “an extremely innocuous series of events,” and he’d never been part of some ingenious scheme to infiltrate the interrogation centre.
His journey to Castlereagh’s kitchen began one night in August 1998. He was driving towards his house on the Antrim coast after leaving the Great Victoria Street restaurant where he worked, when his car slammed into a boulder that had fallen off a tractor. His car flipped several times and he ended up with a broken back. He spent the next two weeks in the hospital. As he was being discharged, he was told by doctors not to return to work for at least three more months. He spent the ensuing weeks trying to deaden the constant pain with pain-killers, and climbing the walls with boredom.
“I was going absolutely out of my mind. My mother-in-law lived next door and she wouldn’t leave me alone,” he said
“So when I could finally walk again, I went down to the training and employment agency in Larne and found job listings for chefs. I filled out several applications and handed them in to the centre’s staff, and within a couple of days, I got a call from the canteen manager at Castlereagh,” who asked him to come in for an interview. A day after his interview, he was hired.

No real evidence
Zaitschek said at no point after he took the Castlereagh job did he ever see or have contact with Denis Donaldson.
“Never once. None,” he insisted.
He also said that press reports right after the break-in that claimed that he’d called several top IRA members as he drove to Dublin to fly home to the US were rubbish: “There’s not even an ounce of truth in any of that.”
Zaitschek said that, contrary to press reports at the time, he didn’t flee the North in a panic, but had a pre-paid airplane ticket. He said he’d informed his Castlereagh employers a month beforehand that he was moving back to the US, and that “there were even nights out drinking, everyone saying goodbye to me. I was moving back to America. It’s not exactly something you do on a whim.”
He said during the two days after the break-in, he was interviewed twice by police in Belfast, “and with a handshake and almost a hug, I was told: ‘We’re done with you in our inquiries. Good luck in America. Thanks for all your great food.’ I left and came back to America. So everyone knew I was leaving. They were done with me. I left, and then this whole story was concocted.”
Zaitschek insists that the reason the PSNI have yet to officially ask US authorities to extradite him is that they have no real evidence against him that would stand up in a US court.
He said that he believes that Special Branch officers were behind several anonymous phone calls he received early-on in the saga, during which he received death threats and kidnapping threats. “Photos were also taken of me coming out of the apartment building that I lived in at the time,” he added.
Eventually, FBI agents, whom Zaitchek stresses were always respectful, began conveying what amounted to bribe offers from Special Branch. He said they included offers of “contact with Pearse in exchange for information about Castlereagh”.
“Obviously, I couldn’t tell them something I didn’t know,” said Zaitschek.
He told the FBI to make all future advances to his lawyer. They made several more offers, all of which were rebuffed, and eventually such advances stopped.
Such offers were especially heart-rending given that Zaitschek has only had two or three brief phone calls from Pearse since 2003, but nothing since.
Via his lawyers in Belfast he has secured the right to get one picture yearly of Pearse so he can at least see what he looks like.
As for the growing theory among Irish republicans that Donaldson and Special Branch set him up as a fall-guy, Zaitchek said: “Denis didn’t know I was working in (Castlereagh) unless Special Branch told him I was working in there. “But I didn’t do the break-in. So it’s very possible that members of the security services did it, and then they did set me up. But I had nothing to do with it, and I don’t know who did. I only know that I’ve been framed by it and my life has been turned upside down as a result of it.”
Zaitschek knows that there are many in Northern Ireland who have already tried and convicted him in their own minds, based on media reports regarding his involvement.
He again insisted that those reports are dead wrong, and that it is subterfuge and chicanery by the PSNI Special Branch that left him as a scapegoat.
“I have to say though, having been reading a lot recently about what’s going on, one couldn’t help but think that the entire law enforcement and security apparatus in Northern Ireland is something of a circus act,” said Zaitchek.

Daily Ireland

Victim’s father accuses Mo Mowlam of ‘political interference’ over death probe

Ciarán Barnes

A convicted loyalist killer questioned about the 1997 murder of a Belfast Protestant was released from custody on the orders of former direct-rule secretary Mo Mowlam, the victim’s campaigning father has claimed.
Raymond McCord Sr made the claim after a meeting to discuss state collusion with direct-rule minister Peter Hain at Stormont yesterday.
Mr McCord’s son was beaten to death in north Belfast in 1997 by an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang that included two police informants.
He says Special Branch officers had prior knowledge he was to be killed, but failed to act in order to protect the identities of their informants.
In the weeks after the killing, senior north Belfast loyalist Angus Knell was taken to Gough barracks for questioning by murder squad detectives.
At the time Knell, who served a 15-year life sentence for the 1976 UVF murder of Catholic barman Eugene McDonagh, was a member of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) talks team.
The negotiations would eventually lead to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998.
Mr McCord insists Mo Mowlam, who died earlier this year, ordered the release of Knell from questioning in order to prevent PUP members withdrawing from the talks.
After yesterday’s meeting with Peter Hain, he accused the direct-rule minister’s predecessor of “politically interfering” with the investigation into the murder of his son.
Mr McCord said: “Angus Knell was questioned about the murder of my son, but released because Mo Mowlam’s office was afraid the PUP would walk out of the multi-party talks.
“I’m not saying he was involved in Raymond’s death, but he shouldn’t have been released just to protect a political party. Mo Mowlam’s political interference hampered the investigation into my son’s murder.”
Although contacted, no one from the Northern Ireland Office was available to respond to the claims.
Mr McCord was one of four victims of paramilitary violence to meet Mr Hain yesterday. They were accompanied by an SDLP delegation led by party leader Mark Durkan.

Belfast Telegraph

Parents put up Poleglass home as surety

By Chris Thornton
cthornton@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
21 December 2005

THE Northern Bank employee accused of being the inside man in last year’s £26.5m robbery was due to be freed on £120,000 bail today.

Chris Ward was cleared for release after his parents agreed to put up the family home at Colinmill, Poleglass, as an assurance that he will turn up for trial.

His release came after the Crown claimed he was part of the “organised gang” that carried out last year’s record-breaking heist, which has been blamed on the IRA.

The court heard that Ward (24), had changed a work rota to place himself alongside supervisor Kevin McMullan on the day of the robbery.

And it was claimed that he “strongly” resisted Mr McMullan’s suggestion that they tip off the bank authorities about the robbery plan after they had been left alone by the gang.

Crown lawyer Gordon Kerr QC described Ward as the main point of contact with the gang during the robbery, saying that he had been seen whispering with the driver of the van that took away the record haul of cash.

The lawyer also highlighted differences between the treatment of Mr McMullan and his wife and Ward’s family when their homes were taken over by the robbery gang.

He said Mr McMullan had been assaulted and threatened with a gun, while his wife had been threatened with death and kidnapped in order to ensure his co-operation.

In Ward’s case, Mr Kerr said, “no violence was used in the house taken over in relation to his family”.

“There was no evidence of weapons. No one was bound. All of the family was allowed basically free access around the house. No one was removed as a hostage,” he said.

Mr Kerr also told the court that when Ward was brought to the McMullans’ house in Loughinisland, “his attitude in terms of what was happening to him can be described as strange”.

The lawyer said Ward asked his captors for beer and food, and slept during the night before the robbery while Mr McMullan had been unable to sleep.

He said the captors left the two men alone in the house the next morning after scrubbing it clean with bleach.

The lawyer said that at that stage Mr McMullan suggested calling a hotline for bank employees to warn about the robbery, but Ward resisted.

“The degree of knowledge showed by the robbers of the internal systems of the bank made it clear that they had inside knowledge, inside knowledge that was consistent with Ward’s duties and responsibilities and not someone higher,” Mr Kerr said.

He said that when Mr McMullan told Ward his father was due to call at the house and he feared he would be unable to keep up “the sham” in front of him, Ward suggested they leave early for their noon shift.

Mr Kerr also confirmed that Ward was placed among republican prisoners at Maghaberry at his request. He said that the prison authorities had been willing to place him in isolation because of his lawyer’s concerns about loyalists.

During the build-up to the robbery, Mr Kerr said Ward had not shown up for work in a local bar, two hours before the robbers turned up at his house.

Frank O’Donoghue QC, appearing for Ward, said he had worked for the bank for nearly six years before the robbery.

He said he “co-operated fully with all of the police investigations” and answered all questions.

Lord Justice Campbell agreed to release Ward, provided he surrender his passports and report to police twice daily.

He also asked for £90,000 sureties from Ward’s parents, £10,000 each from the chairmen of Ward’s GAA and Celtic Supporters’ clubs, and £10,000 from Ward himself.

BBC

Catherine and Paula McCartney met Tony Blair

The family of murdered Belfast man Robert McCartney have met Prime Minister Tony Blair in London.

Two of his sisters were joined by Sinead Commander, whose husband Jeff was allegedly attacked because of his friendship with the McCartneys.

Mr McCartney, 33, was murdered in the street outside a bar in Belfast city centre in January.

Catherine and Paula McCartney requested the meeting with the prime minister as part of their campaign for justice.

Mr McCartney’s family claim they have been intimidated by the IRA.

They and Mrs Commander met Mr Blair at 1700 GMT on Tuesday.

Catherine McCartney said they wanted to dispel a “misconception” that those involved in Mr McCartney’s murder were “rogue elements” in republicanism.

She said it was the first time they had met Tony Blair on a formal basis and they wanted to update him on the investigation.

She added that the family felt that Sinn Fein was not doing all it could to help them.

In March, they had separate meetings with Senator Ted Kennedy and President George Bush, both of whom refused to meet Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams at the time.

Two people have been charged in relation with Mr McCartney’s murder and three people have been charged in relation to the alleged attack on Mr Commander.

Guardian

The multi-layered truth behind the exposure of a British agent in the Irish republican leadership must be uncovered

Jonathan Freedland
Wednesday December 21, 2005
The Guardian

The loudest noise in these islands should be the sound of Irish republicans chanting I told you so. For years, Sinn Féin leaders have banged on about the “securocrats” who pull the secret strings of Northern Ireland. These men, skulking in corners of the army, MI5, Special Branch and the Northern Ireland Office, form, say republicans, a “shadow government”, bent on forcing its own, reactionary agenda on the province. In this view, their driving purpose is the defeat, discrediting and humiliation of Sinn Féin and the IRA - regardless of the policy pursued by Tony Blair and his “official” government in Downing Street.

Yeah, yeah, whatever, journalists in London would say, stifling a yawn. Not only was the “securocrat” speech a broken record, it also sounded vaguely unhinged: a conspiracy theory that belonged in an airport thriller rather than the real world.

Yet last Friday brought news that showed republicans’ worst nightmares were no fantasy. Denis Donaldson, the party’s chief administrator at Stormont, outed himself as a spy: for 20 years, he revealed, his real masters were not his Sinn Féin colleagues, but the despised “securocrats” of the British state. Donaldson had sat in inner circle meetings with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness since the mid-80s, but all that time he had taken his orders from unnamed, unknown “elements” within the British security establishment.

That was dramatic enough, but Donaldson is especially significant. For he was one of three officials charged with spying on other political parties at Stormont: an alleged plot whose discovery in October 2002 so offended unionists and others that Northern Ireland’s brief experiment in self-rule was shut down. The democratically elected Stormont assembly was suspended, frozen in a limbo that endures to this day: day-to-day power reverted back to London, as if the Good Friday agreement had never happened.

That connection made Donaldson’s confession explosive. For if he was a servant of the British state, the charge that Sinn Féin was spying on political rivals was, in all likelihood, bogus. It could well have been Donaldson’s British handlers who were behind the Stormont plot, in a bid to discredit the republican cause. On this logic, unionists in their outrage in 2002, and London in its acquiescence to that fury, were merely following a script laid out by a few spooks in the Belfast dark. Everything Sinn Féin had said about the securocrats was true: they had indeed plotted to bring down a democratic body - simply to keep republicans away from power.

All of which makes a kind of sense. Some republicans have long suspected that, while hardline Brits can just about stomach Sinn Féin and the IRA taking part in the peace process - grateful for the end to violence that entails - they balk at the thought of them in government. What Donaldson called the “fiction” of Stormontgate ensured they got their way. Others say that even the outing of Donaldson was probably engineered with the same aim: to keep republicans out of power. What the men in the shadows imagined was that once Donaldson’s cover was blown, he would flee for his life - fearing the wrath of IRA punishment. His panicked flight would itself prove that the Provos still represented an armed threat - thereby obliging the international monitor on decommissioning to deliver a negative verdict on the IRA, so keeping republicans away from power a bit longer.

Viewed like this, the implications are enormous - and not just for Northern Ireland. For what this reveals is a rogue element within the British state, a return to the late-1980s Spycatcher allegation, when Peter Wright confirmed that a cell of intelligence operatives had once operated as a law unto themselves, “bugging and burgling” their way across London. How would the prime minister explain that, yet again, agents of the British state are out of control?

Well, so far he hasn’t had to - because no one is really asking the question. And that is the strangest aspect of this strange saga. Sinn Féin, who should be climbing the roof of Belfast’s Waterfront Hall screaming their vindication, are oddly muted. Alone among Northern Ireland’s parties, they are not calling for an inquiry into the Donaldson affair. McGuinness has spoken of learning lessons, rather than pointing a wild, admonishing finger at London. The rhetorical dial has been set on cool.

Why might that be? A first explanation is embarrassment: it is mighty awkward for the Sinn Féin leadership that a traitor could have got so close for so long. It plays to the most toxic of republican hardliners’ accusations against the Adams-McGuinness peace strategy - that it’s all a British plot to still the IRA’s guns.

There are other reasons for republicans to be wary of delving any deeper into this murk. I’m told that, internally, Sinn Féin folk are asking the Donnie Brasco question. In that Al Pacino movie, about an FBI infiltrator in the mafia, the mole’s sponsor is told: “You brought him in here, you’re responsible.” Whoever initially brought Donaldson into Sinn Féin will be feeling the heat. I also understand that when Donaldson confessed - under an interrogation led by his own son-in-law, Ciaran Kearney - he named some other Sinn Féin names as fellow British agents. Things could get very nasty.

Alternatively, it’s possible that the Stormont spy ring was not a fiction or even British-inspired, but a genuine IRA scheme - as Northern Ireland’s chief constable insisted yesterday - and that Donaldson had to go along with it in order to preserve his cover. Confirmation of that would also be a disincentive for Sinn Féin to seek any further inquiry, for it would vindicate their enemies.

Or, more complicatedly, it’s conceivable that Donaldson was a double agent - that he had “turned” back to Sinn Féin after his initial betrayal. Standard IRA operating procedure in the past was for an informer to receive a bullet to the head on a lonely country road - and then for an amnesty to be offered to any others. Message: come back to us, or you’ll get the same treatment. Donaldson may have been one to take up the offer. If he was, that would explain the tenor of his Friday statement, when he spoke in the language of an avowed, ideological republican rather than someone who had crossed sides.

No one, save a few key players, really knows what happened (and most I spoke to do not include Blair as one of those privy to the truth). But this episode does reveal three things quite clearly. First, that for some people the war in Northern Ireland has not ended. There are still more British troops there than in Iraq; and there are still “securocrats” consumed with fighting the IRA, even if that organisation has officially stood down. Second, that though peace has held, more or less, for seven years, self-government for the province has been thwarted time after time. And, lastly, that a strange kind of common interest, if not collusion, has evolved between Downing Street and Sinn Féin.

For a long while Northern Ireland’s other parties, unionist and nationalist, have resented the direct relationship between Blair and Adams - as if the real negotiation comes down to the two of them - and now, once again, they see the interests of those two men converge. Both seem reluctant for the truth to come out - but on this shared goal, if no other, they should fail. Northern Ireland has lived in the dark too long.

freedland@guardian.co.uk

Guardian

· Death threats and attacks force family to quit estate
· BBC film and international awards provoke thugs

Angelique Chrisafis, Ireland correspondent
Wednesday December 21, 2005
The Guardian

One of the most talked about voices in European theatre is in hiding - and his extended family have been forced to flee their homes - after a campaign of death threats and bomb attacks by loyalist paramilitaries.

Gary Mitchell, whose political thrillers have arguably made him Northern Ireland’s greatest playwright, was told that every “Mitchell had to get out or be killed in four hours”. His home was attacked by men with baseball bats and petrol bombs.

Brought up on the sprawling Rathcoole estate in north Belfast which is dominated by the UDA, Mitchell is the authentic voice of working class loyalism, whose plays, including As the Beast Sleeps and the Force of Change, have shocked audiences in London and New York with the ugly truth about how paramilitary thugs still control their communities long after “peace”.

Remarkably, while critics raved at the way he dramatised feuds and power-struggles within loyalists gangs, and the collusion between gunmen and the police, he managed to continue living on the same streets where they held sway.

Despite police warnings that he was on the top of a death list - and should not drink in local pubs - Mitchell insisted on staying put, saying he needed to be close to the people he was writing about.

To begin with, the paramilitaries’ prejudice that culture was something only for “taigs and faggots” protected him. But after his acclaimed As The Beast Sleeps was filmed by the BBC, and he began to win international prizes, it began to get serious. One UDA leader told the makers they could only film on the estate if they didn’t use cameras.

Last month, Mitchell’s home was attacked by paramilitaries carrying baseball bats, their faces hidden by football scarves. His car was petrol bombed and exploded in his driveway. His wife, Alison, grabbed their seven-year-old son from his bed, ran outside with him, put him over a wall and threw herself on top of him to protect him. She said: “I heard an explosion and I thought they’ve killed Gary.”

There was a simultaneous attack on his uncle’s home. By then his uncle was the only family member left in Rathcoole. From a secret location, Mitchell told the Guardian: “We are in hiding now. I feel a mix of confusion, anger, frustration and despair. There is a feeling that certain people are jealous and feel that I am depicting them in a bad way. They have decided that they will do this no matter what anybody says … I haven’t done anything other than write.

“Some say the way to deal with this is to sit down with paramilitaries and ask them why they are doing this. I have no interest in doing that because I don’t want to give people authority over my writing. If I negotiated with them, I would be recognising their authority, which I don’t.”

Mitchell’s pensioner parents were the first to feel the intimidation when they were told: “All the Mitchells have four hours to leave Rathcoole or they will be killed.” Sandra and Chuck Mitchell had lived in their home for 50 years, but had to leave. His father is now in hospital.

Mitchell’s grandmother, Sadie, was allowed to stay alone in a small flat. She died five months later.

The Mitchells were told they could not return to Rathcoole for the funeral. “We had to have a police escort. My granny always wanted to be buried from her house. That had to be changed because police said it wasn’t safe. When they were taking the coffin out, a man shouted: ‘One Mitchell dead!’ These are the sorts of things you don’t forget.”

Tommy Kirkham of the Ulster Political Research Group, which advises the UDA, said he had been assured the UDA was not behind the attacks. Mitchell has been told rogue elements may have targeted him.

The Belfast novelist Glenn Patterson has organised an open letter in support of Mitchell with 30 other writers.

BreakingNews.ie

20/12/2005 - 15:22:26

www.lisadorrian.co.uk

The family of a murdered shop assistant have launched a website in a fresh bid to find her body.

Lisa Dorrian, 25, went missing from a caravan site in Ballyhalbert on the Co Down coast in February.

But despite extensive searches and high-profile appeals by her family, no trace of the Bangor woman has been found.

Her sister Joanne said the website – www.lisadorrian.co.uk – would bring global attention to the case.

She said: “It contains a storyboard of Lisa’s life from her birth to the day she disappeared, a page for messages of support from the general public and a page for her closest friends.

“There is also a confidential information page which is completely anonymous and cannot be traced.

“At this time of year someone can put us out of our misery and tell us where she is.

“Any small piece of information could provide the final piece in the jigsaw that we need.”

On the build-up to Christmas, Joanne said: “It is extremely difficult and one of the hardest times of year we have had.

“It is ten months on now and in the next few months it will be difficult to be positive as the first anniversary is coming up.

“I have found myself going out to buy presents and just going through the motions for the children in the house.

“They have been talking about Lisa and how she is not going to be here.”

A number of messages have already been posted on the site, including a tribute from Lisa’s ex-boyfriend, Jamie Mills.

It reads: “We did everything together, walking, holidays, partying, laughing, we were inseparable.

“Now she is gone it is a living nightmare for everyone who loved her and cared about her.

“For someone to take my angel away at such an early age sickens me.

“I pray every night that these people will find it within themselves to say where she is, to stop the endless days of hurt and pain that everyone is going through.”

The posting ends: “I am so lonely and sad now you have gone.

“We will find you Lisa, I swear. There is now a lovely home in heaven with your name on it.

“Miss you, Love you, Always. Jamie xx”

The site has also attracted international interest.

One visitor wrote: “My thoughts are with the Dorrian family, you must be going through hell.

“I live in Germany but I will not stop hoping for you.”

Another, sent from Australia, read: “I opened your website and read Lisa’s story and my heart went out to your family.

“I hope someone, somewhere will come forward and give you closure to this tragedy.”

Detectives have arrested five suspects but they have all been released without charge.

One line of inquiry was that loyalist paramilitaries were involved in the murder.

But it is understood the senior investigating officer now does not believe that to be the case.

Ms Dorrian’s family have campaigned relentlessly in an attempt to keep public attention focused on the case and billboards bearing pictures of her have been placed around Co Down.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Irish Government have both pledged their support in helping to find Ms Dorrian’s body.

A forensic expert brought in to help trace the so-called Disappeared – those murdered and secretly buried by the IRA at the height of the violence in the North – is also expected to examine the case.

BBC

Damn! I hope one of them can give Lord Laird here a bit of fashion advice

UUP peer Lord Laird said the IRA had spies in the establishment

IRA “sleepers” have influence in high places in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, Ulster Unionist peer Lord Laird has claimed.

He was speaking during a Lords debate on extending powers such as non-jury Diplock trials until 31 July 2007.

Lord Laird said the Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill should have included measures to confront “the new threat of white collar terrorism”.

He said the IRA and Sinn Fein had been infiltrating the media for decades.

“This can be seen in the highly negative reaction in sections of the southern media against the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, when he outed and denounced Frank Connolly, one of the Republic’s most prominent journalists, as an IRA fellow traveller.

‘Spies’

“Gerry Adams said recently that all British and Irish government spies in the IRA/Sinn Fein must be removed. I say to him, ‘What about the IRA/Sinn Fein spies in the establishment?’”

He was speaking during the second reading of the Terrorism (Northern Ireland) Bill which extends to 31 July 2007, part seven of the Terrorism Act 2000, with an option to extend the provisions for only a year after that.

Northern Ireland Minister Lord Rooker said the Bill repealed some of the measures no longer required in Northern Ireland.

He said the security situation had “improved significantly” since 28 July, when the IRA ordered an end to its armed campaign in order to pursue exclusively peaceful means.

“If the security situation does not support it, normalisation and the repeal of part seven provisions will not go ahead,” he added.

The Bill was given an unopposed second reading.