SAOIRSE32

Irish Abroad: Intelligencer

**Via Newshound

THE murky world of Northern Ireland politics just got darker this past holiday season with a splurge of stories about new informers in the higher echelons of Sinn Fein.

One newspaper, the Irish Sunday Times, even went so far as to print two names of well known Sinn Fein activists, though hardly leader potential, who the paper claimed had been visited by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and told they were about to be outed.

The British-based Sunday Times has long been a conduit for British security services to ply their trade, so it is hardly surprising that it would be the first to publish names.

The Sinn Fein reaction was speedy, with stories about lawsuits being filed against newspapers that named anyone as being an informer.

The party recognizes clearly that the aim of all the speculation is to destabilize Sinn Fein at a critical time, just as the two governments are about to begin new talks aimed at restoring the Assembly.

Why the British security services would be working so hard to prevent that is a question only British Prime Minister Tony Blair can answer. It seems more and more that the securocrats are running the asylum, instead of being the inmates.

Where Is Donaldson?

THE whereabouts of Sinn Fein spy Denis Donaldson are still a major mystery, with some reports that he is still in the Irish Republic being debriefed by former colleagues in the Republican movement.

What Donaldson’s ultimate fate will be may never be known. Having refused British protection he is dependent on the Republican movement he betrayed to sort out his future — hardly an enviable position.

There is little doubt, though, that Donaldson struck a deal with Republicans before he came clean that he would not be killed or injured in any way if he revealed all. The fact that leading lawyer Peter Madden (former partner of the late Pat Finucane) appeared with Donaldson at his press conference in Dublin was surely a strong indication of that.

A life abroad, living anonymously, seems to be Donaldson’s best bet, though there is speculation that his wife and family are seeking to stay in Belfast where they have their home.

However, one can only imagine what their lives will be like given the hostility to Donaldson by many who believe that his information may have led to the death of their loved ones.

Why Inform?

WHAT makes someone like Donaldson betray everything he knows and turn informer? It is a question that has long baffled those who study the mind of such individuals.

Certainly, there is no doubt a financial incentive, but it cannot be the only reason a person turns on his colleagues. Donaldson claimed in his statement that he had been compromised in some way in the 1980s, but there was no further explanation.

He was known as a womanizer, but it hardly seems — even if he were caught in some compromising position — that it would be sufficient to make him turn on his colleagues. Perhaps we will never know his true motivation.

Stakeknife Informer

UP until Donaldson the most famous double agent was Freddie Scappaticci, a senior member of the IRA’s internal security staff, known as the Nutting Squad.

Scap’s role was to essentially to force suspected informers into confessing before he or someone else shot him. Scap was widely known for his brutal methods in winning confessions from suspected informers, some of whom in retrospect were undoubtedly innocent.

The irony of a paid British agent murdering other paid informers was not lost on many people. But what convinced Scappaticci to turn in the first place?

Martin Ingram, a former member of the Force Research Unit, the secret British army counter intelligence division who knew Scappaticci, had a definite opinion on the matter.

Ingram (real name Jack Grantham) co-wrote a book in 2004 about British dirty tricks. He believes Scap was turned in large part because of his irrational hatred of Martin McGuinness, the Republican leader who is probably the most admired man in the movement.

Scap even went so far on one occasion to grant an interview anonymously, pointing the finger at McGuinness, so deep was his hatred.

Of course Scappaticci, like Donaldson, tried at first to brazen out the accusation that he was a secret agent for the British, when he was revealed as the legendary “Stakeknife,” the long suspected senior spy at the top of the Republican movement.

Eventually, however, the evidence was overwhelming.

Scap Vs. Donaldson

HOW big was Scappaticci in comparison to Donaldson? Very big indeed.

As Ingram reported, Scap had an entire wing of the Force Research Unit devoted to the monitoring of his activities and the tip-offs he gave. Scap was the one who tipped of the British in October 1987 to the huge arms shipment from Libya bound for Irish shores.

His tip led to the dramatic arrest on the high seas of the crew of the trawler Eksund, who were bringing the arms to Ireland.

It is hard to imagine that Donaldson was anywhere near that vital. He was an important operative, but he never really penetrated the senior levels of the movement according to reliable sources.

That seems about right. While the Donaldson outing was in particularly dramatic circumstances, the Scappaticci one was the more significant in the long run.

Another difference is Sinn Fein leaders such as McGuinness and Gerry Adams were pictured with Donaldson just a week before the outing, while Scappaticci had begun to be suspected for some time before he was finally revealed.

Daily Ireland

BY Robin Livingstone

The death of former Secretary of State Merlyn Rees this week brought back vivid memories for me of the Ulster Workers Council strike of 1974 when a plucky little band of Ulstermen brought London to its knees.

And the amazing thing was that they were armed with nothing more than a half-dozen power stations, the British army, the RUC, the BBC, eight reservoirs, an airport, a ferry terminal and four-fifths of the civil service (the other fifth was off sick). Personally, I thought it was all great fun at the time.
But at that age I also thought coming down the Hannahstown Hill on a bike at 40mph with my hands in the air was great fun and my favourite food was butter and sugar sandwiches.
I suppose you could say that schoolboys tend to have a different handle on things. After the power went, my mother set up a primitive barbecue-type contraption in the back garden consisting of 12 bricks and the grill from the cooker on which she made toast and heated tins of beans and spaghetti.
On warm May evenings we’d sit around on chairs taken from the kitchen and eat while the sun set over the Black Mountain. All that was missing was somebody with a mouth organ. Out the back of our house was the Half-Moon Lake, which was… well, a lake shaped like a half-moon set in ten acres of forest and grassland.
We used to build rafts and sail there, while British soldiers drank beer under cover of the trees. One night a patrol passed by the back of our house while we were having our vittles and they stopped to look.
There they stood, eight of them, with rifles in the crook of their arms and the black padded gloves that they always wore, even in the summer; and there we sat, our mouths full of beans, a battery-powered radio tuned into BBC Radio Ulster for regular strike updates.
One of my bigger brothers stood up and invited them to retire to their base, then posed a pertinent poser about whether their presence might not be more urgently required in more easterly parts of the city.
I can’t remember his exact words, but the word ‘Brit’ was featured prominently, as were the words ‘Dunkirk’, ‘Singapore’ and, curiously, ‘thicko, cowardly, corner-boy dole-hoppers’.
Of course, Merlyn could have got the power back on in the blink of an eye had he been so inclined, but he wasn’t so inclined and it came to pass that a bunch of blokes with literacy issues, bad haircuts and pickaxe handles took charge of this here pravince while Merlyn sat in his oak-panelled office at Stormont and pondered his future.
It was at that low point that he decided that never again would he be humiliated, and thus was forged the steely determination that was to see internment continue and an IRA ceasefire undermined.
A lot of people still haven’t forgiven the BBC for having, in their eyes, strengthened the UWC’s hand by broadcasting information supplied by the loyalist/anarchist strikers – traffic updates, petrol stations with petrol, RVH major surgery cancellations, that sort of thing.
That criticism is undeserved, of course, and just to prove that the corporation maintained its independence throughout the difficult days of the strike, I’m pleased to reproduce here the Radio Ulster programme schedule for Sunday, May 19, 1974, the same day that Merlyn Rees declared a state of emergency and flew to Chequers for urgent talks with the prime minister and a non-tinned dinner.
7am: Good Morning Ulster. Up-to-the-minute news with our temporary anchors Andy Tyrie and Tommy Lyttle. Regular traffic updates from Mervyn ‘Black & Decker’ McClurg in our met office in the lounge bar of the Machete and Meathook on the Albertbridge Road.
This morning, a yet-to-be-named UDA brigadier will present ‘What the Papers Would Say if There Were Any’.
9am: The Lenny Murphy Show. Music and chat with the charismatic loyalist leader.
This morning Lenny recalls some hilarious evenings in the back rooms of loyalist bars on the Shankill Road.
12noon: News, drug traffic and weather.
12.10pm: Talkback. Your chance to have your say on the hot issues of the day. You’re on air as soon as you tell us what school you went to.
1.30pm: Easy Does It: Middle-of-the-road and easy listening tracks to brighten your day.
Take off your forage cap, kick off your platforms, put down that iron bar and relax. Whether you’re listening at a barricade, in a shebeen, a drug den or a knocking shop, there’s something here for everyone. Nearly.
5pm: Good Evening Ulster: All the latest developments brought to you as and when they happen from our team of crack masked reporters across the city.
In sport: Catholics in local soccer, the growing menace.
In business: We ask: Have you paid up yet?
7pm: Country Cousins: The best in C&W brought to you by Simpson ‘the Sheriff’ Gibson.
Tracks to look out for include ‘Romper Room Blues’, ‘My Love for You is Higher Than My Heels’ and ‘A Warm Girl in My Arms and a Cold Taig in My Boot’.
10pm: Reflections: Wind down with Pastor Ivan ‘Stewarty’ Stewart of the First Portadown Revival Tabernacle.
Tonight Pastor Stewarty considers Leviticus, Chapter 3, Verse 11:
“Smite ye mightily the poofters and the fenians. For a man that lieth down with a man displeaseath the Lord. But a man that worketh not and yet hath 15 unwashed children is an abomination in the eyes of the Maker.”
Midnight: Close down. And that’s an order.

Sunday Independent

**Via Newshound

**As I said recently, I will not ordinarily post articles by Jim Cusack, but this one makes many interesting assertions

JIM CUSACK

JUST before New Year, an article appeared on a website run by disgruntled ex-spies written by a former British Army intelligence officer who uses the cover-name, Martin Ingrams. The article contained remarkable allegations about the IRA leadership of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

Under normal circumstances, few would pay much attention to the views of a man who spent much of his career recruiting and handling informers. However, ‘Ingrams’ is the man who named Freddy Scappaticci, former head of the IRA’s internal security section, as an informer. Scappaticci, who has since moved to Italy, denied the allegations initially but then left Belfast and made no effort to rebut Ingrams’s allegations.

The naming of Scappaticci as the British Army’s high-ranking informer, code-named ‘Stake Knife’, sent shock waves through the IRA.

The most recent revelation that Denis Donaldson was another informer compounded the sense of shock within the ‘Republican Movement’ - as the IRA now terms itself. Donaldson was in charge of the IRA and Sinn Fein’s ‘international affairs department’.

Gerry Adams sent him to New York to re-organise Sinn Fein’s fund-raising and PR operations there, sacking long-serving supporters and putting in new people. The FBI, who were handling Donaldson while he was on US soil, were simultaneously being fed information about every person coming into contact with Sinn Fein and the IRA in the US. That information, inevitably, was being fed back to their British intelligence counterparts.

Donaldson travelled extensively in the Seventies and Eighties on behalf of the Republican Movement and was the IRA and Sinn Fein’s main contact with groups like Eta, the PLO and Hezbollah.

In latter years he ran the Sinn Fein offices at Stormont during the short-lived power-sharing Assembly. His involvement in the IRA spy-ring at Stormont precipitated the Assembly’s collapse.

Two weeks after Donaldson was exposed, ‘Martin Ingrams’ - a figure with a proven track record in these matters - contributed an article to the on-line magazine, Cryptome, which is run by disgruntled former intelligence officers in the US and Europe.

Ingrams’s latest allegation is that McGuinness and Adams were either completely naive in relation to the British Army and RUC’s recruitment and use of informers at high-level in the IRA or knew about it and let it happen.

The allegation by the former British intelligence officer is not being dismissed by former senior IRA figures who now believe there was a conspiracy to bring down the IRA from within during the Eighties and into the Nineties. In some formerly hard-line republican areas of the North, there is now open criticism of - and hostility towards - Adams and McGuinness.

Among the areas where opinion is most bitter is in the former territory of the East Tyrone and Fermanagh brigades ranging from the Monaghan-Cavan Border area up to the north-eastern shores of Lough Neagh and across into Donegal. The East Tyrone IRA waged a near-genocidal campaign against local Protestant farmers who joined the part-time RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment. They carried out the Ballygawley bomb attack on a bus which killed eight soldiers and injured dozens of others in August 1988. The East Tyrone and Fermanagh IRA were both involved in the Enniskillen bombing on Remembrance Day 1987 when 12 civilians were killed.

It was well known that the East Tyrone IRA was opposed to any deal short of a British declaration of intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland. In the early Nineties, when secret talks were taking place between the Adams/McGuin-ness leadership and the British, the Tyrone IRA carried out the bomb attack which killed eight Protestant workmen leaving work on a building site at a local RUC station in January 1992 at Teebane.

East Tyrone, however, was suffering heavy casualties, and more than 20 were killed by the SAS or RUC in ambushes. In 1987 an entire unit of eight East Tyrone IRA bombers was wiped out by the SAS in an ambush at Loughgall. The dead included Jim Lynagh, the Co Monaghan IRA leader who was known to be implacably opposed to Gerry Adams’s proposals to pursue an “unarmed strategy” to move the IRA away from terrorism towards subversive politics.

It is now known that the information that led to the infiltration and near annihilation of the East Tyrone leadership came from at least one source who was very close to the Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness leadership.

‘Ingrams’ now says that Adams and McGuinness, as effective joint leaders of the IRA at this time, must have been aware that the British and RUC intelligence services would be targeting what he terms the “vulnerable points” of the IRA. These, he says, were mainly IRA men who had already served prison terms and were in fear of a return to prison for long sentences. These were very easily recruited.

In order to counteract this, Ingrams says, the Adams and McGuinness leadership would have known it was necessary to have an effective internal security organisation that could target and exterminate informants. He points out that to avoid the danger of infiltration, it would have been necessary to rotate internal security personnel. Yet, this did not happen. Scappaticci and his boss, an ex-British soldier who had joined the IRA and has since died, were in charge of internal security for over 20 years, both passing information to the British Army and RUC. Ingrams wrote: “Now either Adams and McGuinness are the two unluckiest people on this planet or it was no accident.”

Ingrams also claims that an RUC case against Martin McGuinness which could have led to his prosecution for taking part in the abduction and murder of a highly placed informer in the Derry IRA was dropped because, at the time, McGuinness and Adams were moving towards their secret talks with the British.

The case to which Ingrams refers is that of Frank Hegarty, an IRA man turned informer who fled Derry after being exposed. He returned, however, after his family was persuaded by McGuinness that Hegarty would not be killed. McGuinness met him at his family home and is believed to have overseen his removal to Donegal where Hegarty was later shot dead and dumped in a country lane.

McGuinness has publicly denied any involvement in the death of Frank Hegarty but Ingrams says the RUC case against McGuinness, which was dropped, contained statements by three witnesses.

Ingrams’s theory is that there was high-level collusion in both the British security services and the IRA leadership to ensure that Adams and McGuinness were protected and that their opponents in the IRA were destroyed to ensure that the IRA campaign was brought to an end.

This theory is now also believed by other former senior IRA figures who have told the Sunday Independent they were not surprised that Denis Donaldson was working as an agent and that other senior figures close to Adams and McGuinness were also long-serving agents. They are now waiting for further revelations about moles who were working inside the IRA and possibly protected from within the IRA leadership.

BreakingNews.ie

08/01/2006 - 16:39:58

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern tonight said the Justice Minister has his full support over revealing details about allegations that investigative journalist Frank Connolly had travelled to Columbia on a false passport.

Mr Ahern said Michael McDowell had made the cabinet aware of the facts surrounding the illegal use of a passport application.

“The Minister for Justice on this issue dealt with the case as he saw fit, he put information into a parliamentary reply. There is an issue of a fraudulent use of a passport. Those are the facts of the case and I don’t think anything that has happened has changed that,” Mr Ahern said.

He added: “What Michael McDowell did had the support of the cabinet throughout.”

The claim was made by Mr McDowell under privilege in a written answer in the Dail early last December. Mr Ahern has backed the Dáil claims that Mr Connolly flew to Colombia on a false passport in 2001 as part of an IRA plot to sell bombing know-how to Farc rebels.

Mr Connolly himself has strenuously denied the allegations and said the claims were part of a smear campaign against himself and the Centre for Public Inquiry.

The Taoiseach said he believed the passport issue was not linked to the Centre for Public Inquiry.

Mr Ahern said the facts Mr McDowell made public in the Dáil were from the Department of Foreign Affairs passport office.

“He was not using the information from garda files,” he told RTE Radio’s This Week programme.

Mr Ahern said the Justice Minister believed he should give all available information on the incident in reply to the parliamentary question.

The chairman of the CPI, former High Court Judge Fergus Flood, said Mr Connolly was told on December 16 in a letter from the Director of Public Prosecutions that the decision had been taken on March 7 2003 not to prosecute him in relation to the false passport allegations.

In December, Mr Flood said Mr McDowell had unleashed a private and public blackening of Mr Connolly’s character.

BreakingNews.iel

08/01/2006 - 16:02:42

The community of Midleton in County Cork has been remembering 11-year-old Robert Holohan, who was killed a year ago.

As well as the boy’s family and friends, Gardaí, soldiers and volunteers who took part in the search for him have attended a special mass to mark the first anniversary of his death.

In his homily, Father Billy O’Donovan paid tribute to the courage of Robert’s parents, Mark and Majella, since the tragic loss of their son.

“In the past 12 months, you’ve shown remarkable courage and strength. You’ve been an example under extraordinary difficult circumstances,” he said.

BreakingNews.ie

08/01/2006 - 17:43:48

Political parties must move on from the Stormont spying controversy to focus on restoring devolved government to the North, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said tonight.

In the aftermath of Sinn Féin’s head of administration at Stormont Denis Donaldson revealing he was a British spy, Mr Ahern said he believed it was best if people tried to return to concentrating on the peace process.

“I think it would be helpful if we continue to try to normalise society in the North where nobody is watching anybody, where we have proper political parties, proper garda procedures, proper policing procedures and that we all move on in that kind of a vein,” he said.

“To start checking who was spying on who, or if two spies were spying on each other, or maybe three spies were spying on each other. I’m afraid I would need to live to a very old age to ever resolve the Northern Ireland peace process.”

Mr Ahern said he was prepared to move on from the revelations as he would never be able to resolve it.

Northern Ireland’s political institutions have been suspended since October 2002 when allegations about a republican spy ring at Stormont threatened to permanently destroy them.

Denis Donaldson, his son-in-law Ciaran Kearney and civil servant William Mackessy were arrested and accused of operating the intelligence gathering operation.

However last month the case against the three men dramatically collapsed in Belfast Crown Court when the Public Prosecution Service said it was no longer in the public interest to pursue it.

In a further dramatic twist, Sinn Féin expelled Denis Donaldson one week after he was warned by his security force handlers that his cover was about to be blown.

Mr Donaldson went into hiding after confessing his role to party officials and later appeared on Irish television reading from a prepared statement admitting he was a spy.

Mr Donaldson said he was recruited to work for British intelligence and the RUC/PSNI Special Branch after compromising himself during a vulnerable time.

“I think there is no doubt about it, the way agents have been used in Northern Ireland, the way targeting has been used in Northern Ireland, the way technology is used in Northern Ireland is strange. I have plenty of experience of that over my years dealing with Northern Ireland,” the Taoiseach told RTE Radio’s This Week programme.

Mr Ahern said it was crucially important that Northern Ireland moved forward to a stage where the political institutions were back in place.

“I really believe that 2006 is the year where we should try and get back the institutions in Northern Ireland, everybody has to take chances and everyone has to take risks. I have taken a lot on the peace process, so has Tony Blair and so have others,” he said.

Mr Ahern warned risks would have to be taken by all sides.

“I don’t think the chances left in this are that enormous, I don’t think they are that unsurmountable,” he said.

Mr Ahern said he hoped the Democratic Union’s Dr Ian Paisley, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and British Prime Minister Tony Blair could focus their attention fully on the restoration of the Stormont Assembly in 2006.

Sunday Life

Exclusive by Stephen Breen
08 January 2006

**See also Final Farewell

Jordan Murdock

THE heartbroken mother of an Ulster schoolboy who was swept out to sea two years ago, says her family is still struggling to come to terms with their loss.

Carrie Murdock opened her heart to Sunday Life on the second anniversary of son Jordan’s drowning.

The mum-of-four from Killough, Co Down, told how her family’s grief has been compounded because Jordan’s three young sisters, Carrie and Eliza-Joe, both seven, and Olivia, three, still believe Jordan will be coming home.

Time has not healed the family’s pain.

“The longer it gets the harder it gets for our family, but it’s especially hard for Jordan’s three young sisters.

“His sisters are forever talking about him and they keep asking me when’s he’s coming back. The whole thing is heartbreaking.

“They know Jordan is in heaven and they have been asking me to phone God to ask him if we can have their big brother back.

“My daughters are just children and it’s very hard for them to understand what happened, but they think that Jordan is a star in the sky and that he will come back to them some day.”

The family’s nightmare began on January 11, 2004, when the popular 14-year-old fell into the sea while playing with friends at the village’s harbour.

Although hundreds of volunteers searched day and night along the coastline for the missing boy, his body was only found three weeks later, just 200 yards from where he’d disappeared.

The mum-of-four told Sunday Life of her family’s despair over the last two years.

“People say time is a great healer, but the last two years of my family’s life has been an absolute nightmare,” said Carrie.

“It’s not getting any easier and the only thing that helps me through it is prayer, and the support of my family and friends.

“Christmas was just like another day to us, but we had to try and make the most of it for Jordan’s sisters. I really do think the longer it gets the worse it gets.

“I’m not looking forward to Wednesday because the memories will come flooding back… we just intend to spend the day at home.

“When Jordan fell into the sea we were just so busy with people trying to find him. But we’ve had more time to reflect in recent months, and we still find the whole experience hard to believe.

“The people of Killough were magnificent during the days Jordan was missing… we will never forget what they did for us.”

• A Mass will be held for the teenager at St Joseph’s Church, Killough, at 7.30pm, on Tuesday.

Sunday Life

By Sinead McCavana
08 January 2006

CATHOLIC parents will remove their children from a thriving integrated primary school if it is relocated to a mostly Protestant village, it has been revealed.

The North Eastern Education and Library Board has proposed that Carnlough Integrated Primary School move to a more modern building in neighbouring Glenarm.

But according to school governor Rosemary Haveron, both parents and teachers are “100pc opposed to the move”.

“The school has been very successful over the past five years - the integrated ethos has been grasped within the village more than we could ever have anticipated,” she said.

“We’ve had a 57pc growth within the school since it became integrated and have hit all the targets set down to us.

“None of the parents wish to go to Glenarm: they believe that integration will only really work in Carnlough.

“Catholic parents have said they will not send their children to Glenarm when there is a perfectly good maintained school in Carnlough.

“There’s quite a number of Protestant parents who have indicated their children will not go to Glenarm either. If the board forces this move, it will ruin integration in the area.”

NEELB member Joe Reid has spoken out against the proposal.

“I can see no good reason for moving the school from Carnlough to Glenarm,” said the former school principal.

“I feel it goes against the good community relations that have been developed within Carnlough - it can only have a negative effect.”

The Co Antrim school has formed an action committee which will give a presentation to the Board at its next meeting later this month.

Mrs Haveron, who has three children at the integrated primary, says the school has been very positive for community relations.

“I’m a Protestant parent on the board and we are very much in a minority within the village, yet we function very well within the school because politics are very much left at the gate,” she said.

“We have total respect for each others’ beliefs.”

A NEELB spokeswoman said: “The proposal will be considered by the board at its meeting on January 31 and the way forward will be taken from there.”

Glenarm Primary School is due to close in August due to dwindling numbers. The two schools have a combined roll of around 60 pupils.

Sunday Life

Exclusive by Ciaran McGuigan
08 January 2006

The pill-pushing cousin of LVF drugs kingpin Laurence ‘Duffer’ Kincaid was last week jailed for flogging the loyalist terror gang’s Ecstasy tablets.

Former squaddie David Michael Kincaid was wearing a bullet-proof vest under his T-shirt as he arrived at Downpatrick Crown Court, on Friday, to face charges of supplying Ecstasy and cannabis and possessing a stun-gun.

He’s on a UVF death list and is in constant fear of his life, because of his association with Duffer and his drug-dealing cronies.

Death threats from the UVF forced dad-of-two Kincaid (36) to flee his north Belfast home in July 2004 and to move to an address within an LVF enclave at Holywood, Co Down.

When cops raided the house in January, last year, they recovered £1,000-worth of cannabis and more than 800 Ecstasy tablets.

They also found a stun-gun and a walkie-talkie.

During the raid, Kincaid led cops to the drugs - wrapped in bags in his kitchen and ready for sale - and claimed that the cannabis was for his personal use and that two men had intimidated him into holding on to the Ecstasy tablets.

The court was told he also claimed the stun-gun had been given to him by a “Mr Warnock” to repair, as it was broken.

At the time of the raid, Kincaid’s cousin Duffer was on remand at Maghaberry Prison, after cops unearthed a “drugs distribution centre” in the Ballysillian area of north Belfast - a rap that the previously convicted drug-dealer eventually beat.

Despite being behind bars for a time, Duffer along with close associates of murdered LVF commander Stephen Warnock, were still running a major drug supply network in loyalist areas of Belfast and north Down.

And they had set David Kincaid up as one of their dealers in Holywood, inside his heavily fortified home.

He pleaded guilty to possessing the cannabis and Ecstasy with intent to supply it to others and possessing the stun-gun during a hearing, last year.

Judge Peter Gibson jailed Kincaid for two years and ordered that he spend another two years on probation, which included receiving any appropriate psychiatric treatment.

Sunday Life

Sunday Life discovers how easy it is to fake credentials on babysitting service

By Ciaran McGuigan, Chief Reporter
08 January 2006

PARENTS were last night warned about child predators using an online babysitting service to target vulnerable kids.

The dire warning came after Sunday Life exposed how easy it was for an imposter to pass themselves off as a bona fide childminder on the website.

Dublin-based internet company www.babysitters.ie bills itself as Ireland’s first website dedicated to uniting parents and babysitters.

It provides dozens of potential ‘babysitters’ across Northern Ireland.

But Sunday Life has discovered the website is potentially open to abuse by perverts who prey on both children and young babysitters.

We discovered how easy it was for anyone to fake credentials as a genuine childminder via the website.

In just a few minutes, we were able to create the identity of a qualified primary school teacher, who also has childcare experience and first aid skills, and offer their services as a babysitter.

We were also able to create two fake references for our ‘babysitter’.

And our fictitious teacher was quickly added to the list of thousands of available babysitters across Ireland who are registered with the site.

While those using the service may be genuine, the risk of impostors looms large.

Pip Jaffa of the Belfast-based Parents Advice Centre warned: “There are two aspects to this (website service) - the young person doing the babysitting could be trapped, or the children could be vulnerable.

“Those who do not have the best interests of the children and young people in mind, and who want to target children for their own gain, use opportunities that are around and they actively seek out ways to access young people.

“The controls against someone being able to use this website, or something similar like that happening, would be of utmost importance.”

Website owner Comado Limited - which also runs an online fashion house and websites for clubbing, mobile ringtone downloads and a gay dating service - gets users to agree to a legal waiver that clears them of any liability should anything go wrong with the website.

However, there were no indications of any substantial background checks being carried out on applicants.

Added Ms Jaffa: “Anyone who would leave the most precious and prized thing in their lives in the charge of anybody needs to scrutinise very closely who these people are. Selecting a babysitter is not just about finding somebody who is available, but someone who is competent and dedicated to looking after the child and who can be relied on.

“They need to be competent to deal with whatever situation could arise with the child.”

Comado director Hugh Durkin said no checks were made on the babysitters, but added that it was up to parents to meet with them to decide if they were suitable.

“It’s as safe as answering an ad in the local paper or using a agency.

“I leave it (background checks) up to the parents, but I do not think anyone should be lax. And we have not had any complaints.

“And if there is any dispute we can pass our information to the Gardai.”

Sunday Life

Exclusive by Stephen Breen
08 January 2006

AN Ulster-born former Irish soldier is on his way back to Northern Ireland - after 23 years behind bars in Dublin.

Belfast-born Michael McAleavey (44), who was jailed for the murder of three Irish Army colleagues in the Lebanon, has been branded the “forgotten man” of the Republic’s justice system.

But Sunday Life can reveal he is now set for a transfer to a jail in Northern Ireland and could be free by Christmas.

The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Brian Kerr, set McAleavey’s jail tariff at 24 years in Belfast last Thursday.

That clears the way for the west Belfast man to be transferred to Maghaberry, and he could be freed before the end of the year because of the length of time he has already spent in jails in Republic.

He is expected to be transferred over the coming weeks.

The ex-squaddie’s family, who have fought to have him repatriated to Northern Ireland since the late 1990s, have been campaigning for over a year for the tariff to be set.

The prisoner’s solicitor, Joe Rice, told us the tariff indication set by the LCJ was “real and substantive progress”.

Said Mr Rice: “I spoke to Michael on Friday and he believes there is now light at the end of the tunnel.

“He is very anxious to be returned close to his family and wants to be transferred to Northern Ireland as soon as possible.

“His request should be given every consideration and urgency, on compassionate and humanitarian grounds, now that the tariff indication has finally been set. I believe he will be transferred to Northern Ireland very soon.”

McAleavey was serving as a peacekeeper with the Irish Army in the war-torn region, when he riddled his colleagues to death with a machine-gun.

Although he initially claimed his unit had been attacked by Lebanese Pro-Israeli Christian militia, McAleavey later admitted that he had “cracked” under pressure and heat exhaustion.

McAleavey was found guilty in 1983, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Since then, he has been detained in Portlaoise, Limerick, Wheatfield and Dublin jails. McAleavey first applied to be repatriated to Maghaberry jail in the late 1990s without success.

Sunday Life

Exclusive by Stephen Breen
08 January 2006

A TOP American forensic expert - who gave evidence at the murder trial of OJ Simpson - could be called as a defence witness in the Omagh bomb case.

Sunday Life can reveal that legendary investigator Dr Henry Lee has been approached by lawyers acting for Sean Hoey, who is facing 61 charges over the worst single atrocity of the Troubles.

A senior legal source told us Hoey’s solicitors, Kevin Winters & Co, wrote to the leading scientist last year in a bid to highlight their client’s case.

The firm hopes Dr Lee, who also reviewed the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, can be persuaded to assist their defence.

Dr Lee, who has been a forensic scientist for over 40 years, is now considering the request.

Although Dr Lee has prior engagements until June, Hoey’s lawyers hope he can come to Belfast after a trial date has been set.

This latest development comes after the Omagh bomb accused’s mum, Rita Hoey, sent letters to human rights groups around the world to voice, what she claims, are serious “concerns” about the case.

Said the legal source: “Correspondence has been made with Dr Lee’s office by Hoey’s solicitors but nothing has been confirmed yet.

“He is obviously famous for the OJ Simpson trial, but he has also been involved in countless other trials around the world.

“Hoey’s team are pulling out all the stops in preparation for their defence of what is sure to be the biggest trial in Northern Ireland’s legal history.

“It will be interesting to see if the doctor takes up the offer because he is certainly no stranger to high-profile murder cases.”

We contacted Hoey’s solicitor, but he refused to comment on the development. We also attempted to contact Dr Lee, but he was not available.

Dr Lee has helped investigate more than 6,000 cases, including the suicide of President Bill Clinton’s former White House attorney, Vince Foster.

He is also the founder of the Forensic Science Programme at the University of New Haven and the author of 30 books.

Hoey (35), an unemployed electrician from Molly Road, Jonesborough, is charged with 29 counts of murder.

A date for his trial is expected to be announced early this year.

Sunday Life

By Ciaran McGuigan
08 January 2006

A LOYALIST godfather appeared in court yesterday accused of laundering hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Police allege Laurence Peter Chris John Kincaid (33), of Cogry Hill in Doagh, Co Antrim, laundered large sums of dirty money by buying high-performance cars and motorbikes under false names.

He is even alleged to have laundered £10,000 by supplying bail for his half-brother ‘Duffer’ Kincaid when Duffer was freed by the High Court last year when facing drugs charges.

The Doagh man is also accused of laundering money by buying property, laptop computers, an expensive diamond ring and paying for a holiday in the sunshine paradise of the Maldives.

At Belfast Magistrates’ Court yesterday, he denied a total of 34 charges - 24 counts of entering into arrangements to acquire criminal property, seven counts of obtaining services by deception, one of obtaining money by deception and two counts of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Among the services he is alleged to have obtained by deception was a Liverpool Football Club credit card.

A detective constable from the PSNI crime operations department told the court that the accused was believed to be a senior member of a loyalist paramilitary organisation.

He added: “Police have information that other members of his group may assist him to flee by providing financial assistance.”

Under cross-examination from Kincaid’s lawyer, the officer confirmed that the accused had gone to police voluntarily last week and had, in an affidavit, offered explanations for the money and property in his possession.

The defence lawyer told the court that, in denying the charges, her client had told cops: “If I had anything to hide, I would be on a plane.”

Resident Magistrate Ken Nixon agreed to release Kincaid on his own bail of £5,000, with a £5,000 surety.

Throughout the hearing, Kincaid’s father, also Laurence, and half-brother Duffer watched from the public gallery.

The pair hid their faces from cameras as they left the Laganside court complex.

The accused was briefly detained, while a surety was arranged.

It is understood that another six men have also been charged in relation to the same police operation.

They are due to appear in court later this week.

Kansas City Star

Northern Ireland’s capital welcomes tourists as it leaves its Troubles behind

By TERESE LOEB KREUZER

Click to view - Albert Memorial Clock Tower, built between 1865 and 1870

Belfast guide Rosemary Connolly pointed out the city’s new courthouse, near St. George’s Market. “This just shows you how things have progressed in Belfast,” she said with wry humor. “We’ve got a brand new courthouse with a glass wall, and it’s still standing.”

A few years ago that would have sounded like a bad joke. Not anymore. After 30 years of guerrilla warfare between Loyalist Protestants and Catholic Republicans over whether Northern Ireland should remain part of Great Britain or unite with the Republic of Ireland, most people have decided that’s enough. About 3,000 people in Northern Ireland have died.

A gradual easing of hostilities began in 1994. Last July the Irish Republican Army formally ordered an end to its armed campaign.

“I believe it’s over,” said Michael Deane, one of Belfast’s top chefs with a string of awards after his name, including a Michelin star. “Just because somebody doesn’t agree with someone about something doesn’t make you have to fall out all the time. I think the real people are moving Belfast on. I really believe that.”

Deane was standing in St. George’s Market, where he had come to do a cooking demonstration on how to use leftover Christmas turkey. St. George’s is a Victorian brick building that was restored in 1999 by the Belfast City Council.

The Friday market is large and utilitarian, with food staples and household goods for sale. On Saturdays vendors sell gourmet food — organic produce, cheeses, olives, homemade soups, pastries, tea and more. People come with their children and their dogs to sit at little tables in the middle of the market, where they chat, listen to music or maybe read the newspaper.

“The real people,” Deane said, “are the people in places like this, in the markets, the everyday businessmen. These are the people who have been making Belfast work.”

A woman came up to Deane holding a bag of sweets. “Here’s something for the wee boy,” she said, indicating Deane’s 6-year-old son, Marco, who had come with him that day.

“We just can’t live with each other,” Deane said to me, “but they are lovely people.”

Yes, the people of Belfast are lovely — hospitable, funny and unpretentious.

Belfast is a workingman’s city that grew during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. When Ireland was partitioned in 1921, Belfast became Northern Ireland’s capital. Shipbuilding and linen production were the major industries along with the manufacture of heavy machinery, rope and whiskey.

Most of that is gone now. Although 1,742 ships were built in Belfast — including the Titanic — the last ship was launched two years ago. But the workers’ housing remains — street after street of small, attached houses called “terraces.” The older ones have two rooms on the ground floor and two rooms above, with an attic.

You can go to museums and concerts in Belfast, but much of the real culture is in the pubs and in casual conversations, which are often laced with trenchant observations, stories and sardonic wit.

The painted walls of Belfast are another example of the city’s populist culture. Found primarily in West Belfast (and to a lesser extent in East Belfast) on the gabled ends of housing terraces or on fences, they started almost 100 years ago as crudely painted political statements and as territorial markers for the Loyalists and the Republicans. Gradually, however, many of them achieved a compelling level of artistry.

The paintings, which now number more than 600, have become a major tourist attraction. Some are memorials to the dead, some are cultural statements. Sightseeing buses ( www.city-sightseeing.com ) and Black Taxi Tours in London-style cabs take visitors to the Shankill and Falls roads in West Belfast, where the violence was once so intense that a “Peace Wall” of concrete, wire and corrugated tin had to be built to separate the opposing communities. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton and the Dalai Lama have signed the wall, as have numerous other people.

Although sections of the wall remain, everywhere in Belfast are signs that peace is taking hold. Belfast guide Rosemary Connolly pointed out the city’s new courthouse, near St. George’s Market. “This just shows you how things have progressed in Belfast,” she said with wry humor. “We’ve got a brand new courthouse with a glass wall, and it’s still standing.”

She also pointed out a passing police car — an armor-plated Land Rover that she said is being phased out. “We used to build police stations like fortresses. The police were being attacked from both sides of the political divide in certain areas. We opened two new police stations last year, and you wouldn’t know they were police stations at all. The security is so low-key.”

Along Belfast’s River Lagan are more indications of peace and prosperity. A few years ago a weir was built to keep the water from receding completely at low tide, which caused an unbearable stench. Now that the river smells better and is less polluted, waterfront housing has become desirable and increasingly expensive. Waterfront Hall, with two auditoriums, an exhibition space and a restaurant, opened in 1997 as part of a major Laganside redevelopment program. It’s used for big-name performers and classical music as well as for conferences.

Near the hall is Thanksgiving Square Belfast, with a large wire sculpture of a ponytailed woman standing on a sphere. Her formal name is “The Angel of Thanksgiving and Reconciliation,” but Belfasters call her “the doll on the ball.” A sign at her feet says she represents “hope and aspiration, peace and reconciliation.”

During the years of the Troubles, the Europa Hotel on Great Victoria Street was one of the few hotels in Belfast. It’s right next to the Grand Opera House, one of the city’s spectacular Victorian landmarks. The Europa was bombed 27 times, causing it to proclaim itself “the most bombed hotel in Europe.”

“At one time because of the bombs, the kitchens weren’t in operation,” said Connolly, so they barbecued food for the guests. “But they weren’t up to four-star status, so one of the jokes was, ‘People said what kind of wine do you have? And the answer was “red wine, white wine and pink wine.”’”

With few visitors, there wasn’t much need for hotels, but now, Connolly said, “we have all these new hotels! We have visitors here!”

The newest Belfast hotel, scheduled to open in April, promises to be one of its most luxurious. Called the Merchant Hotel, it’s in the former headquarters of the Ulster Bank — a dazzling example of Victorian architecture on a narrow, cobblestoned street in the city’s Cathedral Quarter. Nearby are old pubs and new restaurants and across the street is a printmaking workshop and gallery housed in a former cotton warehouse.

One of the city’s newly minted festivals, the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival, is scheduled for April 27 to May 7, with poetry readings, plays, folk music and exhibitions.

A more traditional form of entertainment takes place at the Christmas season. Pantomimes, or “pantos,” are mounted on Belfast stages, with ribald, slapstick humor interspersed into fairy tales such as “Jack and the Beanstalk” or “Aladdin.” A portly man dressed as a woman is a stock character, playing the hero’s mother, a nurse or cook. The audience boos the villain, yells warnings to the hero and talks back to the Panto Dame.

At “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the Christmas panto at the Grand Opera House, May McFettridge, playing the nurse, ended the performance by wishing the audience “a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.”

In Belfast, those were not empty words.

Guardian

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday January 8, 2006
The Observer

In a move designed to make St Patrick’s Day a more neutral celebration, Belfast City Council is to ditch the traditional green shamrock with its republican connotations and introduce a multi-coloured version at this year’s parade.

The council forgot, however, that the colours of the rainbow also make up the flag of the gay community across the world, prompting delight from the city’s gay rights campaigners. Others accuse councillors of being ‘politically correct’ and ‘daft’.

The rainbow shamrock, suggested by the St Patrick’s Day Carnival Committee, is one of a series of changes instigated by City Hall. Irish tricolours, Glasgow Celtic tops and republican bands will not be welcome; the red-and-white Cross of the St Patrick flag will be.

James Knox, a policy director at the Belfast-based gay pressure group the Rainbow Project, described the shamrock colour change as ‘hilarious, but also an opportunity.’ It is said to be encouraging the gay community to apply to march in the parade on 17 March.

Sinn Fein councillors at City Hall said it would be ‘brilliant’ if the gay community joined the carnival.

But Ulster Unionist councillor Jim Rodgers, a former lord mayor of the city, called the rainbow Shamrock ’silly and politically correct’.

For the first time in its history Belfast City Council passed a motion last week calling for financial support for the carnival. A combination of Sinn Fein, SDLP and Alliance votes secured £100,000 for the festival’s organisers. In return they agreed to a set of guidelines aimed at making the carnival more politically and culturally neutral.