SAOIRSE32

BBC

A Belfast college has confirmed that Catholic students were threatened outside its east Belfast campus.

A spokeswoman for the Belfast Institute of Further and Higher Education at Tower Street said two men verbally abused students having a smoke break.

The spokeswoman said sectarian threats were made before the men left but they returned armed with knives.

She said the PSNI were called and the men were questioned. Police said the incident was being investigated.

Masked

A PSNI spokesperson asked witnesses to contact police at Strandtown on 0845 6008000.

Three years ago the campus, which is in a loyalist area, was closed after masked men threatened Catholic students there.

The college said the students involved in Monday’s incidents were attending performing arts courses.

It said there was CCTV footage of the incidents which would be examined on Tuesday.

Daily Ireland

Man remanded on weapons charges
by Ciarán Barnes

09/01/2006

A dissident republican prisoner has accused the British government of denying him his human rights.
Tommy Hamill was arrested before Christmas and charged with weapons offences.
He is being held on remand at Maghaberry prison in Co Antrim.
During the Christmas period, relatives of the Co Tyrone man travelled to the jail to visit him but were turned away after being examined by sniffer dogs.
Mr Hamill has still not been visited by his family. He has denied the charges against him but has been refused bail. A spokesman for the Irish Republican Information Service accused the British government of denying Mr Hamill his basic human rights.
“Tommy was refused bail and it is obviously the intention of the Crown to make his remand a long one.
“Some Irish republicans were held on remand for nearly three years before their cases fell apart at trial.
“These tactics are a form of internment. The prisoner is shipped off to Maghaberry prisoner-of-war camp, where conditions are poor.
“There are no education facilities, no freedom of association, and rigourous security measures make life in Maghaberry a miserable one,” the spokesman said.
The charges Mr Hamill faces are connected to the discovery of a cache of weapons, ammunition and explosives in Dungannon, Co Tyrone, in 2004.
After arresting the accused on December 23 last year, the PSNI claimed that the items had been found on Mr Hamill’s property and with his fingerprints.
In follow-up raids after the arrest, PSNI officers are alleged to have wrecked Mr Hamill’s home. The front and back doors of his house were broken down, stud walls were ripped out, and furniture was broken and overturned.
Another Dungannon republican has complained of having his home wrecked during PSNI raids on the same day.
The man, who does not wish to be identified, was at work when he received a phone call informing him his house in the Dunavon estate was being searched.
He said that, by the time he returned, the PSNI had seized “anything that was not nailed down”, including personal items and Christmas presents.

Newshound

(by Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune)

“He wouldn’t be tortured, there’d be nothing like that. He’d be taken away in a car. In the old days, suspected touts would be tied up and put in the boot but I’d be surprised if he was even blindfolded.

“They’d just make him sit in the back seat with his head down so he didn’t see where he was going. He’d be taken to a safe house for interrogation, ” says a veteran west Belfast republican with experience of IRA internal security.

He’s talking about the prominent Sinn Féin and IRA figure in the northwest reportedly questioned by the Provos earlier this week about allegations he is a British spy. “There’d be no violence. He wouldn’t be stripped or hooded.

Two or three interrogators would be in the room. He’d be told to sit in a chair with his back to them so he couldn’t see faces. Internal security sometimes put a coin or bit of plastic in their mouths so their voices are distorted and can’t be recognised.”

The republican movement is in turmoil. A prominent Belfast Sinn Féin representative was reportedly questioned by internal security on Christmas Eve and allegations are circulating about other Provisionals, including leading household names.

If any of these figures admit to being informers, it’s likely they’ll be sidelined instead of publicly named with the accompanying political embarrassment for the Provos.

“Since Denis [Donaldson] was outed, nobody knows who to trust, ” says another west Belfast republican. “Wee suspicions about individuals that have festered over the years are now huge.”

An ex-prisoner acknowledges widespread “panic and disillusionment” but thinks it pointless: “Everybody knew the Brits would try to infiltrate the movement. People must remain calm. They shouldn’t become paranoid about those they’ve trusted all their lives. The media is using the Donaldson episode against us.”

The Provo leadership is attempting to divert attention from its internal problems by saying other Irish parties and organisations are also likely to be infiltrated.

Many grassroots republicans don’t buy that argument. “What does it matter if a British agent infiltrates the SDLP or Fianna Fail? Those parties weren’t at war with the Brits. Agents in their ranks couldn’t do the damage they can do in ours, ” says one activist.

“The republican movement asks a hell of a lot more of its members than the SDLP or Fianna Fail does, so trust in the leadership is essential. When you join the IRA you’re told you’ll end up in jail or the graveyard. It’s not too much to in return expect that senior figures are clean.”

The changed political environment means Sinn Féin/ IRA leaders under suspicion are treated very differently from previous alleged informers. “Internal security is generally more relaxed. People are told to be in a certain place, picked up, and if another session is needed told to show up at a set time the next day.

“Dissidents aren’t abducted now either. They’re ordered to be at Clonard Monastery [in west Belfast] and then taken away. They wouldn’t get the rough treatment they once did, ” says a west Belfast source.

Another west Belfast republican says there would still be lengthy and rigorous questioning of suspected informers with the interrogators demanding detailed answers about matters which had aroused suspicion. The suspect’s answers would be meticulously checked with other IRA and Sinn Féin members.

But some activists have lost faith in internal security. Its two previous heads, an exBritish marine and Freddie Scappaticci, were informers. “Everybody they appointed or promoted must be dubious, ” says an ex-prisoner. “Internal security are running around questioning people but volunteers now wonder who internal security are?”

Another source claimed internal security weren’t on top of their brief but “desperately need to be seen to be doing something to appease grassroots”.

Last week, a Sinn Féin press officer confirmed to The Sunday Times that allegations had been made that Belfast councillor Tom Hartley and veteran republican Dickie Glenholmes were British agents, but that both men had denied the claims.

Hartley has no criminal convictions. It’s not the first allegation about Glenholmes who has a previous republican conviction and whose daughter Evelyn was once the most wanted woman in Ireland.

Marian and Dolours Price were arrested in London for the 1973 Old Bailey bombing. “The police had information about the operation that only myself, Dolours and three people in Ireland had, ” Marian Price told the Sunday Tribune.

“We were able to rule out one person immediately. The second was Gerry Adams, and we refused to believe he was an informer. The third person was Dickie Glenholmes. Through an intermediary, we sent word of our suspicions to Adams.

He rejected it like we were hysterical women who couldn’t do our time, ” claims Price. When Price was released, she claims she raised the issue with Adams again: “I wasn’t looking for retribution, I was concerned because Dickie had remained prominent in the movement. Gerry Adams said, ‘Don’t worry, Dickie isn’t in a position to do damage.’ I felt I was being fobbed off.

“I’m not saying Dickie Glenholmes definitely is an informer. If anyone is publicly saying so now, I’d suspect they’re outing small fry to protect a far bigger fish. But my concerns were never properly addressed and I’d like to know why.” Glenholmes’ conviction occurred subsequent to Price’s allegations.

Internal security’s unprecedented access to information makes it the IRA’s most important department. It vets all new recruits and investigates every IRA operation that goes wrong. It has the right to know the make-up of every IRA unit, who was on what operation, and the location of safe houses.

Martin Ingram, a former British intelligence officer, is stunned the IRA didn’t rotate its security personnel regularly to disrupt any long-term infiltration. Denis Donaldson caused divisions among republicans in the US, sidelining militants.

An ex-member of the Sean Savage Sinn Féin cumann in Kilkeel says he did the same in south Down. “Donaldson’s job was at Stormont but for some reason he was never out of our area. He’d even visit a farm near Ballynahinch, shooting birds and rabbits with his legally held firearm.

“He stuck his nose into everything. He’d tap his finger on the table, tell us what to do, and there was no arguing. Anyone independent-minded, anyone who even asked questions, was marginalised.

“Donaldson and his clique drove 40 people out of the party in south Down. He ran a dictatorship and plenty of good people, including an ex-hungerstriker, were treated very shabbily. Those he sponsored and promoted are now highly suspect.”

Former councillor and Newry Institute lecturer, Martin Cunningham, joined Sinn Féin 30 years ago. He’d helped build the party in loyalist Kilkeel.

Selected at a local convention as the South Down Assembly candidate, he was later deselected by the leadership. “I’d taken risks for Sinn Féin but I was replaced by Catriona Ruane who had just joined the party and didn’t live in the North, let alone the constituency. Donaldson came down to enforce the decision.

Cunningham claims that Donaldson said, ‘Take it from me, this is coming right from the top.’ “I’d clashed with him over Orange marches. Kilkeel nationalists were tortured by parades every weekend night in summer. Donaldson opposed me organising protests, ” said Cunningham.

Another south Down republican accused the leadership of indifference to security risks: “There was one boy we believed was a tout. He acted suspiciously and had that many mobiles we called him ‘three phones’. “When we raised it with the leadership, we were asked what role we saw for him in the movement. ‘Suicide bomber’ we said. He’s still involved.”

On informer scandals, the Provisional leadership’s record, even to its own members, isn’t one of transparency. To save face, it provided cover for Freddie Scappaticci, outed three years ago.

Martin McGuinness said then: “Mr Scappaticci is the only person with the courage to go before the cameras and to issue a statement in his own name. These stories are coming from nameless and faceless securocrats in British intelligence. People have to judge who has the most credibility on all of this.” Gerry Adams and Gerry Kelly made similar statements.

It’s widely accepted by IRA grassroots that ‘Scap’ was an informer. He has since fled the country. Sinn Féin had little to say when questioned by the Sunday Tribune about ‘Scap’ on Friday. “I don’t know what our position on him is, ” a spokesman said. “We don’t discuss it. He is not a member of the party.” Over the years, ‘Scap’ was regularly photographed beside Sinn Féin leaders.

A west Belfast republican says the outing of ‘Scap’ and Donaldson raises uncomfortable questions for grassroots: “Over the years, MI5 used Donaldson to strengthen the Adams-McGuinness leadership and to weaken its critics.

“The British could have used ‘Scap’ as a state witness against Adams or McGuinness, like MI5 and the FBI used Dave Rupert against Mickey McKevitt, but they didn’t. We have to ask ask ourselves why the British didn’t want to harm the leadership.”

January 9, 2006
________________

This article appears in the January 8, 2006 edition of the Sunday Tribune.

Irelandclick

On January 30, 1606, five Catholics were publicly hanged, drawn and quartered in London, after being found guilty of attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
This was followed by the execution of one of the main conspirators, Guy Fawkes, and another man, Thomas Bates, on the following day. Records show that the victims had their genitals removed and burned in front of them when they were still alive, and their decapitated heads were fed to animals in a public orgy of savagery.
The whole infamous episode in English history was the culmination of a relentless persecution of Catholics, which started when Queen Elizabeth I banned them from practising law, serving as military officers or voting in elections. After the murder of the conspirators, and anyone suspected of helping them, including Jesuit priests, the persecution of Catholics was intensified.
They were forbidden to hear Mass and forced to attend Anglican Church services. It was not until 1829 that Catholics were allowed to vote in elections. In Ireland there was no respite from persecution. The wholesale confiscation of grain and food to feed the industrial revolution in England caused the starving to death of over one million of our people and the forced emigration of nearly two million, most of whom died on the ships.
During their death throes the starving victims of genocide in Ireland were forced to pay a levy to the Anglican Church. This was all happening in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
In retrospect, historical revisionists could look at all of this in the context of a wider European history, which is dominated by religious persecutions, including the persecution of Protestants and Huguenots by Catholic regimes in France and Spain.
But there is a fundamental difference in that the Christian pogroms throughout the rest of Europe ended four centuries ago when people over there became civilised, a civilising influence which has still not touched the English aristocracy, their political leaders, their civil servants, or their rabble-rousing clergy in Ireland.
We only have to look at the discrimination against Catholics in employment, allocation of public funding, the discrimination policies in unionist councils such as Ballymena and Lisburn, and the role of unionist paramilitaries in excluding Catholics from housing in North Belfast. All of this has the approval and connivance of English ministers and civil servants from the top down. And this is not even to mention the haste with which they collapse democratic governmental structures at the whim of the unionists, their media, their secret police and their network of well-paid spooks and spies. Moreover, when we consider that English schoolchildren are even given a public holiday and encouraged to celebrate the shameful and barbaric events of 1606 by bonfires and fireworks, we can understand the seething hatred that inspired many of them to join the army and murder people in Ireland during the last thirty years.
And when we consider also the institutionalised hatred and exclusion of Catholics which characterises England’s unelected but official heads of state, it is not surprising at all that unionists who worship these wasters want to pipe bomb Catholic houses, stop Catholic toddlers from attending school, intimidate people at cemetery ceremonies and exclude the entire nationalist community from any political power in their own country.
But we could not consider any of this without being confronted with some other more fundamental questions. We would have to wonder why it is that Irish people still humiliate themselves when they bow at the feet of the English monarch in exchange for offensive titles. And this after so many Irishmen and women gave their lives to win our dignity as Irish citizens instead of subjects and commoners.
And why is this insult to our nation and the memory of our dead not punished by the Irish government by the removal of their Irish citizenship and the confiscation of their passports?
And we need to ask also why no Irish government will challenge the British administration through the European parliament over its continued exportation and sponsorship of anti-Catholic racism in Ireland. (There is no such thing as sectarianism. The collective hatred of people for any reason is called racism).
But there are even more pertinent questions here. When Fawkes, Gatesby and the rest were put to death in 1606, they were not executed for attempted murder but for treason, because they tried to destroy a government which was elected by the people – a crime which is still punishable by the death penalty.
Now why is nobody being sentenced to death for treason following the collapse of the Stormont Executive by a Special Branch spy ring?

JACK DUFFIN,
BELFAST

Irelandclick

A Sinn Féin councillor for the Upper Falls has appealed to youths in the North Link area to stop vandalising a children’s playground.

On Friday night a number of fires were started in the North Link playpark after youths took bins from nearby houses and burned them in the playground.

Chrissie Mhic Giolla Mhín described how she arrived on the scene with the Safer Neighbourhoods Project to witness yet more bins being brought to the area to be burned.

“As we approached this much-needed play facility, many young teenagers ran in different directions leaving three separate fires blazing throughout the play area.

“I am appealing for those who are involved in setting fire to people’s wheelie bins to stop. It has been brought to my attention that during the past week there has been a number of wheelie bins stolen from outside houses and set alight as some kind of teenage prank.”

Cllr Mhic Giolla Mhín said that the community can ill afford to lose such a resource for local children.

“This park has been an excellent facility in the heart of Andersonstown since I was a child living nearby but it unfortunately has become the focus for vandalism and destruction.

“The City Council have been doing what they can to keep the playpark in good order but such destruction is depriving many young children of this play facility,” she said.

She also appealed to parents to do what they could to stop the damage being caused.

“I am asking local parents to be more aware of the whereabouts of their children before somebody is hurt. The clothes of the young people standing around these fires must be filthy and stink of the dangerous fumes given off from the burning of household waste mixed with burning plastic.”

In order to deal with ongoing problems in the area the Safer Neighbourhood Project, Sinn Féin elected representatives and other community leaders were on the streets on Friday night in the North Link area.

Journalist:: Staff Reporter

Irelandclick

Two Belfast men are to appear in the High Court today to face charges connected to a vicious assault on a nightclub doorman.

Self-confessed drug addict Brendan Devine and Hugh ‘Applegoat’ McCormick are alleged to have attacked West Belfast man Kieron Magee outside the Venue nightclub in Bruce Street in November 2003.

Mr Magee was hospitalised after being stabbed a number of times.
Mr Devine and Mr McCormick were once close friends, but the pair have fallen out in recent months.

Mr McCormick’s brother, James ‘Dim’ McCormick, is accused of attempting to murder Mr Devine on January 31, 2004. Mr Devine had his throat slit in an attack outside a pub in the centre of Belfast.

In the same incident Mr Devine’s friend, Robert McCartney, was stabbed to death. Terence Davison has been charged with murdering Mr McCartney.

Mr Devine is expected to appear before the High Court today via video-link.
He is currently behind bars after being jailed for five years for his part in a botched robbery in South Belfast in February 2004.

Sentencing him last June, Judge Derick Rodgers said the 30-year-old was “playing for high stakes” and had to accept an appropriate sentence when caught.

Mr Devine’s lawyer said the father-of-two had run up “significant and uncontrollable debts” because of his serious abuse of drugs.

In order to fund his lifestyle and business Devine, who was spending up to £1,000 a week on his cocaine habit, agreed to get involved “out of desperation”, and had “succumbed to the temptation of immediate profit”.

Journalist:: Staff Reporter

Irelandclick

by Evan Short

The PSNI have denied that one of their officers drew a loaded weapon on a group of children who were playing football in a West Belfast street.

The PSNI had been called to Springmadden Court to assist in the sectioning of a man under the Mental Health Act on Friday night, and it was then that resident Raymond Walker says he saw the officer draw his weapon.

“My son Raymond was out playing football with friends when the Land Rovers came into the street. One Land Rover came into the court and the other parked at the entrance where the children were playing. That’s when the driver of the vehicle got out and pulled his weapon, pointing it at the children.

Another two then got out of the Land Rover with their batons drawn.”
The Land Rovers then withdrew, returning to the street when the doctor arrived.

“When they came back a policewoman got out and I approached her explaining what had happened. She began to defend the man who had drawn his handgun and said it was CS spray. I don’t know how she could say this because she wasn’t there to see it and I was.”

Raymond’s 12-year-old son, also called Raymond, spoke of how scared he was after the incident.

“I was very frightened and started crying when he took out his gun. I don’t like coming out to play anymore.”

Lorraine Matthews, whose 11-year-old son Ciarán was also playing in the street at the time, said she was livid at how the PSNI had behaved.

“The kids can’t play in the street anymore because they are so scared. They were doing no harm, they were just playing football. Is it going to be like this from now on? The gun could have gone off, it just doesn’t bear thinking about,” she said.

Sinn Féin councilor for the area, Marie Cush, said that she would be contacting the Police Ombudsman’s office about the incident.

“I am calling on the PSNI officer involved to be suspended and also the female officer who defended him when she was in no position to do so.

“Residents and children who live in this street have been traumatised over what happened and it could have been a lot worse.

“Serious questions have to be asked about the PSNI drawing firearms and batons when they are under no threat at all,” she said.

A PSNI spokesman said, “Police were called to assist medical staff at Springmadden Court on Friday night.

“When they arrived they were heavily bricked and bottled. No firearms were drawn.”

Journalist:: Evan Short

Belfast Telegraph

By Ashleigh Wallace
09 January 2006

Tributes were last night paid to the relatives of 10 murdered workmen who attended a service to mark the 30th anniversary of the Kingsmills massacre.

Nine of the ten factory workers gunned down by the IRA on January 5, 1976 were from the Co Armagh village of Bessbrook.

And yesterday, an emotional memorial service was held in the village’s town hall to remember the innocent workmen who were ordered off their work minibus and gunned down by the IRA.

Paying tribute to the courage and dignity displayed by the men’s loved ones at the service, local Assembly member Danny Kennedy said the massacre was remembered each and every day in the hearts and minds of those affected by the killings.

Councillor Kennedy said: “Despite the profound and enduring sadness of the families involved, they have always avoided lapsing into bitterness or sectarianism and have borne their grief and loss with great dignity.”

On the day of the 30th anniversary - last Thursday - relatives of the murdered men attended a service at the scene of the shooting on the Whitecross/Bessbrook Road. One relative planted a cross with a poppy at the scene.

A total of 12 men were on board the bus when it was stopped by a gang of armed men whilst making the journey home to leave off staff from John Crompton’s clothing factory in Glenanne.

The only Catholic on the bus was allowed to flee and as he ran from the scene, the gunmen opened fire, killing ten of the 11 men on board. Despite being hit 18 times, Alan Black survived.

Nine of the ten men killed in the atrocity were from Bessbrook. They were Reginald Chapman and his brother Walter, Kenneth Worton, Robert Chambers, John Bryans, James McWhirter, James McConville, Robert Freeburn and Joseph Lemmon. Driver Robert Walker was from Glenanne.

Saying the deaths continue to cast a shadow over Bessbrook, Councillor Kennedy said: “The wider Northern Ireland community should never be allowed to forget the suffering ensured by innocent victims, from both communities, over the period of the Troubles.”

Belfast Telegraph

By Michael McHugh
09 January 2006

Republicans who erected Tricolours on land vacated by the Army in south Armagh have been dubbed “ghoulish” by victims’ representatives commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Kingsmills massacre.

UUP Armagh Assemblyman Danny Kennedy voiced his criticism after republicans gathered on Saturday at a series of former watchtower and Army installation points in the border region to erect flags.

Relatives of the 10 men shot dead on their way home from work gathered at Bessbrook, where nine of the deceased lived, for an emotional service yesterday, hours after republicans held their own ceremony.

Although organisers have denied any connection to Kingsmills, Mr Kennedy said it would be seen as offensive by those who had suffered.

“It is ghoulish timing and it is an indication that there are those in society who are devoid of compassion for the relatives of those who died at Kingsmills,” he said.

“For an event like this to take place on the same weekend that relatives are marking the 30th anniversary of their loss is a disgrace.”

The events held across south Armagh were organised by the South Armagh Demilitarisation Committee and follows moves by the Army to reduce its presence in the border area.

Sources associated with the committee said the criticism was petty and insisted they did intend to offend victims.

Belfast Telegraph

By Michael McHugh
09 January 2006

The SDLP last night launched a bitter attack on Sinn Fein following reports that republicans may have been spying on the state of their opponents’ marriages.

SDLP deputy leader Alasdair McDonnell accused Sinn Fein of sinking to the “lowest tactics” in gathering information about people’s marriages and private lives.

The broadside follows reports in a Sunday newspaper that Sinn Fein politicians and employees sought details on unionists during a year-long operation at Stormont.

Dr McDonnell said it was time for Sinn Fein to come clean on who oversaw the secret probe.

“Spying and lying are profoundly damaging to the peace process. They undermine trust,” he said.

“You cannot run a successful partnership administration if you are spying on your partners and lying about it to this day.

“It is time that Sinn Fein did the decent thing and told the truth for a change - and admitted who the MLA was who oversaw this spying.”

Sources quoted in a Sunday newspaper yesterday suggested that senior Sinn Fein members were aware of the spy ring and were asked to gather intelligence on political opponents.

South Belfast MP Dr McDonnell added: “Sinn Fein told nationalists that they did not do the Northern Bank. They did.

“They told nationalists that they were co-operating in the investigation of the murder of Robert McCartney. They have not.”

The row over Sinn Fein covert activity has been fuelled by the decision to drop charges against the former head of their Stormont administration, Denis Donaldson, and his subsequent admission that he was working as a British intelligence agent.

There have been widespread reports that a second Sinn Fein mole with a higher public profile than Donaldson may soon be unmasked.

A Sinn Fein spokesman said: “The allegations are based on the same British anti-peace process sources.

“The evidence is that there was a spy ring being operated by the British to bring down the political institutions.”

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern last night urged the political parties to move on from the Stormont spying controversy to focus on restoring devolved government to Northern Ireland.

“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 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.”

BreakingNews.ie

09/01/2006 - 07:42:32

A 20-year-old man is recovering this morning following a paramilitary-style punishment shooting in south Belfast yesterday.

The victim was shot twice in the leg shortly after 6pm.

The attack happened in the mainly loyalist Roden St area.

scoop.co.nz

A clandestine National Security Agency spy program code-named Echelon was likely responsible for tapping into the emails, telephone calls and facsimiles of thousands of average American citizens over the past four years in its effort to identify people suspected of communicating with al-Qaeda terrorists, according to half-a-dozen current and former intelligence officials from the NSA and FBI.

The existence of the program has been known for some time. Echelon was developed in the 1970s primarily as an American-British intelligence sharing system to monitor foreigners - specifically, during the Cold War, to catch Soviet spies. But sources said the spyware, operated by satellite, is the means by which the NSA eavesdropped on Americans when President Bush secretly authorized the agency to do so in 2002.

Another top-secret program code-named Tempest, also operated by satellite, is capable of reading computer monitors, cash registers and automatic teller machines from as far away as a half-mile and is being used to keep a close eye on an untold number of American citizens, the sources said, pointing to a little known declassified document that sheds light on the program.

>>Read on