SAOIRSE32

Daily Ireland

by Aine McEntee
06/02/2006

The wife of a Belfast man murdered on Friday last night described her husband’s killers as ‘scum and cowards’.
Gerard Devlin was murdered on Friday in broad daylight after he was involved in a street fight in Ballymurphy which was linked to a dispute between two families.
Mr Devlin was confronted by a number of men who were carrying knives and baseball bats. He was fatally stabbed and died in his wife Aine’s arms.
Mrs Devlin said she was devastated, but was keeping strong for her children.
“The people that did this are scum and cowards. They’ve left a family of six kids without their daddy,” she told Daily Ireland.
Two men were last night still being questioned by the PSNI in connection with Mr Devlin’s murder.
The police were also investigating whether petrol-bomb attacks on several houses in the Ballymurphy area on Saturday night were linked to his death.
The Devlin family contacted the Police Ombudsman with a complaint about the PSNI last summer after Mr Devlin was attacked with a pitchfork and spade. No one was charged in connecton with the assault.
Last September Mr Devlin told our sister paper the Andersonstown News that a bounty of £10,000 (€14,662) had been placed on his head.
He said at the time he was living in fear of his life and predicted he would be the target of another murder bid.
In the fatal attack on Friday afternoon, the victim had called to his wife’s house in Whitecliff Parade to see his children, as he had recently moved out of the area in an effort to ease tensions.
According to Mr Devlin’s aunt, Bernadette O’Rawe, a number of men called to the door and invited him outside for a fight.
“They asked him out for a fair dig. They did this all the time he was about. He went out but he wasn’t given a chance. When he came out there was too many of them, and they had baseball bats, planks with nails in them, bricks and knives. He didn’t stand a chance.
“And when he was dying on the ground, they were chasing the ambulance with a knife and a baseball bat.
“They were still trying to get him, even though he was on the ground dying.”
She said that during the past three years the rival family had tried to take her nephew’s life on four occasions.
The father-of-six had his throat slashed three years ago after being assaulted by two men. He was stabbed seven times in that attack.
And each time, the names of those responsible were made known to the PSNI.
“There is guilt on the PSNI. They could have done something sooner,” Bernadette O’Rawe said.
“Now Gerard’s gone, everybody is sitting up and taking notice. At last something is being done.”
A spokesman for the Police Ombudsman said if a complaint is made about the PSNI to them, they will investigate the circumstances fully.
“We would constantly be in touch with the family about it if they’ve lodged a complaint with us.
“If they feel they want to update us on anything, then they can.”
A spokesperson for the PSNI said, “In May 2003 Mr Devlin was the victim of another incident.
“However, he declined at the time to have the matter investigated by police.
“The allegations were, however, raised by him during a police investigation into another incident which occurred in late August 2005.
“A file concerning these and other allegations was submitted to the Public Prosecution Service at the start of November 2005.”
Local Sinn Féin councillor Marie Cush said people in the area had suffered enough.
“People are saying enough is enough. They want their streets back,” Marie Cush said.
“People want to look to the future and they want to walk the streets safely, and they want their children to play without fear and intimidation.”

Daily Ireland

Damien Kiberd
06/02/2006

The poet Patrick Kavanagh once asked a most pertinent question. In the course of his poem Epic, he asked: “Who owns this half a rood of rock, this no man’s land, surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claimants?”

He was referring to an argument over a small piece of land in his native Co Monaghan. But the same question might be asked in relation to another, even more contentious matter — ownership of the “intellectual property rights” to the concept of the Irish Republic.

The Dublin political establishment has been making a strong pitch for full ownership of these “rights” in recent months. (Click to view photo) Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has ordained that the annual “military parade” past the GPO in Dublin should be reinstated to coincide with the forthcoming 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising. This annual event was abandoned in the 1970s by order of the Department of Defence in Dublin. It was always a hugely popular event in which the rather poorly equipped members of the army of the state — whose official title is Óglaigh na hÉireann — marched past the birthplace of the Republic, halting before an official reviewing stand laden with political worthies from Dáil Éireann.

Bertie’s newfound enthusiasm for the Easter parade is causing anxiety among letter writers to The Irish Times, who feel, somewhat bizarrely, that the notion of the armed forces marching down the capital’s main thoroughfare could somehow provide a retrospective validation of the IRA campaign waged from 1970 onwards.

Only in Ireland could such odd arguments be put forward. The objectors, for example, ignore totally the fact that the training given to members of the Irish army since 1970 has been entirely designed to combat people who are seen as subversives. The vast bulk of the military training given to recuits in recent decades equips them to tackle small groups of men armed with light infantry weapons, operating from “hides” in rural terrain. In parallel, the intelligence-gathering operations of the Irish army have, as recent state papers confirm, been directed largely at republican subversives and alleged subversives. The same army has, on a number of occasions, been involved in operations directed at the IRA.

The idea that a “national army” might be prevented from strutting its stuff through its own capital city is, by any standards, strange. Can you imagine, for example, French people suggesting that the annual celebrations of Bastille Day in Paris be abandoned? Or that the English queen should put an abrupt stop to the trooping of the colour on Horse Guards Parade?

Taoiseach Ahern was also attacked some time ago when he decided to exhume the remains of Kevin Barry and nine other republicans from their burial places in prison soil and thereafter rebury them in republican graves — eight in Dublin, two in Munster.

The decision, which was carried out by the Irish army with considerable aplomb, provoked a wave of hostile and inaccurate attacks on Ahern in the Southern media. A sustained effort was made to portray Kevin Barry (18 years old at the time of his hanging) as a blood-crazed thug and a would-be sectarian killer. The forensic detail of Barry’s trial was misrepresented completely. The fact that Barry’s gun had jammed during the shoot-out in Church Street or that the gun he carried was incapable of firing bullets of the calibre that killed the British soldier whom he was accused of killing was simply ignored. Earlier military activities carried out by Barry in west Wicklow and northeast Carlow — on the instructions of Michael Collins — were similarly misrepresented and distorted.

The latest member of the Dublin establishment to enter these shark-infested waters of pseudohistorical scholarship is no less a person than President Mary McAleese herself. Her recent address to a public meeting in University College, Cork was delivered in what seems to me to be a measured and even-handed way. But that has not insulated her from attack, again primarily from The Irish Times. The newspaper focused on her rejections of the assertion that the 1916 Rising “was an exclusive and sectarian enterprise”.

It is difficult to know why McAleese felt obliged to reject such an assertion. After all, the suggestion that the Easter Rising was a sectarian enterprise has never been made in any sustained way by historical scholars but by journalists and columnists of the modern period whose track record is well known. And what historian would claim that any of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Republic was animated by sectarian impulses?

Even Pearse, with his pietistic Catholic faith, had a pronounced sense of disrespect for the Castle Catholics of Rathmines and Rathgar and was a radical in areas like policy on education. Connolly was an international socialist. Clarke and his friends within the Fenian movement had grown sick and tired of threats of excommunication, the refusal of the sacraments and so forth over many decades. The most prominent surviving leader of the Rising, Eamon de Valera, is frequently attacked because of the allegedly theocratic (and Catholic) nature of his 1937 constitution but it is almost universally accepted that he was scrupulously evenhanded in his dealings with religious minorities when he held power and that his constitution has innumerable strengths that have stood the test of time.

There is some evidence that prominent figures within republicanism may have had associations with Catholic dogma and teaching that — with the benefit of eight decades of hindsight — are considered unwise or unduly close. William T Cosgrave and Kevin O’Higgins, for example, revealed their strong links with the Catholic hierarchy quite quickly in late 1922 when they enlisted the support of the bishops to procure the surrender of weapons across the country by those who had been involved in the War of Independence. (Today’s revisionists would probably approve of the letters read at Mass that again threatened excommunication, refusal of sacraments etc.) Arthur Griffith’s utterances in the early years of the 20th century contained some anti-Semitic sentiments. And of course, the facility with which members of the FitzGerald and O’Higgins families donned blueshirt uniforms in the 1930s, even wearing them in Dáil Éireann, demonstrated their perceptions of themselves as firmly rooted within the Falangist/corporatist tradition typified by Franco and Mussolini.

But as President McAleese and her media critics well know, any attempt to conflate republicanism and sectarian Catholic attitudes cannot be sustained. The vice-like grip held by the Catholic church on many schools and hospitals predated the 1916 rising by some 85 years and was won with the active backing of the British.

The Irish Times concentrated on a rather small part of the McAleese speech. Of far more interest was her claim that the administration of Ireland during the latter stages of British rule was “carried on as a process of continuous conversation around the fire in the Kildare Street Club by past pupils of the public schools. It was no way to run a country, even without the glass ceiling for Catholics.” Whatever could she mean by this? Will she elaborate further as her second term draws to a close?

Damien Kiberd is a writer and broadcaster. A presenter for NewsTalk 106 in Dublin, he was previously editor of The Sunday Business Post.

Daily Ireland

by Ciarán Barnes
06/02/2006

The families of five people murdered in a loyalist gun attack on a south Belfast bookmaker’s have called on the PSNI to make public the history of the weapons used in the attack.
Relatives of the dead gathered outside the Sean Graham betting shop on the Ormeau Road yesterday for a memorial service on the 14th anniversary of the killings.
On February 5, 1992, two Ulster Defence Association gunmen opened fire in the bookmaker’s shop with an AK47 assault rifle and a Browning pistol. They killed five people.
It later emerged that the UDA informer William Stobie had given the Browning pistol to RUC detectives before the attack.
Police officers gave the gun back to the UDA, which used the weapon to murder a Catholic in a west Belfast pub before using it in the Sean Graham massacre.
The AK47 had previously been used by the Ulster Volunteer Force in a murder bid on a north Belfast Catholic.
Police chiefs have consistently refused to make public the full history of the weapons, despite repeated requests from the families of the Sean Graham victims to do so.
A section of a report by the Canadian judge Peter Cory into cases of collusion between the security services and loyalist paramilitaries focuses on the guns.
However, in the final published version of his investigation, sentences detailing the history of the weapons are deleted.
Sean Graham survivor Mark Sykes, who was shot five times in the attack, said he believed that security chiefs were determined to prevent the history of the weapons being made public. He has maintained they have something to hide.
“There is something about those guns that they don’t want us to find out,” he said.
“Why else are they refusing to disclose the full history of the weapons? Why was this crucial information deleted in the published version of the Cory report?
“I was shot five times in the attack. My brother-in-law was killed, along with four other people. I have a right to know the history of the guns involved.”
The Browning and AK47 were part of a consignment brought into the North in December 1987 by the UDA informer Brian Nelson.
The double agent’s British army handlers had full knowledge of the huge arms shipment but did nothing to prevent the transportation from apartheid South Africa.
The arms were divided between the UDA, UVF and the Ulster Resistance group, which for a time had links to Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party.
The South African weapons have been used in more than 100 sectarian killings since January 1988.
Those murdered in the Sean Graham betting shop 14 years ago were Christy Doherty, Jack Duffin, James Kennedy, William McManus and Peter Magee.
Four of the five UDA men who planned and carried out the attack are also dead. They are Joe Bratty, Raymond Elder, Jim Gray and Terry Mercer. The fifth man was expelled from the UDA’s east Belfast brigade last year after an internal row.

Irelandclick

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has called for maximum community support for Féile an Phobail as it faces its greatest funding crisis since its establishment in 1988.

As revealed in Thursday’s Andersonstown News, uncertainty hangs over the festival after the Department for Social Development (DSD) and the Department of Culture Arts and Leisure (DCAL) called a halt to funding.

This has resulted in the loss of five key jobs within Féile an Phobail.

“Breaches of commitments on funding by the Department for Social Development and Department of Culture, including breaches of personal commitments given to me by British Ministers, mean that the Féile’s ability to organise key events will be severely affected,” said Mr Adams.

“The West Belfast Féile is one of the most successful of its kind in these islands.

“It empowers local communities, is an educational and play resource for thousands of children each year, draws in millions of pounds to the local economy, is a major tourist attraction for the city and promotes the arts and culture,” he added.

The West Belfast MP said that the Féile also crucially provides an opportunity for people from different backgrounds to come together and talk about issues affecting them.

“In particular this involves representatives of unionist and loyalist organisations, as well as ethnic minorities,” said the Sinn Féin President.
“I have spoken to the British Secretary of State and other Ministers on this issue.

“I will continue to lobby and press them on it but it is also very important that everyone within the West Belfast community mobilises around the Féile,” he added.

Journalist:: Staff Journalist

Random Ramblings from a Republican

Once again: This time 25 years ago:

On Friday, February 6th, 1981, the IRA, after promises to hinder British ship movement off the Irish coast, bombed and sank a British coal boat: the Nellie M.

>>>Read on

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Derry Journal

Friday 3rd February 2006

Monday (today) marks the 25th anniversary of the IRA sinking of the ‘Nellie M’ coal boat in Lough Foyle. On Friday, February 6th, 1981, the merchant vessel, valued at £3million, with a coal cargo worth £1million, was at anchor in Lough Foyle between the coasts of Co. Derry and Co. Donegal, waiting for the tide to turn so she could proceed upriver to Derry.

What its skipper and crew didn’t know, however, was that an armed IRA unit was on its way to scupper it. Seven IRA men hijacked a pilot boat at Moville pilot station and instructed its pilot, a Moville native, to take seven volunteers armed with tons of explosives out to the coal ship. Five IRA men kept guard at Moville docks during the operation. Reports from the time, including those in the ‘Derry Journal’ recount how the IRA went on board the ‘Nellie M’ and commandeered the vessel. They informed the ship’s chief engineer about their intention. Realising the seriousness of the situation, he agreed to cooperate and went to the living quarters to inform the crew. The captain of the ‘Nellie M’ would later comment on the professionalism of the IRA volunteers.

With four of them keeping guard over the skipper and crew, the other three immediately set about planting the timed explosives in preplanned positions in the engine room. The crew were then told to put on lifejackets and get into their lifeboat. The volunteers then attached a rope from the lifeboat to the Moville pilot boat and towed it towards shore.

When they were close to shore, the lifeboat was then set adrift. At about this time, when the volunteers and ‘Nellie M’ crew were out of harm’s way, the merchant coal ship was rocked with an explosion and the fires on deck could be seen from miles around. Another explosion, timed to go off several hours later, would slowly begin to sink her. By daybreak, the rear of the vessel was submerged. It is understood the IRA volunteers left a message on board that merchant ships in future would meet the same fate, in line with their pledge to disrupt the movement of British ships off the Irish coast. The crews of such ships would not be targeted, they said. Almost a year to the day later, a second coal boat, the St. Bedan of Glasgow, was also bombed and sunk by the IRA. Moville man Seamus Bovaird, who was home on leave from the Merchant Navy at the time the St. Bedan was bombed, recalls the aftermath of the incident.

“I was a member of the Merchant Navy and Airline Officers Association and the union asked me to help their members on the St. Bedan, who included the crew and officers. “They were taken to Keaveney’s Hotel and because they had come in from sea on a raft, they were standing there soaking wet, not knowing how they would get home. “We organised for them to get clothes from a local shop, Breslin’s and shoes from Bonner’s. The bills for these clothes were all paid up about three months later. We also organised for them to get transport home. Some flew and others took the ferry,” he remembered.
But the story of the ‘Nellie M’ didn’t end there. She was raised and refurbished in 1982, sold to an Irish company and renamed ‘Ellie’. Two years later, JR Rix & Sons Ltd., of Hull bought her and once again she was renamed, this time to ‘Timrix’. In 1991, the vessel was extended by about seven metres and in 1995 was again resold. She was renamed ‘Maltese Venture’ and within a year, sold again as the ‘Spezi’. Six years ago, in 2000, she crossed the Atlantic to new Colombian owners and is still trading as ‘The Dove’. Not many boats can boast of having had no fewer than six names.

Sinn Féin

Published: 6 February, 2006

The DUP Mayor of Coleraine Cllr Timothy Deans has apologised to Sinn Féin councillor Billy Leonard for trying to exclude him and his colleagues from a Christmas reception, paid for by the ratepayers.It is thought that this is the first time a DUP representative has had to admit that he acted against the law and apologise to a Sinn Féin representative as a result of legal proceedings. Seven unionist councillors now face the threat of being surcharged as a result.

Cllr Leonard instigated High Court proceedings against the Mayor and Coleraine Borough Council under Equality legislation. It is believed that the council received legal advice to settle out of court because they were on very weak legal ground and Leonard was bound to win.

The Sinn Féin councillor said:

“This was a clear cut case of misrepresenting the ratepayer. The DUP mayor tried to pursue his party policy of excluding Sinn Féin from a function paid for by the ratepayer. It didn‚t work and perhaps the DUP in Coleraine and elsewhere will learn from this episode.

“There may be only one Sinn Féin councillor on Coleraine Borough Council but we as a party are determined to pick our challenges wisely. I believe this is the first time that the DUP have admitted that they acted against the law and apologised to a Sinn Féin representative.

“Eight months into this Council term and Sinn Féin has drawn a firm line against unionist intransigence and there will be more.”

And Leonard is determined not to let the question of costs rest.

“Sinn Féin has already notified the Local Government Auditor of its opinion that the seven councillors who voted for this exclusion should be personally liable for the costs of this case. Local electors will now take the necessary action to instigate this process.

“Seven councillors cannot act in this way and think there is no comeback. That is why Sinn Féin proposed a motion before the event and demanded a recorded vote. If six DUP councillors, including the Mayor, and one Ulster Unionist councillor believe that they can act against equality legislation they need to pay for the case that has proved otherwise.” ENDS

BN.ie

06/02/2006 - 16:05:31

An electrician accused of murdering 29 people in the Omagh bomb massacre was refused bail today over fears he may flee south. Sean Hoey is pictured here in an artist’s impression.

An electrician accused of murdering 29 people in the Omagh bomb massacre was refused bail today over fears he may flee south.

A judge told Belfast Crown Court he could not release Sean Hoey, 36, because he had tried to escape arrest by hiding in bushes.

With the south Armagh man facing 58 charges involving 14 separate terrorist attacks, Mr Justice Weir insisted the allegations against him were too serious to back the case put forward by his defence.

Even though Hoey has been on remand for nearly 900 days, he now faces another seven months behind bars before standing trial in September for the Omagh bombing.

The accused, of Molly Road, Jonesborough, near the border, denies involvement in the August 1998 no-warning strike on the Co Tyrone market town.

As well as killing 29 people and unborn twins, a massive car bomb detonated by the Real IRA injured hundreds more.

Hoey has also been charged with a series of other dissident republican attacks across the North during the same period.

Although his defence argued that Hoey has been on remand eight times longer than any suspect in England can be held, Mr Justice Weir accepted Crown fears that he may not turn up for trial.

The judge’s concerns were heightened by Hoey’s bid to escape when he was seized at his home in September 2003.

Mr Justice Weir said: “The conclusion I have reached is that there is a well-founded fear that if released on bail the applicant would fail to surrender to it. He attempted to evade arrest and to hide himself when police came to arrest him the last time.

“The fact he lives close to the border, has family living there and has a history of employment in the Republic of Ireland, means he would find it more straightforward than others to establish himself in the Republic of Ireland if he chose to do so.”

Friends of Hoey, who sat expressionless in the dock, were prepared to lodge £50,000 (€73,000) in cash, a farm and land as sureties that he would not flee if released.

His mother, Rita, was also ready to hand over her total savings of £1,500 (€2,200) and put up the family home as assurance, Mr Justice Weir was told.

But as Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed at Omagh, listened from the public gallery, the judge set out why he could not agree to the request.

The most serious charges against Hoey were the 29 murders, he stressed.

Mr Justice Weir accepted Hoey had been in custody for some time and would have to wait months before the non-jury trial could get under way, but he did not accept that the delay had been inordinate.

“Given the gravity and extent of the charges the applicant faces, I consider that no conditions the court might impose could guard against the risk of the applicant absconding,” he added.

“I must refuse the application for bail.”

BBC

Two of the charges related to the murder of Jameson Lockhart

A solicitor whose meetings with clients were secretly taped by police has denied attempting to incite a murder.

Manmohan Sandhu, 41, of Colby Avenue in Londonderry, also faced four charges of perverting the course of justice.

Two of these charges related to the police inquiry into the UVF murder of Jameson Lockhart last July.

A detective chief inspector said the evidence against Mr Sandhu was solely based on recordings of conversations with clients at Antrim police station.

He told Antrim Magistrates Court these were obtained from a listening device hidden in a solicitors’ consultation room at its serious crime suite.

The policeman agreed that a solicitor’s meetings with clients should be confidential.

However, he added: “Given the seriousness and unusual nature of the offences, I am satisfied that the police response was proportionate, lawful and necessary.”

Feud sparked

A loyalist feud was sparked by the murder of north Belfast man Jameson Lockhart, 25, who was shot as he sat in a lorry on the lower Newtownards Road in the city last July.

Mr Sandhu was accused of attempting to frustrate the police investigation into the murder.

Similarly, he was accused of attempting to frustrate the police investigation into the attempted murder of Jonathan Hillier last August.

Mr Sandhu was also charged with attempting to incite an unknown person to murder Mr Hillier.

He replied “definitely not guilty” to the charges when they were put to him.

Mr Sandhu was remanded in custody.

Meanwhile, Law Society Chief Executive John Bailie has been holding a private meeting with Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde to raise its concerns that Mr Sandhu’s private conversations with his clients were bugged.

Belfast Telegraph

By Marie Foy
06 February 2006

A RELATIVE of murdered father-of-six Gerard Devlin today appealed for calm in west Belfast as police investigate a number of fires in the area.

The 39-year-old was stabbed to death as he picked up his children in the Whitecliffe Parade area of Ballymurphy on Friday afternoon.

Two men arrested in connection with the killing were today still being questioned by police.

Two of Mr Devlin’s relatives were also seriously injured during the brutal attack.

The row has been linked to a long-running dispute between the murder victim’s relatives and some members of another local family.

Mr Devlin had moved out of the area after an agreement was reached regarding the affair.

Mr Devlin’s aunt, Bernadette O’Rawe, said that he had only returned to Ballymurphy for 15 minutes to collect his children when he was targeted.

“He was making a new life for himself - he had moved out of the district.

“He came in to take his kids out,” she said.

The family had been planning to move to Glenavy in Co Antrim.

Several homes in Dermot Hill sustained minor damage after they were attacked with petrol bombs on Saturday night.

Detectives are investigating claims that the incidents are linked to the killing.

Mrs O’Rawe has appealed for all attacks and trouble in the area to stop.

“We want any talk of feuds to end.

“We condemn what has been going on with houses and shops burning,” she said.

“We are not responsible, we don’t know who is responsible. We want to make it clear that this sort of thing isn’t helping our cause.”

Mrs O’Rawe said that the family had not had time to come to terms with their grief because of the trouble which had flared.

Mr Devlin’s funeral is expected to be held on Wednesday.

Sinn Fein councillor Marie Cush said: “Feelings are still running high over this senseless murder.

“Community workers are doing their best to keep a lid on the situation and they are doing their best to ensure that no-one else loses their lives.

“The main focus now should be about respecting the Devlin family’s right to be allowed to bury their loved one in peace.”

Belfast Telegraph

Seventeen years after his murder, and an official inquiry into the killing seems no nearer. Chris Thornton examines the reasons why

By Chris Thorton
06 February 2006

THE seventeenth anniversary of Pat Finucane’s murder comes round in six days. When the defence lawyer was shot dead in front of his family back in 1989, there were almost immediate suspicions that there was more to his death than met the eye.

Over the years, those suspicions have become well-grounded in fact. It is now more than two years since Britain’s most senior policeman and a retired justice of the Canadian Supreme Court independently came to the conclusion that there was collusion between the UDA men who killed Mr Finucane and members of the security forces.

The next stage, at least according to Justice Peter Cory, was clear: there should be a public inquiry into the collusion surrounding the murder - the exact outcome for which Mr Finucane’s family had been campaigning down the years.

Since then, on the surface at least, very little has happened. There has been no apparent progress towards an inquiry - no panel named, no date set for a start. The exception is the passage of an important piece of legislation, one that currently stands between the Government and the Finucanes.

Tomorrow Mr Finucane’s widow, Geraldine, and other members of the family will meet Secretary of State Peter Hain about the problems in setting up the inquiry.

After campaigning for years for an inquiry, the family now find themselves in the curious position of opposing the one proposed by the Government. That is because the legislation passed to bring about the inquiry, the Inquiries Act, gives the Government unprecedented powers to keep aspects of the case secret.

Mr Hain also finds himself in a curious position. He has said there will be an inquiry under the Inquiries Act or “none at all”.

But the family’s opposition has made setting up the inquiry difficult - so far the Finucanes have successfully discouraged judges around the world from chairing the tribunal - and could ultimately render it pointless. The Finucanes’ refusal to cooperate would be a serious challenge to the inquiry’s credibility even before it opened.

The “none at all” option is equally unsatisfactory, in that it puts everything back to square one. Disturbing questions about the case remain unanswered and the Government looks as if it still has something to hide.

The family is not alone in having problems with the Act, which was rushed through Parliament last year. Justice Cory and the judges who chair the Bloody Sunday Inquiry have also questioned it.

The Government says the Act makes public inquiries more focused; in the wake of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry’s huge costs, it applies a brake to funding.

But the Act is controversial because it has made an important shift in powers: now the Government adopts the role of player and referee in the operation of an inquiry. Where the chairman of a tribunal or a High Court judge would determine whether sensitive information given to the inquiry should be secret, now that power lies with a Minister.

What a Minister wants excluded is automatically excluded; he or she may also stop the inquiry at any time and edit the inquiry’s final report.

The Finucanes argue that this takes away the independence of the inquiry, and they are not alone. Last week, David Wright, the father of loyalist Billy Wright, took High Court proceedings against the use of the Act in the inquiry into his son’s murder in the Maze Prison.

National security is an important factor in the Finucane case, at the very least in terms of exposing the practices of intelligence agencies. After all, it was an Army agent that supplied the information that led to Mr Finucane’s murder. It was a police agent who supplied the guns. The man who organised the killing is believed to have been yet another agent, and one of the triggermen was later recruited as a police agent, in spite of making a confession to detectives.

The Finucanes have not disputed that national security is a genuine consideration in an inquiry, but they point out that such concerns have been adequately protected by the legislation that has been in place for more than 80 years.

RTÉ

06 February 2006 11:02

The Northern Secretary, Peter Hain, has said he is confident that a way forward can be found at talks which get under way at Hillsborough in Co Down today.

The discussions, involving Northern Ireland’s political parties and the Irish and British governments, will explore ways of restoring a power-sharing assembly at Stormont.

Mr Hain said all the parties had put forward proposals and all sides accepted that the current state of political paralysis was simply not sustainable.
Advertisement

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, has arrived at Hillsborough for the talks.

The Assembly has been closed since autumn 2002.

BBC

Police investigating the disappearance of a County Down man are to begin an underwater search at Belfast docks.

Martin Kelly, from Holywood, was last seen in the docks area on New Year’s Day after going with friends to a bar in Garmoyle Street.

Divers, boats and sonar equipment are to be used in a two-week operation.

They plan to search an area around the spot where CCTV footage pictured a man standing on the night the 21-year-old went missing.

Mr Kelly, a plumber and part-time barman, stayed on in Pat’s Bar after his friends left and was seen leaving it alone at about 1910 GMT.

The PSNI have also renewed their appeal for information about Mr Kelly’s disappearance.

They said they wanted to hear from anyone who may have seen him in a nightclub or other premises on the night of 1 January or from any taxi driver who may have collected him and taken him elsewhere.

Mr Kelly’s family and friends have previously criticised the police for not doing enough to find him.

Searches

Since his disappearance, they have handed out leaflets outside Belfast City Hall and at the Odyssey arena, in an attempt to jog people’s memory and gain information.

Last Sunday, they released 100 yellow balloons, before taking part in a search of the docklands and surrounding areas.

Many people also took part in a walk from Garmoyle Street back to Mr Kelly’s home town.

Paul Kelly, Martin’s brother-in-law, believes the family’s campaign forced the police into action.

“No missing person would get this level of support at this stage from police unless there was pressure, not only from the family but also from the media as well as large backing and support from the public,” he said.

Mr Kelly said the family believed every person who went missing had the right to be found quickly and that searches should be done speedily and effectively.

“It is only by the pressure we have put on as a family to the police that these searches are taking place,” he said.

The family and friends of the missing man have also launched a website to try to gain clues to his whereabouts.

BBC

The plant could launder 80,000 litres of fuel a week

Three fuel laundering plants have been uncovered in south Armagh, HM Revenue and Customs has said.

Customs officers and police visited three rural locations in the Cullyhanna area on Friday and dismantled two fuel laundering plants in farm buildings.

They also dealt with a third laundering plant which was mobile.

The illegal operations had the combined capacity to produce 80,000 litres of laundered fuel per week. No arrests were made and enquiries are continuing.

They recovered 30,000 litres of contaminated fuel and seized a fuel tanker, pumps and filtration and storage equipment.

In addition 5,000 litres of sulphuric acid and 7,000 litres of toxic contaminated sludge, the hazardous chemical residue of the laundering process, were cleared from the sites.

Toxic sludge was found on the lorry

HMRC Head of Detection Northern Ireland, Colin McAllister said the estimated annual loss in revenue of £2,250,000 should have been “going to our schools and hospitals, not into the pockets of a few individuals”.

“People need to be aware of the potential environmental damage that can be caused by the indiscriminate dumping in our countryside of the waste products from the laundering process,” he said.

“They need to consider what happens to the waste by product and the damage caused by contamination to arable land and our water and rivers.”

He revealed that a lorry carrying about 5,000 litres of hazardous laundering waste was abandoned at the roadside in County Armagh last week.

“This waste is a danger for the local community and the environment, and is difficult and expensive to dispose of safely,” he said.

Sinn Féin

Published: 5 February, 2006

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has extended his “deepest sympathy and condolences to the family of Eileen Haddock (nee Hickey) who has died after a long and courageous battle against illness.”

Mr. Adams said:

“Eileen comes from one of those spinal Belfast republican families which in times of great danger and challenge helped organise and sustain the republican struggle. In 1973 she was arrested and spent four and a half years in prison. While there she was Armagh Women’s Prison’s first Republican O.C. (Officer Commanding). She formed the women prisoners into a coherent republican structure and was a determined spokesperson for them in negotiations and arguments with the prison administration.

On her release in 1977 she returned to republican activism. She was a stalwart,hard working republican enormously respected by all who knew her.

She also returned to education and qualified as a teacher. Eileen recognised that there was a section of children and young people falling out of full time education in West Belfast. Some were being expelled, some just dropped out, and others were having real problems learning in the formal classroom environment. She began teaching in Fr. Des Wilson’s Springhill project. In Springhill, and subsequently in Conway Mill when the school moved there, Eileen proved an effective teacher. She had a remarkable ability to motivate the young people she taught. She also was principally responsible for introducing exams into the curriculum for the youngsters.

Conway Mill is also renowned for its art and theatre activities and Eileen ensured that these were an integral part of the experience of the young people who attended her classes.

Eileen and her husband Johnny Haddock were very much part of the Sean O’Neill craft shop which provided local artists and designers an opportunity to showcase their work. And she was also very much involved in the ‘Prisoners Day’ exhibition held each August in the Felon’s Club as part of Féile an Phobail. Eileen and several close friends and colleagues were very keen on opening a museum in the Mill that would reflect the story of republicanism in Belfast. They established the Irish republican History Museum Committee and were given the An tSean Mhuillean club in the Mill as the site for their museum. This has required much refurbishment and the gathering of artefacts from the 1940s and on.

Eileen published an excellent book, entitled ‘Essays on Irish History through Verse’ the proceeds from which went to the Museum. In many ways all of this was entirely appropriate. Conway Mill was very much at the heart of events in 1969. In its shadow Catholic families were driven from their homes by loyalist mobs and the RUC and later, as Fr. Des, Tom Cahill, Eileen and others tried to maximise the potential of Conway Mill to provide employment in west Belfast, it was one of the first projects to suffer political vetting by the British government. In 2003 mural artists honoured those visionaries who in 1982 established Conway Mill and included on the mural, which can still be seen, is Eileen and Elsie Best.

Eileen was a dedicated republican activist and community leader who made a significant contribution to improving the quality of life of many of those she came into contact with, particularly the young people.

To her family and friends I want to extend on behalf of the entire republican community and the people of west Belfast our deepest sympathies and condolences.” ENDS