SAOIRSE32

Irish Times

**Via Newshound

Conor Lally, and Gerry Moriarty in Ballybinaby
10 March 2006

The massive cross-Border security operation launched yesterday against an oil laundering business will resume along the Louth-Armagh border this morning. (Fuel tankers being driven from Murphy’s farm after raid - photo from Telegraph)

Gardaí believe the main focus of the inquiry, former chief of staff of the IRA Thomas “Slab” Murphy, may have hidden from them in an underground bunker throughout the day.

Today’s follow-up operations will have to deal with the disposal of up to six tonnes of synthetic chemicals believed to have been used in the oil laundering business and which may be highly toxic.

Murphy was not at home when his farm straddling the Border at Ballybinaby in north Louth was raided just before 7am yesterday.

Three people aged in their 50s and 60s, two men and a woman, were arrested during yesterday’s operation. All were later released.

Yesterday’s searches of multiple sites and premises, named Operation Achilles, involved more than 300 Garda and PSNI officers, Irish and British soldiers, and customs and revenue officials from both sides of the Border.

Co-ordinated searches took place around the townland of Ballybinaby and across the Border in Crossmaglen, south Armagh, and in Newry, Co Down.

The operation was linked to the investigation last year into a €44 million property empire around the Manchester area with which Murphy has been linked.

A fleet of tankers which were being used to transport laundered fuel was seized during the searches. Some of the trucks bore the livery of multinational fuel companies, allowing them to drive cross-country without arousing suspicion.

Four laundering facilities attached to a major network of storage tanks, some of which were underground, were also found.

Gardaí also recovered at least €200,000 in cash stuffed into plastic bags, 30,000 smuggled cigarettes and two firearms.

Documentation and computer hard drives were also seized at the north Louth properties and at a number of offices in Dundalk and Crossmaglen.

Gardaí believe a soft-sided trailer fitted with large oil tanks has been used to export oil off the island of Ireland by truck via the ports.

The Irish Times has learned that a very significant amount of illegal fuel has been detected leaving Dublin Port destined for Liverpool for distribution across northern England. One line of inquiry now being pursued is that at least some of this fuel came from the plant targeted yesterday.

The three people who were arrested were taken for questioning to Garda stations in Drogheda and Kells. They were released without charge last night. A file will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.

A fourth person escaped during the course of the raids in north Louth. He drove away at high speed across the Border into Northern Ireland and then took to the fields on foot.

He is a much younger man than the people who were arrested and is well known to them.

The Garda helicopter was involved in trying to follow him and is believed to have briefly entered Northern airspace.

Gardaí said a break-in at Dundalk courthouse where the search warrants used yesterday were issued on Wednesday was in no way linked to the operation.

Yesterday’s searches in the Republic were carried out by up to 150 personnel from the Garda, revenue, customs and Army.

A similar number of PSNI members, British soldiers and customs personnel were involved in searches north of the Border in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh, and Newry, Co Down.

Daily Ireland

Editor: Colin O’Carroll
10/03/2006

So, when it came down to brass tacks, the DUP worked out that the incalculable debt that the people of the North owe to the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) is in fact very calculable indeed – £28,000 (€40,7000) a head for full timers, in fact and £14,000 (€20,350) for part timers.
The instinctive reaction to news that British armed forces minister Adam Ingram is to spend £250 million (€364 million) on pay-offs to the doomed home service battalions of the RIR is to point to other areas where such a vast sum could be much better spent. And we can’t help feeling that it would have been nice if the British could have directed some of that vast amount of money to the many victims of the RIR and their blood-soaked predecessors, the UDR.
After all, the British government directed that baleful nexus of the UDR/RIR and loyalist paramilitaries whose raison d’être was to strike terror into the Catholic community and who carried out some of the most sickening atrocities of the Troubles. Not a bit of it. Not only do we have to put up with the idea of that discredited regiment being handsomely remunerated for their part in the sectarian slaughter, but we have to listen to endless claptrap about how the brave men and women of the RIR/UDR stopped the North from sliding into the abyss.
“They [RIR/UDR] should all be rightly proud of the of the crucial role they have played in creating the environment for normalisation,” said Mr Ingram yesterday. Crucial role? Normalisation? Ask any Catholic who was ever stopped by some tattooed louts in uniform up a country lane at night what they think of the regiment’s crucial role in creating the environment for normalisation, Mr Ingram, and you’ll get a rather different answer. The fact of the matter is that the regiment did as much, if not more, to deepen and prolong the conflict than any of the illegal paramilitaries.
That the regiment is happy to take money to go away quietly is as good a measure of its calibre as any. And that the DUP was the main broker behind the deal says much about that party’s priorities. But at least the main unionist party has learned that a defeat doesn’t have to be total – sometimes a bit of filthy lucre can be salvaged from the ruins.
They failed to smash the IRA; they failed to crush Sinn Féin; they failed to save the B Specials; they failed to rescue the RUC. They failed to save the RIR, too, but at least this time they got their pals in uniform a few extra quid. It’s official: for the DUP, serving Ulster is worth the price of a conservatory or a time-share in the Algarve.
Even as we speak, the DUP are engaged in a similarly grubby deal with the British government over what size of a wad it’s going to take to persuade Protestants not to wreck the place every time they’re denied permission to march. Really, you have to wonder what Edward Carson would make of it all.

Daily Ireland

UDR/RIR £250 million payoff – ‘For justice, the truth of this regiment’s role must be independently investigated’

By Jarlath Kearney
10/03/2006

Relatives of people killed by the UDR/RIR yesterday described a £250 million (€364) million ‘golden handshake’ for 3,000 soldiers as ‘repugnant and offensive’.

(Click photo to view)

The British government announced the severance package at Westminster after six months of pressure by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
The disbandment of RIR units based in the North – known as the Home Service – was announced last July within days of the IRA’s historic statement ordering its volunteers to pursue purely political activities.
The British government’s severance package will ensure full-time soldiers receive £28,000 (€40,800) on top of a redundancy payment and life pension. Part-time RIR members will receive £14,000 (€20,400), as well as their redundancy and pension.
Responding to the announcement, DUP leader Ian Paisley stressed his party’s opposition to the disbandment of the RIR.
However, he said that the DUP “made a very strong case to the MoD… on the basis of comparative equality with payments made to the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the prison officers”.
“The price of their life’s blood which many of them sacrificed can never be valued. I am personally glad that the socio-economic difficulties that these men will have to face in getting employment in the province have been recognised by the government and we will continue to discuss these matters with the government,” Mr Paisley said.
Between 1970 and 1990, over 300 members of the UDR were convicted of serious loyalist offences.
Following the collusion scandal of the late 1980s, when security photo montages of Catholics were published by loyalist paramilitaries, the British government renamed the regiment as the RIR. However, even as recently as July 2004, 28 RIR members were removed from duties after the “disappearance” of a major intelligence document about 400 nationalists from the Castlereagh security base in east Belfast.
Relatives for Justice (RFJ), which campaigns for victims affected by state violence, condemned the severance payments.
RFJ spokesperson Tommy Carroll, whose brother Adrian was killed by UDR members in 1983, said: “This is a payoff to put a gloss on what was otherwise a shameful chapter. It is an affront to the memory of those killed as a result of the UDR/RIR activities and all decent people who had the misfortune to endure the sectarian abuse and harrassment that was the UDR/RIR.
“For many, their ‘duty’ saw no distinction between their role in the UDR/RIR and their loyalist murder gang of choice. For those nationalists on the receiving end there was little distinction either.
“The issue of truth and justice are paramount. The British government has yet to recognise the terrible injustices it inflicted through its armed forces. It has yet to face up to policies of collusion, of which the UDR/RIR was at the heart,” Mr Carroll said.
Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew, described the RIR and UDR as a “paramilitary force”.
“Sinn Féin have consistently raised the issue of the continuing role of the RIR, its sectarian composition and its collusion with the unionist paramilitaries,” Ms Gildernew said.
“The issue of collusion and the RIR will not go away. Unionist arguments about the economic implications resulting from the scrapping of the RIR expose the truth about their opposition to progress on demilitarisation. It is based on unionist self-interest not the interests of the peace process or the demilitarisation of our society.
“Rather than seek a British exchequer subvention of millions for the exclusive benefit of the unionist population, I believe that many people in places like Fermanagh and Tyrone would prefer to see this money spent on improving the roads infrastructure, improving local schools and in developing the local economy to the benefit of everyone,” Ms Gildernew said.
SDLP assembly member Dominic Bradley described the severance package as “a pay-off to the DUP”.
“But the important point to remember is that the RIR is gone from the political landscape. The RIR was a political and community relations disaster like its predecessors, the UDR and the B-Specials.
“Collusion with loyalist killer gangs was rife and systemic in many parts of the UDR and no significant attempt was made to clean it up before it was rolled over into the RIR,” Mr Bradley said.

BN.ie

10/03/2006 - 13:39:09

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams today stood by alleged former IRA chief Thomas “Slab” Murphy.

The businessman, whose farm is at the centre of a police probe into a multi-million pound smuggling operation, has been wrongly demonised, he claimed.

Mr Adams declared: “Tom Murphy is not a criminal. He is a good republican.”

Murphy’s sprawling estate, straddling the Irish border, was among 15 properties searched on Thursday during police raids planned in Belfast and Dublin.

Around €300,000 in cash, 30,000 cigarettes, 8,000 litres of fuel and weapons were all seized in the offensive against organised crime.

Two men and a woman arrested during swoops in north Louth and south Armagh were questioned and released last night by gardaí.

Murphy, the one-time alleged IRA chief of staff, who is already under investigation by the Assets Recovery Agency probing house sales in the Greater Manchester area, was not detained.

But police customs officials and soldiers were all involved in a major operation on his land at Hackballscross.

Murphy, 62, insists he is a legitimate farmer with no involvement in crime.

And Mr Adams offered his total support following raids which were months in the planning.

“I read his statement after the Manchester raids and I believe what he says,” the West Belfast MP insisted.

“He is also a keen supporter of the Sinn Féin peace strategy.”

Asked if Murphy was a member of the IRA Army Council, Mr Adams replied: “If he denies being a member of the IRA then I accept that.”

Mr Adams was critical of the scale of the huge cross-border operation, but backed its objectives.

“We support the pursuit of criminal assets,” he added.

“Anybody who is involved in criminality should face the full rigours of the law.

“That includes the right to a fair trial and the right not to be vilified in the media.”

Irelandclick

Anger over yet another rise in waiting lists for nationalists

The chairman of St Patrick’s and St Joseph’s Housing Committee has blasted the latest Housing Executive report that shows that housing stress and homelessness continues to rise.
Liam Wiggins has also branded the outgoing North Belfast Housing Strategy “a complete failure” and demanded that any next strategy be split so it addresses both unionist and nationalist areas separately because of their differing needs.
“After three years of the North Belfast Housing Strategy we called for a review as regards unionist and nationalist areas because they had two different sets of needs, this did not happen. Now we are in the final year of the seven-year strategy and in the area we represent not one brick has been placed on top of another one in a new build development to increase the number of homes,” he said.
“I would ask the Housing Executive if management consider this strategy a success?
Liam Wiggins was responding to a report released recently entitled: Northern Ireland Housing Market – Review and Perspectives.
It showed housing stress figures for North Belfast (those over 30 points in the controversial points system) had again increased by 14 per cent since its last report. Of the entire housing need under and over 30 points, the figure had risen by 16 per cent.
Liam Wiggins said based on these percentages, he estimated that nationalists were now over 90 per cent of the waiting list.
“This so-called strategy has delivered nothing but more housing crisis, now up to 90 per cent from March 2000 at the start of the strategy when it was 73 per cent. We ask: Is this a success?”
The housing campaigner also said that that the Girdwood barracks development plans raised more questions than answers following claims by the SDLP’s Alban Maginness that it would go some way to easing the problem of housing in nationalist areas.
“We need to know what the plans for Girdwood are. Is it going to be a split site, and if so then what percentage of the land will be earmarked for housing? How many units will be built? Whilst we welcome any housing and potential leisure facility being built on the site the facts are that there will be no work started for at least two years which means the waiting list will continue to rise.”
Solving the long-term housing problem for nationalists demands more commitment from government, said Liam Wiggins.
“Realistically what nationalist North Belfast needs is a separate housing strategy similar to the Shankill. This has to be a strategy based on need and the genuine acquisition of land in sufficient amounts to meet that need.”
Liam Wiggins said the answer was an urban village for Sailortown.
“The swathes of land that are lying behind the dock gates under the control of a quango – the Harbour Commission – are the answer to this spiralling problem.”
A Housing Executive spokeswoman admitted that the housing stress list continued to rise, but claimed the situation would be much worse without the strategy.
But again she rejected accusations that the North Belfast Housing Strategy had failed, insisting the investment “cannot in any terms be classed as a failure”.
“By the end of March 2006, the Housing Strategy will have invested £166 million in North Belfast. Up to 2005, the Strategy had brought 822 new homes to North Belfast and by the end of March this year that total was expected to exceed 1,100.”

Journalist:: Evan Short

Irelandclick

The BBC programmes on truth and reconciliation aired this week should not be viewed as an example of the form any proper truth process should take, an Ardoyne research group has said.

Tom Holland of the Ardoyne Commemoration Project said right from the outset his group and other victims’ groups objected to the BBC hosting such intense and painful exchanges about the conflict.
“These programmes may well help to highlight the need for some way to be found to comprehensively deal with our past.
“But the BBC, with respect to the political situation in Ireland, has always demonstrated an inherent British government and unionist bias,” Tom Holland said.
“This was reflected in the programmes’ content with two loyalist and three republican ‘perpetrators’ and one British soldier who thinks he might have accidentally killed the wrong man.”
The Facing the Truth series and subsequent special Spotlight episodes aired this week featured several North Belfast people including former IRA member Joe Doherty who met up with victims of the Narrow Water bombing, despite his not being involved in the attack, and Mary McLarnon who met with the British soldier who shot dead her brother, Michael McLarnon, in 1971.
Clifford Burrage, who admitted killing Michael, also met with Ardoyne republican Martin Meehan – he had savagely beaten Meehan to within an inch of his life that same year.
Tom Holland said the programme, which was chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, masked the complexity of the conflict.
“It has brought us no closer to understanding who was involved, why they were involved, what role they played and how that impacted on the rest of society,” he said.
“More importantly, they showed no interest in the wider lessons we as a society need to learn from our traumatic experiences if we are to ensure that we never again revisit the conditions of conflict.”
To gain a proper understanding of the conflict an independent, international truth commission is required, the ACP believes.
“Neither the British state, unionists nor republicans have a right to control such a process.
“They all have an equal responsibility to outline their role in the violence and in creating the context to the suffering over the last 37 years.
“We owe it to the victims, to ourselves and to future generations to deal with this issue once and for all in a manner which has the fullest appreciation of the causes, context and consequences of the conflict we all had to endure.”
Martin Meehan, who took part in the Spotlight special programmes, said his contribution to the series was slightly different in that in his case two ex-combatants had come face to face rather than victim and perpetrator.
“The response I’ve got has been very positive.
“A lot of people were of the opinion that our exchange should be a model for the way forward,” Martin said.
“For me I got a lot of inner analysis of conflict resolution at its coalface. Confronting your enemy is a difficult road to go down.
“ But I think we all have to face that road sooner rather than later.
“Conflict resolution, I believe, should be robustly explored and developed for us as a community to make any progress,” said Martin Meehan.

Journalist:: Áine McEntee

Irelanclick

North Belfast on high alert as Sinn Féin dismisses UDA claims of reduced criminality

Nationalist North Belfast is on high alert after a wave of UDA death threats were delivered to homes late on Tuesday night by the PSNI.
The threats, mostly to Catholic taxi drivers, claim an attack is imminent and that “someone was going to be shot”.
The sinister letters come on the back of a murder bid on a Catholic taxi driver at the weekend in Ligoniel.
Following a PSNI raid on the Alexandra bar on the York Road a court heard the UDA was intending to announce an end to criminality, a claim dismissed by Sinn Féin.
Local MLA Gerry Kelly said the subsequent death threats exposed such a claim by the UDA as a sham.
“These threats are the most recent attempt by the UDA in North Belfast to crank up sectarian tension and intimidation,” he said.
“This latest development coupled with the attempted murder of a taxi man at the weekend is further evidence that the UDA’s public pronouncements on ending criminality are nothing more than a PR stunt,” he said.
“How do they square this circle when they are making threats under the names of the Red Hand Defenders?”
He called on unionist leaders to condemn the threats.
“I want to take this opportunity to call upon unionist politicians to stand with the rest of us in solidarity with those providing a public service to have the death threats against the nationalist community of North Belfast removed.”
John Bunting of the UPRG said he had spoken to members of the UDA about the threats to Catholic taxi drivers.
“I’ve spoken to the UDA about this and there’s no threat to anyone, be they Catholic, republican or a taxi driver from the UDA in North Belfast. I totally condemn what has happened.
“There is no Red Hand Defenders and even the dogs in the street know the codeword, so it could be anybody putting the mix in.”
The PSNI said they raided the Alexandra bar because they believed a paramilitary event was being organised.
Eleven men have since been charged with attempting to organise a meeting in support of the UDA – six were released pending a report to the Public Prosecution Service.
DUP MP Nigel Dodds said he would be writing to the Chief Constable Hugh Orde about police tactics during the raid.
North Belfast loyalist Ihab Shoukri was one of the men arrested during the dramatic swoop on the alleged bar event, which Chief Constable Hugh Orde has described as “no teddy bear’s picnic”.
Ihab Shoukri is currently awaiting trial on charges of UDA/UFF membership. On Wednesday Belfast Crown Court refused the PSNI’s application to revoke his bail.
Judge Tom Burgess said the accused was downstairs while an alleged UDA meeting was going on upstairs and there was no evidence he had broken his bail.
The PSNI had claimed he breached bail conditions banning him from associating with paramilitaries by being in a bar where they were meeting.
Meanwhile the controversial Independent Monitoring Commission produced its ninth report yesterday.
It said the IRA does not pose a “terrorist threat” as it has decided to follow a political path.
But in relation to loyalist activity, it maintained that while loyalists were heavily involved in organised crime, there were signs of a possible readiness to abandon some of its criminality.

Journalist:: Áine McEntee

Daily Ireland

by Mick Hall
10/03/2006

A new biography of hunger striker Bobby Sands was launched last night.
Denis O’Hearn’s biography – Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker who Ignited a Generation – was launched during a ceremony in Belfast.
Mr O’Hearn lectures in sociology between departments at Queen’s University Belfast and Binghampton University New York. The book was launched in the US several weeks ago.
“The book will obviously be of interest to Irish American activists but also to a wider audience,” said Mr O’Hearn.
“Bobby Sands was an internationalist. He drew strength and political conviction from people like Che Guevara in Cuba, Camilo Torres in Columbia and George Jackson in Soledad, USA. Bobby was particularly interested in Afro-American history and today, contemporary black activists show great interest in his life.
“I have met ordinary people in central America, Jamaica, Palestine and South African and they all have spoken of Bobby Sands.
“When Turkish political prisoners went on hunger strike five years ago, their secret codeword for their plans was ‘Bobby Sands’.
“When Bobby died, Fidel Castro compared him with Jesus Christ, Nelson Mandela led a protest at Robben Island and Mayan militants went on the first hunger strike at Cero Hueco prison in Chiapas. He is an international figure,” Denis says.
Mr O’Hearn is certain that, since 1981, political activists have given the hunger strike more prominence as a political weapon: “Hunger-strikes hadn’t been unique to Ireland. But the political impact of the 1981 hunger strike elevated the tactic internationally. It had a ripple-effect. It is no coincidence that the US government has gone to extreme measures to keep hunger-strikers at Guantánamo Bay alive, by brutally force-feeding them. They don’t want another Bobby Sands,” he said.
Mr O’Hearn’s said his aim in the book was to “get under the skin” of Bobby Sands and find out what made him tick. The book outlines his life before his IRA involvement. It looks at his childhood, growing up with the societal vicissitudes of racist, sectarian hatred and his teenage experiences of living under a repressive police state.
But it also attempts to penetrate his psyche, to identify a revolutionary characterology which could account for his endurance of a slow and painful death.
“Nine other men died, while dozens of men and women were involved in the prison struggle. Was there something special about Bobby Sands? Yes,” Mr O’Hearn said.
After being arrested at just 17 years old, Sands spent most of the rest of his life in jail. He died at 27, on May 5, 1981, after 66 days of hunger-strike, during which he wrote poems, kept a prison journal and was elected as Member of Parliament for Fermanagh-South Tyrone.
“He was a leader in jail. Bobby’s strength was his ability to reinvent himself. This was particularly the case in prison. In 1975, when Britain took away political status for republican prisoners, he convinced fellow prisoners to reclaim their prison spaces, to fight criminalisation and he led by example.”

Larkspirit

Tuesday 10th

It has been a fairly normal day in my present circumstances. My weight is 59. 3 kgs. and I have no medical problems. I have seen some birthday greetings from relatives and friends in yesterday’s paper which I got today. Also I received a bag of toiletries today.

There is no priest in tonight, but the chief medical officer dropped in, took my pulse, and left. I suppose that makes him feel pretty important.

From what I have read in the newspapers I am becoming increasingly worried and wary of the fact that there could quite well be an attempt at a later date to pull the carpet from under our feet and undermine us — if not defeat this hunger-strike — with the concession bid in the form of ‘our own clothes as a right’.

This, of course, would solve nothing. But if allowed birth could, with the voice of the Catholic hierarchy, seriously damage our position. It is my opinion that under no circumstances do they wish to see the prisoners gain political status, or facilities that resemble, or afford us with the contents of, political status.

The reasons for this are many and varied, primarily motivated by the wish to see the revolutionary struggle of the people brought to an end. The criminalisation of Republican prisoners would help to furnish this end.

It is the declared wish of these people to see humane and better conditions in these Blocks. But the issue at stake is not ‘humanitarian’, nor about better or improved living conditions. It is purely political and only a political solution will solve it. This in no way makes us prisoners elite nor do we (nor have we at any time) purport to be elite.

We wish to be treated ‘not as ordinary prisoners’ for we are not criminals. We admit no crime unless, that is, the love of one’s people and country is a crime.

Would Englishmen allow Germans to occupy their nation or Frenchmen allow Dutchmen to do likewise? We Republican prisoners understand better than anyone the plight of all prisoners who are deprived of their liberty. We do not deny ordinary prisoners the benefit of anything that we gain that may improve and make easier their plight. Indeed, in the past, all prisoners have gained from the resistance of Republican jail struggles.

I recall the Fenians and Tom Clarke, who indeed were most instrumental in highlighting by their unflinching resistance the ‘terrible silent system’ in the Victorian period in English prisons. In every decade there has been ample evidence of such gains to all prisoners due to Republican prisoners’ resistance.

Unfortunately, the years, the decades, and centuries, have not seen an end to Republican resistance in English hell-holes, because the struggle in the prisons goes hand-in-hand with the continuous freedom struggle in Ireland. Many Irishmen have given their lives in pursuit of this freedom and I know that more will, myself included, until such times as that freedom is achieved.

I am still awaiting some sort of move from my cell to an empty wing and total isolation. The last strikers were ten days in the wings with the boys, before they were moved. But then they were on the no-wash protest and in filthy cells. My cell is far from clean but tolerable. The water is always cold. I can’t risk the chance of cold or ‘flu. It is six days since I’ve had a bath, perhaps longer. No matter.

Tomorrow is the eleventh day and there is a long way to go. Someone should write a poem of the tribulations of a hunger-striker. I would like to, but how could I finish it.

Caithfidh mé a dul mar tá tuirseach ag eirí ormsa.

(Translated, this reads as follows):
Must go as I’m getting tired.

Mural detail from >>CAIN

Belfast Telegraph

By Chris Thornton
10 March 2006

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has been invited back to the White House for St Patrick’s Day - but he will not be allowed to raise cash while in the US.

Mr Adams is expected to take up the invite, along with other Northern Ireland politicians, for the annual Shamrock Ceremony.

However, the family of a Dublin man murdered by republicans will be among those taking centre stage at the annual festivities.

Relatives of Joseph Rafferty, who was shot dead in a Dublin housing estate last April by a man believed to be a former IRA member, will meet President George W Bush during a special VIP gathering.

Their meeting will mark the second year in a row that Mr Bush has chosen to highlight victims of republican violence at the high profile event. Last year he welcomed the sisters of Robert McCartney, the Belfast man stabbed to death by IRA members.

Northern Ireland politicians were not invited to last year’s ceremony because of the disquiet following the McCartney murder and the Northern Bank robbery.

But Mr Bush decided this week to approve the return of politicians, in part to recognise the IRA pledge to become “purely political”.

Reports from Washington say US envoy Mitchell Reiss phoned Mr Adams last night to invite him to the White House.

But he was also informed that his visa conditions will not allow him to attend a Sinn Fein fund-raising breakfast in Washington next Thursday.

Fund-raising has been a sore point between Mr Adams and the US recently. In November he refused a trip to New York after being told he could not attend a fund-raising event.

He ended up speaking to the Sinn Fein dinner by a satellite link-up, and later called on Mr Bush to rein in “anti-Sinn Fein elements” in the US administration.

Belfast Telegraph
10 March 2006

The introduction of 50,000-volt stun guns by the PSNI will be opposed on the Policing Board by the SDLP.

Board member Alex Attwood hit out at the “headlong rush” to introduce TASERs and said there are concerns about their safety.

“The SDLP is totally opposed to the introduction of TASERs - even for the limited purposes that the PSNI wants them,” he said.

PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde recently approached the board about buying a dozen of the weapons, which use jolts of electricity to incapacitate people.

Sir Hugh wants them as a less lethal option than firearms. He told the board specially trained officers would use the US-made weapons.

TASERs deliver six watts of electricity at 50,000 volts through two barbed electrodes that attach themselves to the targeted person.

But critics of the device say it has been associated with more than 100 deaths in the US and Canada. According to reports, TASERs have been recorded as a factor in 15 deaths in the US.

The weapons were approved for use in Britain last year. But Mr Attwood said: “There is also a dearth of proper research about their safety - especially their effects on children.”

He said the time set by the board for public consultation - two-and-a- half weeks - is “woefully insufficient” and wants it extended.

A spokeswoman for the Policing Board said it is “essential for the police to have access to a range of equipment to meet difficult and often dangerous policing situations.”

Irish Independent

Tom Brady
10 March 2006

LAPTOP computers, which could be the key to unlocking the IRA’s multi-million euro war chest, were found under bales of hay yesterday.

The discovery was made after the biggest cross-Border operation targeting the homeland of the IRA’s chief of staff, Tom ‘Slab’ Murphy.

The operation was aimed at striking a deadly blow to the heart of the IRA’s financial empire. Thousands of documents and computers were seized for detailed examination.

The raids were spearheaded by the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Northern Assets Recovery Agency (ARA). Over 400 personnel were involved.

Detectives from the gardai and the PSNI carried out checks at Murphy’s home which straddles the border at Ballybinaby which is between Hackballscross and Crossmaglen.

Murphy (56) was not at home when the house was raided and the area was sealed off as detailed searches were completed.

On this side of the border gardai searched nine properties including Murphy’s own house, his family home, houses occupied by several others living nearby and the offices of a solicitor’s firm in Dundalk.

In the North police searched six houses and businesses in Crossmaglen and the nearby village of Keady and officers also served orders on several businessmen, requiring them to provide full audits of their accounts to the anti-racketeering authorities.

Thirty boxes of documents were taken away for inspection along with the computers that had been located in a hayshed.

Gardai seized around €250,000 in sterling and euro, 30,000 cigarettes and 8,000 gallons of diesel.

They also found a diesel laundering unit located on one of the farms, three fuel trucks, a larger truck with a fuel container concealed on its trailer, and two shotguns.

Two men who tried to avoid a road checkpoint were trailed by gardai and spotted by the air support unit who kept watch in a helicopter until the suspects were arrested.

At one stage the helicopter was thought to have strayed across the border while observing the suspects but the incident was later described as minor.

Two men and a woman who is married to one of them were questioned by gardai after the raids.

The three, who are in their 50s and 60s, were later released without charge and a file will be prepared for the DPP.

In the North, Chief Supt Bobby Hunniford said his forces seized a dozen fuel trucks and about €29,000 but made no arrests.

He said locals were “sick and tired of living in fear of the organised criminals among them”. Almost 120 personnel were involved in the operation on the southern side. The CAB team was backed up by local units from the Louth-Meath division, the Special Branch, Emergency Response Unit, national fraud bureau, garda technical bureau, national bureau of criminal investigation, air support unit, Customs officers and officials from the Department of Social and Community Affairs.

More than 250 police, British troops and Customs officers took part across the border.

The operation followed months of planning supervised by the head of CAB, Det Chief Supt Felix McKenna and the ARA boss, Alan McQuillan.

It follows a major joint operation last October which culminated in raids on a €44m property portfolio in Manchester and a dozen properties in Dundalk.

Slab Murphy later denied any connection with that property.

The operation was based on intelligence that had been built up over the past four years by police on both sides and represented the first significant blow at the massive smuggling trade being run from south Armagh.

Security risks in the past have restricted the activities of the police in south Armagh.

But senior anti-terrorist officers were determined to smash the smuggling trade which was estimated to provide a very substantial portion of the finances needed for the day to day running of the Provisionals as well as building up a “war chest” to pay for the development of Sinn Fein as a political party north and south.

Last night officers said it would take several months to examine all of the documentation and the information downloaded from the computers.

But the operation was described as a significant success which was likely to have major implications.

BBC

Looking north at the proposed new Grosvenor Road junction

Roadworks on Belfast’s Westlink are set to make their biggest impact so far on motorists travelling through the city.

From Monday, northbound traffic will be unable to turn right from the Westlink onto the Grosvenor Road.

Motorists heading into the city will have to exit at the Divis Street or Broadway turn-offs.

Those travelling southbound will be unable to turn right towards the Royal Victoria Hospital. The Roads Service has warned motorists to expect delays.

Roy Spiers of the Roads Service said: “I would ask motorists to be patient, and to be aware that there is a change in traffic plans starting on Monday.”

Work on the multi-million pound upgrade is due to be completed in the spring of 2009.

It will create three continuous lanes on the M1 and Westlink between Blacks Road and Divis Street junctions.

The Westlink carries 65,000 motorists every day and is Northern Ireland’s busiest road.

Two lanes will be maintained in both directions throughout the work from 0600 GMT until 2200 GMT on Monday to Saturday and from 1100 GMT on Sundays.

KRT Wire

BY CAROL ROSENBERG
Knight Ridder Newspapers

MIAMI - More than 250 physicians from around the world are condemning the Pentagon’s practice of force-feeding suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a letter in Friday’s edition of the British medical journal Lancet.

“Fundamental to doctors’ responsibilities in attending a hunger striker is the recognition that prisoners have a right to refuse treatment,” says the letter, which accuses the U.S. military of violating medical ethics.

Physicians who signed the letter include former military doctors, psychiatrists, gastroenterologists, pathologists and general practitioners from Britain, the United States, South Africa, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. They included South African physician John Kalk, who refused to force-feed hunger strikers in Johannesburg during apartheid.

The protest in the prestigious journal comes on the heels of a New York Times report that U.S. military medical personnel at the base have been overseeing force-feedings of hunger strikers. The captives have been strapped into restraint chairs in cold cells to get them to eat on their own, the Times said.

“We urge the U.S. government to ensure that detainees are assessed by independent physicians and that techniques such as force-feeding and restraint chairs are abandoned, forthwith in accordance with internationally agreed standards,” the letter said.

The Pentagon said in a statement Thursday night that Guantanamo detainees are “treated humanely and are being provided with excellent medical care.” It added that doctors follow federal prison guidelines for feeding prisoners with tubes.

“These dangerous men are held in an environment that is stable, secure, safe, and humane,” the Pentagon said.

U.S. commanders at the Guantanamo Bay Navy Base have been struggling for nearly four years to cope with the consequences of hunger-striking protests by some of the nearly 500 captives. They argue that they cannot allow a captive to starve himself.

After a detainee refuses nine consecutive meals, according to Guantanamo procedures, he is fed liquids through a tube that is snaked down his nose and into his stomach.

Guantanamo officials defend the practice as humane in court filings.

“This is not a no-risk procedure. Eventually someone is going to die,” said David Nicholl, a neurologist at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, England, who organized the letter-writing campaign in Europe.

He listed potential life-threatening complications of force-feedings: a collapsed lung, if the tube is inserted improperly; pneumonia; chest infection; and injuring a captive struggling against straps and restraints.

The physicians assert U.S. military medicine is being unethical by engaging in the practice - and that even U.S. Navy doctors should comply with a hunger striker’s wish, because he is a patient first, a prisoner second.

The letter writers say the World Medical Association specifically prohibits force-feeding in the Declaration of Tokyo and Malta, which the American Medical Association has signed.

Nicholl, who was born in Belfast, drew notice last year by running the London Marathon in the garb of a Guantanamo detainee - wearing an orange jumpsuit and chains.

Nicholl said he became aware of Guantanamo’s force-feeding practices through a Navy doctor’s affidavit attached to a habeas-corpus petition in a U.S. civilian court.

He has since written the Navy doctor’s medical association seeking to have him stripped of his license.

Both sides there, he said, are engaging in a form of “mutual Russian Roulette.”

“If they choose of their own free will to starve themselves to death, the argument that you’re saving their lives just doesn’t hold water. You are reviving them in effect through torture.”

In the case of Northern Ireland, Nicholls said, the authorities allowed Irish Republican prisoner Bobby Sands to starve himself to death in 1981, rather than force-feed him.

The English did force-feed some Irish prisoners, he said, but only after family went to court and the prisoners were declared mentally unfit.

Nicholls dismissed such an alternative at Guantanamo. “It begs the question, if you’ve got somebody who is mentally ill, is Guantanamo the right place for them?”

RTÉ

09 March 2006 22:06

The three people held for questioning following Thursday’s cross-border search operation have been released without charge.

Files are to be sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

An estimated €200,000, as well as fuel and 30,000 cigarettes were seized in the raids along the border in a joint Garda/PSNI operation directed against organised crime.

Two shotguns, computers and boxes of documents were also taken away for examination during the raids in north Co Louth and south Co Armagh.

Up to 400 gardaí, PSNI, customs officers and military personnel from Northern Ireland and the Republic were involved in the search.

About a dozen properties have been searched in what is described as one of the biggest ever cross-border raids.

At one stage, an area around the family home of Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy, allegedly a former IRA chief of staff, was sealed off.