SAOIRSE32

Daily Ireland

by Connla Young
18/03/2006

The commander of the Colombian army held secret meetings with the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British military officials while on a tour of military installations in the North, Daily Ireland can reveal.
The revelation has prompted British officials to deny that Colombian security forces are being trained by the “regular army” in the North of Ireland.
A spokesman said he was not aware if Colombians were being trained by members of the British special forces. General Jorge Enrique Mora met senior members of the RUC in Portadown and at their Knock headquarters in Belfast in 2000.
Confidential British government documents obtained by Daily Ireland reveal that General Mora also met with Peter Hain, the current British secretary of state in the North, while he was attached to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
During his five-day visit to Britain in August 2000, the Colombian general was introduced to former commander of the British army in the North General Roger Wheeler.
The general toured a facility used by the military to train army personnel before they are sent to the North.
While in the North, Mora, who was accompanied by other senior members of the Colombian military, received detailed briefings from senior members of the British security forces on the nature of joint police and army operations.
The detailed document revealed that neither human rights or collusion issues were brought up during the general’s visit to the North.
The South American visitors also met with former chief of the Northern Ireland Prison Service John Steel.
One month after the Colombian visit to Belfast, then British Secretary of State Mo Mowlam travelled to Colombia and met senior officials there.
The get-together took place just a year before three Irish men were arrested and charged with training left-wing guerrillas and travelling on false passports. Niall Connolly, James Monaghan, and Martin McCauley, fled Colombia last year.
Although the PSNI refused to go into detail, Daily Ireland understands that a Colombian official met with the PSNI earlier this month in the North.
In recent years the relationship between Britain and the Colombian governments has been questioned by human rights groups.
The British government is believed by many to be providing the Colombian authorities with practical military help in their ongoing campaign against left-wing rebels.
In the past both governments have been accused of colluding with state sponsored paramilitaries in the murder of civilians.
Military authorities in both countries meet regularly and as late as 2004 General Carlos Ospina Ovalle of the Colombian army visited a number of British army installations.
A PSNI spokesman said: “Colombian officials have visited the PSNI on a number of occasions in the past and also visited the RUC.”

BBC

Mr Ahern insisted: “We are going to finalise this in 2006″

A Northern Ireland Assembly may operate for some months without an executive, the Irish premier has told the BBC.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said the aim was to have a fully functioning assembly with an executive as envisaged under the Good Friday Agreement.

However, he said a deadlock over the formation of that executive should not stop the assembly from operating while there is work for it to do.

He made his remarks in an exclusive interview with the BBC’s Politics Show.

It comes as the British and Irish governments prepare to unveil their blueprint for restoring Stormont.

Mr Ahern said he wanted to give the assembly a chance and it would not be a meaningless interim assembly.

He suggested the assembly could operate over the summer and into the winter.

However, he warned that time was limited and that if there was no agreement on an assembly with an executive, Stormont would not operate into next year.

“At the end of the day, we want to get to a position where we’ll have the assembly operating fully and functioning as it was designed in the Good Friday Agreement and we want to get the executive doing the same.”

He added: “What we have said is that 2006 has to call it. So we’ll set out our plan, but I think we do not intend to go into another winter in this position, but at the same time if politicians want some time to debate issues and to go through things we’ll listen to that.

“There are no two better listeners (than Mr Ahern and UK PM Tony Blair). We’ve spent the last nine years listening to debate.”

‘A huge tragedy’

Mr Ahern said “if we don’t agreement on the executive you can’t have an executive”.

“But that shouldn’t stop the assembly operating for a period of time while there is work for it to do and that could take a few months.”

The Irish premier said that if “we cannot get the institutions functioning as per the Good Friday Agreement this year, then we’ll all have to think again”.

“But that would be a huge tragedy and I do not want to find myself in that position.”

Earlier on Saturday, Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said the British and Irish governments would take the decisions on Northern Ireland if NI politicians did not share power.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s Inside Politics programme, Mr Ahern said London and Dublin would adopt “an intergovernmental approach”.

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said any such move would be “completely unrealistic”.

“It’s time Dublin stopped being the bully boy and worked with the rest of us,” he said.

Devolved government at Stormont was suspended in October 2002 following allegations of a republican spy ring at the Northern Ireland Office.

A full interview with Bertie Ahern will be featured on The Politics Show at 1230 GMT on Sunday on BBC One.

The Republican

Saturday, March 18, 2006
By FRED CONTRADA
fcontrada@repub.com

NORTHAMPTON - It was a great day for the Irish in Northampton. A lot better than the day two Irishmen had 200 years ago.

The laughter that usually marks St. Patrick’s Day festivities was tempered somewhat yesterday as the community took the occasion to commemorate the deaths of James Halligan and Dominic Daley, a couple of Irish immigrants who were hanged in 1806 for a murder they didn’t commit. Gathering around a monument to the two Irishmen on Hospital Hill, where the men were put to death, leaders of the city’s Irish community joined other opponents of prejudice in emphasizing the lesson that the story holds for society today.

“We want to remember these men, because they were subject to prejudice and intolerance in their day,” said Judge W. Michael Ryan. “Prejudice is poison. We have to accept all as our neighbors and treat all equally and with justice.”

Daley and Halligan were traveling through the area on their way to New York City when Marcus Lyon, of Wilbraham, was murdered. A 13-year-old boy who lived near Lyon told authorities he had seen two men acting suspiciously on the nearby toll road and picked Daley and Halligan out of a lineup.

The prejudice shown against Irish Catholics at the time was hardly disguised as court-appointed defense lawyers were given a mere 48 hours to prepare their case after Daley and Halligan had been held in jail for four months. Some 15,000 people turned out to watch the two Irishmen be hanged. Some years later, another man confessed to the murder on his deathbed.

Michael White, a professor at Fairfield University and author of “The Garden of Martyrs,” a newly released historical novel about the incident, said he visited the memorial during his research and thought about what must have been going through the minds of the two men. Hampshire County Sheriff Robert J. Garvey read from the final statement of the condemned men, in which they reasserted their innocence but forgave their executors.

“‘We blame no one,’” Garvey read. “‘We forgive everyone.’”

The ceremony was one of a yearlong series of events commemorating the 200th anniversary of the deaths of Daley and Halligan.

The day started off on a more cheerful note as some 300 Irish and Irish-for-a-day gathered at the Clarion Hotel for the 26th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast. As usual, the breakfast was an occasion for levity. With her recent mayoral opponent Richard J. Feldman sitting nearby at the head table, Mayor Mary Clare Higgins suggested that her Irish heritage helped her carry the day last November.

“I think a lot of people looked at the ballot and said, ‘Didn’t I go to St. Michael’s with her?’” Higgins said.

Feldman, who followed Higgins to the podium, told the crowd, “The last time I spoke for a few minutes following the mayor last November, I didn’t do so well, either.”

Telegraph

**Via Newshound

By Tom Peterkin in Crossmaglen
(Filed: 18/03/2006)

“The people here are the friendliest in the world,” said Tommy McKenna as he sipped his pint of Guinness in an upmarket hotel bar in the IRA heartland of south Armagh.

“But don’t ever cross us,” he warned. “The British Army crossed us and they had 30 years of hell.”
Open: The Cross Square Hotel in Crossmaglen

With masterly understatement, Mr McKenna summed up the inhabitants of a place once notorious as the most dangerous posting in the world for a British soldier and where helicopters are still the safest mode of transport for the Army.

But following the IRA’s promise to abandon the armed struggle, the lawless border area nicknamed Bandit Country is attempting to forsake terrorism for tourism.

The most obvious manifestation of that transformation is the brand new hotel where Mr McKenna sat drinking.

Opened yesterday, St Patrick’s Day, the Cross Square Hotel, Crossmaglen, is the first such establishment to exist in south Armagh in almost a century.

Crossmaglen remains a place apart, however, with the 15-bedroom hotel offering splendid views of fluttering tricolours, a republican memorial and the helicopters flying into the forbidding military installation overlooking the village square.

The owners of the Cross Square hope visitors will be attracted by fishing on the Fane, a trail inspired by 18th century Gaelic poets and the Ring of Gullion, the beautiful geological landform dominating the Irish border.

But they are realistic enough to accept that opening in south Armagh means guests will be anxious to explore the former fiefdom of the Provisional IRA. The south Armagh brigade of the IRA was responsible for many of Ulster’s worst atrocities and numerous mainland bombing campaigns

“We have grown up with the Troubles,” said Fiona Carragher-Kieran, the hotel’s marketing manager.

“It is part of our history and it is inevitable that people will want to see that, but we want to change people’s perception of Crossmaglen and what south Armagh is about.”

Judging from recent headlines that could be a challenge for Mrs Carragher-Kieran and her parents, Gene and Briege Carragher, who have invested £1.5 million in the family venture.

This month, police and Army raided the farm straddling the border at Hackballscross owned by Thomas “Slab” Murphy, believed to be the IRA’s chief of staff.

A few miles from the hotel, fuel laundering equipment, oil tankers and smuggled cigarettes were found when six properties including Murphy’s farm were targeted in an attempt to close down the Provos’ smuggling empire.

Although the IRA’s alleged criminality is still a cause for

concern, there is relief at the

passing of the dark days of the conflict when south Armagh republicans accounted for the lives of 127 soldiers, 67 RUC officers and 96 civilians.

After checking into the Cross Square, The Daily Telegraph went on its own “terror tour” taking in monuments to the hunger strikers and a lonely roadside cross at Kingsmill marking the place where 10 Protestant workmen were hijacked and slaughtered by the IRA 30 years ago.

Also on the itinerary were the remaining Army watchtowers, which are being dismantled as troops are withdrawn from Ulster, and the Three Steps pub in Drunintee. This was the Provisionals’ watering hole from where Capt Robert Nairac, an undercover SAS man, was abducted and murdered after his cover was blown in 1977.

Graffiti, shrines, murals and unofficial signposts reflecting the IRA’s dominance cannot be avoided by the tourist. But one horrific legacy of the IRA is not to be seen.

To this day the whereabouts of “the disappeared”, corpses of several IRA victims, including Capt Nairac, is still unknown.

But a different side of south Armagh was in evidence in the friendly hotel bar.

The Carraghers, who have been in the oil distribution business for the last 25 years, explained that the last hotel in Crossmaglen was owned by a distant relative.

Fittingly, it was Mrs Carragher-Keiran’s grandmother’s aunt, Auntie Geough, who ran the Commercial Hotel.

This notable establishment closed after the Great War when the partition of Ireland saw Co Armagh become a border county. And south Armagh’s ability to throw up the unexpected surfaced spectacularly when a representative of one of the most quintessentially English institutions appeared at the bar in this hotbed of republicanism.

Cricket is not something one would associate with a place whose notion of sport begins and ends with the highly successful Crossmaglen Rangers Gaelic football team. But Mick Hunt, a Londoner and the MCC’s head groundsman at Lord’s, has been visiting Bandit Country for more than 30 years.

In 1974 he married Rosemary Quinn, a nurse from Crossmaglen, after they met on an aeroplane.

His most frightening episode during the Troubles was a nasty scuffle with some Scottish soldiers, who took umbrage at his English accent following the 5-1 defeat of Scotland at Wembley in 1975.

“It was a bit squeaky,” he recalled. “But as long as I was with someone local - my brother-in-law or my wife’s cousin - then it wasn’t a problem.

“I come back here every year, I really love it.

“You’ve got to remember St John’s Wood is full of bank robbers.”

tpeterkin@telegraph.co.uk

Belfast Telegraph

By Michael McHugh
18 March 2006

Over 20,000 firearms certificates were issued by police to members of the security forces and private citizens last year, it emerged last night.

That equates to one in 12 people here owning a gun - three times the figure for England and Wales - and that’s just the legally held weapons.

Gun owners believe concerns are “alarmist” but news that the Chief Constable issued 20,074 certificates to applicants in 2005 will spark more attention.

Lord Laird obtained the information in Westminster and he said the authorities should be trying to reduce the number of weapons held, both legal and illegal.

“I recognise that there are certain people who have to have firearms like farmers with vermin but I do feel we should be looking at trying to cut down on the number of guns,” he said.

“I am opposed to hunting as a sport and that is an area in which I would like to see gun ownership coming to an end.

“In an ideal world there would not be a single gun in Northern Ireland, that is the utopian world which we should be working towards.”

The Belfast Telegraph revealed last month that 7,174 new guns were issued in the last four years recorded.

There are presently more than 144,500 legally-held guns in Northern Ireland. This does not include security force personal protection weapons.

Police screen applicants for certificates under the provisions of the Fire Arms (NI) Order 2004.

According to information on the PSNI’s website, successful applicants must not be of “intemperate habits or unsound mind” or for any reason unfitted to be entrusted with a firearm. The petitioner must also not constitute a threat to public safety or the peace.

Many of the weapons are used by farmers, although there are only 51,000 farmers registered in Northern Ireland under the most recent census.

Some of the more than 30,000 privately-owned rifles and handguns would be used at Northern Ireland’s 55 authorised gun clubs and 39 legal gun ranges.

There are 132 registered gun dealers. A PSNI spokesman said the checks carried out on applicants were “among the most rigorous in the world”.

Belfast Telegraph

By Jonathan McCambridge
18 March 2006

Unionists last night said the St Patrick’s Day celebrations in Belfast were “intimidatory” because of the waving of Irish tricolour flags.

For the first time, the Belfast parade from the City Hall to Custom House Square was funded by the council, which had attempted to ensure that tricolours were not paraded.

But both the DUP and UUP claimed protestant constituents left the celebrations because they felt they were intimidatory, casting doubt on future council funding of the event.

UUP MLA Michael Copeland said the event had proven “unwelcoming” to unionists.

“Commemorations of St Patrick in Northern Ireland should reflect the fact that his legacy belongs to all the people of Northern Ireland, both protestant and catholic,” he said.

“Unfortunately St Patrick’s day celebrations in Belfast have one again proved to be for one side of the community only.

“Many of my constituents who ventured to the celebrations did not stay long. They felt uncomfortable and unwelcome. The sheer number of tricolours and the strong nationalist look and feel to the parade rule out any sense of a cross-community event.”

DUP representative Diane Dodds said the St Patrick celebrations were “another disappointment”.

She added: “There were not that many people at the concert but there were plenty of republican flags and it seems that for republicans it is simply an excuse to wave Irish tricolours in the city centre.

“It would be good to have a cross-community event in the city, one where unionists and nationalists can feel safe, but it is clear that republicans cannot cope with that.”

But SDLP deputy Lord Mayor Pat Convery said he thought yesterday’s parade had been a “small step forward” for a divided city.

“We hope that the diversity of our city will be able to be included in this parade and concert,” he said. “We hope we will be able to generate a lot of interest in this new event every year.”

Belfast Telegraph

By Noel McAdam
18 March 2006

Fury erupted last night over Government plans to restore full housing powers to councils in Northern Ireland.

Secretary of State Peter Hain was warned the move could return the province to the “poisonous pit” of the past.

Insisting the Government abandon the idea, the SDLP argued it could seriously dent fragile community relations. Assembly member Patsy McGlone said: “It is incredible a Labour Government could think of doing this.”

A senior Ulster Unionist MLA also called the plans a “recipe for disaster” and predicted council chambers would become “sectarian bear pits”.

UU Assemblyman Fred Cobain said: “Can you imagine councils allocating houses along sectarian interfaces? It would be a nightmare.”

Under the blueprint, the seven new ’super-councils’ would have control of housing management and allocations - effectively dismantling the Housing Executive. But the proposal will raise the spectre of one of the most contentious issues - discrimation - which underpinned events leading to the Troubles.

Mr Hain is expected to announce the potential transfer of housing powers to local government as part of a massive shake-up of Northern Ireland quangos next week. But it is understood he will hold out the prospect of a completely restored housing function until after the new councils are up and running by 2009.

But SDLP housing spokesman Mr McGlone said last night: “This is totally crazy territory. It is incredible to think the Government could be so stupid and naive.”

In a letter to Mr Hain he warned the return of housing allocation and management to councils would open up every opportunity for a step back to the “poisonous pit” of discrimination.

A spokesperson for the review of public administration, whose blueprint for the unelected quangos is to be unveiled on Tuesday, said they could not respond. The Belfast Telegraph yesterday revealed the Housing Executive could lose a number of other key functions to councils, including grants, health environmental schemes and the fuel efficiency programmes.

While it declined to respond, senior Housing Executive officials were said to be “extremely concerned” about the operational changes.

Guardian

Richard Norton-Taylor
Saturday March 18, 2006
The Guardian

Aircraft suspected of being used by the CIA for “extraordinary rendition” - the practice of sending detainees to camps, including Guantánamo Bay, where they were at risk of being tortured - passed through British airports on 73 occasions since 2001, the government disclosed yesterday. They included an aircraft which left the Afghan capital Kabul and landed in Edinburgh in November 2002 before continuing its journey to Washington.

The aircraft, registered N85VM, landed at Guantánamo Bay on a number of occasions in 2002 and 2003, sometimes via the Turks and Caicos islands in the Caribbean, a British overseas territory, according to flight records seen by the Guardian.

New details of aircraft known to be used by the CIA were disclosed by Alistair Darling, the transport secretary, in answer to a parliamentary question from Michael Moore, Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman. Some of the aircrafts landed here on their way to the Middle East.

Mr Darling said none of the information held by his officials “provides evidence that these flights were involved in rendition”. He said that Britain had made clear to the US, “including in recent months”, that the government expected it to seek permission before rendering detainees via British territory and airspace.

Mr Moore said last night that the disclosures raised serious questions about the number and purpose of CIA flights through the UK. He added: “A fundamental question remains unanswered: has the UK government actually asked the US how many individuals have been rendered through Britain? If this hasn’t been asked, then why on earth not?”

The Ministry of Defence admitted last week that two aircraft known to have been chartered by the CIA landed 14 times at RAF Northholt, west London, and RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire between October 2003 and May 2004.

Gareth Crossman, policy director of the civil rights group Liberty said last night: “The government’s ongoing smoke and mirrors campaign, in which piecemeal information on these flights is grudgingly handed over, is baffling and in gross contrast to our obligations against torture.”

BBC

A man and a woman arrested in connection with the murder of north Belfast teenager Thomas Devlin have been released.

A report is being sent to the Public Prosecution Service. The pair, both aged 22, were arrested in Belfast on Wednesday morning.

They were freed on Friday night, but details have just been released.

Thomas, 15, died after being stabbed five times as he and two friends walked along Somerton Road last August.

No-one has been charged in connection with his killing, although a number of people have been questioned.

BBC

Gerry Adams had been attending meetings in Washington

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams missed a St Patrick’s Day event in the US after being delayed at a Washington airport for “secondary screening”.

He had been invited by Congressman Brian Higgins to speak in Buffalo.

Mr Higgins told the audience Mr Adams was absent because his name was on a “terror watch list”, but Homeland Security officials would not comment.

They said he had a routine security check and “secondary screening” but was not arrested or detained.

Mr Adams, who had earlier attended a St Patrick’s Day event at the White House, was due to speak at the Buffalo Irish Center in New York state.

His name, and that of a travelling companion, appeared on a terror watch list at Washington’s Reagan National Airport, claimed Congressman Higgins.

AP news agency said he told the crowd awaiting Mr Adams’ speech: “When I spoke with his assistant a little while ago, their luggage was still being, let’s just say, inspected.

“Gerry Adams should not have been on a terror watch list,” he said.

“That his name would appear in this untoward manner and that appearance ruined his ability to celebrate St Patrick’s Day in Buffalo is sad and unfortunate when one considers Gerry Adams’ leadership in the decommissioning of the IRA’s weapons and his commitment to the Good Friday agreements,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

A Homeland Security official refused to comment on whether Mr Adams’ name had appeared on a terror watch list, saying privacy restrictions precluded them from discussing individuals on no-fly lists, said AP.

The official also declined to explain why Mr Adams underwent the secondary screening, which was described as “thorough”.