SAOIRSE32

RTÉ

28 May 2006 20:57

A film about the War of Independence, ‘The Wind That Shakes the Barley’, starring Irish actor Cillian Murphy has won the Palme d’Or premier award at the International Cannes Film Festival.

The film was directed by Ken Loach. It is due to go on general release in Ireland on 23 June.

The film, set amid the struggle for Irish independence in the early 1920s, beat 19 other contenders for the main prize at the world’s most prestigious film festival.

The president of the nine-member jury, Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, said the decision was unanimous.

In his acceptance speech, Ken Loach said he hoped the film was a ‘very little step’ on the path to Britain confronting its ‘imperialist history’.

cryptome.org

John Cassidy
May 28, 2006

The Sunday World. Exclusive.

A British Army whistleblower today names Sinn Fein chief Martin McGuinness as a high-ranking MI6 agent.

And Martin Ingram says McGuinness’s MI6 handlers actively encouraged the IRA chief to wage a bloody ‘human bomb’ campaign in Ulster to provoke a public backlash against the Provos.

Ingram a former agent handler in the shadowy Force Research Unit, says his claim that McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, was a top British mole is supported by documentary evidence.

Freddi Scappaticci was unmasked two years ago as the FRU agent ‘Stakeknife’ who was a senior figure in the IRA’s internal seurity department, known as the ‘Nutting Squad’.

Transcript

The Sunday World has obtained a transcript of a conversation which Ingram confirms is between McGuinness and his MI6 handler. In it, the pair discuss the IRA’s ‘human bomb’ strategy which was an escalation in the republican groups’s terror campaign. Acording to Ingram, Martin McGuinness is referred to in the document as ‘J118′.

Ingram, told the Sunday World from his secret address outside of Britain, ‘Every member of every terrorist organisation is given a number by the intelligence services - FRU, Special Branch, MI5 and MI6.

‘In the FRU, we used a P system, Special Branch, MI5 and MI6 had their own system which started with a letter followed by a number.’ Ingram says McGuinness’s MI6 handler is referred in the transcript as ‘G’.

‘This is an authentic document. I have checked it with people in the intelligence community who would be knowledgeable on these matters. From the transcript of the conversation, it has been confirmed to me that ‘J118′ is Martin McGuinness.’

The ‘J119′ refers to his brother Willie McGuinness, who was a senior member of the IRA in Derry. ‘The Murray referred to the transcript as ‘B328′ is Sean ‘Spike’ Murray, who at the time was the ‘Operations Director’ for Northern Command.’

The following is the transcript of the conversation which Ingram says was made in the run-up to the start of the ‘human bomb’ campaign which rocked Northern Ireland in 1990.

J118: As I said, Patsy (SA3) was all for it, Tommy (SA1) was ready to go, he said he would have no problems asking the crew for their support.

G: Do you think there will be any problem with it?

J118: I know our fella (J119) has everyone geared up for it, he (J119) thinks it is his idea.

G: I think you should push this along as quickly as possible.

J118: Murray (B328) is pushing, starting to ask a lot of questions about Belfast Command.

G: Don’t worry, we will look after things in that department, you just concentrate on the checkpoints.

G: We must have another meeting next week. In the meantime you can use the number I gave you in updates on the progress of things.

Significant

Ingram told the Sunday World:

‘The most significant thing for me in this transcript is the fact that McGuinness’s handler is the driving force behind the ‘human bomb’ campaign.

‘That quote from ‘G’ is very significant: ‘Don’t worry, we will look after things in that department, you just concentrate on the checkpoints.’

He was directly telling McGuinness to forget about ‘Spike’ Murray who wanted to bring the ‘human bomb’ campaign to Belfast and couldn’t understand why the Belfast command were not following the Derry brigade.

‘G’ is saying to him, ‘just you concentrate on the checkpoints. I don’t think MI6 wanted the ‘human bomb’ campaign going to Belfast. As ‘G’ says, they wanted the IRA to concentrate on the checkpooints along the border.’

In the first ‘human bomb’ attack, 42 year old Patsy Gillespie was forced to drive a large explosive device to Coshquin vehicle checkpoint on the border with Donegal.

The bomb was set off while he was still in the driver’s seat, killing him and five soldiers from the King’s regiment.

The door to the cab was booby-trapped. ‘A device was wired to the light inside the cab. Once Patsy opened the door to the truck the device went off.’

Added Ingram: ‘If you look at the transcript very closely, McGuinness tells his handler that his brother Willie (J119) thinks the ‘human bomb’ idea was his idea. ‘And from the transcript ‘G’ was very happy with this idea: ‘Well then, there is no one that can point the finger at you’.

‘It is a very clear strategy by MI6. They were quite happy to let Willie take the blame for the ‘human bomb’ strategy so their man Martin would stay out of the spotlight. ‘If I had have gone to my boss (Colonel) Gordon Kerr with the ‘human bomb’ plan he would have told me to get lost. There is no way Gordon Kerr would have gone for the idea, despite what people might think of him. ‘But obviously MI6 and the British Government had a different strategy towards the ‘human bomb’ campaign.

Asked why MI6 and the British Government would kill five British soldiers in a deliberate ‘human bomb’ campaign, he replied: ‘They would see it as a means to an end. They play the long game, not the short game. To them solving the problems in Ireland was a marathon not a sprint.

‘I could not have gone to my boss Gordon Kerr to organise the ‘human bomb’ campaigh. The top brass would not have entertained it.’

Ingram said he had also been suspicious that Martin McGuinness had been an intelligence agent. ‘This transcript, which is 100% authentic proves to me that McGuinness was working for MI6.

Incident

Another incident that proved to him was his involvement in the murder of Frank Hegarty, a FRU agent, who was also the IRA Northern Command’s quartermaster. ‘When McGuinness brought Frank back into the IRA, senior republicans went to McGuinness and said Frank was a tout. Within six months of being brought back into the IRA, Frank was promoted to quartermaster of the Northern Command. ‘When a large consignment of IRA guns was intercepted and Frank was taken off-side by us, Martin McGuinness went to Frank’s home. He got down on one knee and promised Frank’s mum Rose that if he came home he would guarantee his safety.

And Frank came home believing he would be safe. He was taken to a meeting and McGuinnesss turned to Freddie Scappaticci and told him to kill Frank.

So when McGuinness was asked by republicans afterwards why did he allow the tout back in, his reply was ’sure didn’t we whack him anyway.’ He was protecting himself. You have to remember that Martin McGuinness had the power over life and death.’

The murder of Frank Hegarty latter featured in a ITV Cook Report programme in which his tearful mother Rose recounted McGuinness’s promise to her.

The RUC later launched a top level investigation into the Cook Reports allegations about Martin McGuinness, codenamed Operation Taurus.

McGuinness has never been convicted in a British court. He has two previous convictions for IRA membership in the Republic of Ireland.

He has been the commander of the IRA in Derry, head of Northern Command and Chief of Staff of the IRA between 1978 and 1982.

‘We would have loved to have had Martin on our books at FRU,’ said Ingram. ‘I remember putting an application into RHSB (Regional Head of Special Branch) to recruit his brother Willie.

‘RHSB sent the application back and said, ‘No, Willie would have been a great catch.’ I don’t know if Willie was working for the Branch or not.’

‘But I am 100% convinced that his brother Martin McGuinness is an agent, that the document is 100% authentic and I am 100% convinced he was working for MI6,’ added Ingram.

Sunday Life

Alan Murray and Stephen Breen
28 May 2006

RELATIVES of Omagh bomb victims demanding the closure of a Real IRA support website hosted in Toronto have requested a meeting with the Canadian Ambassador in London.

Former Unionist Party leader David Trimble has already asked the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Ian Blair to take action under the Terrorism Act to shut down the controversial 32 County Sovereignty Movement site.

It features a public forum topic on 101 ways to murder Lord Trimble.

Efforts to persuade Netfirms, the Canadian company which hosts the site, to close it down have so far failed despite lobbying by the Omagh families led by Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed in the 1998 Real IRA massacre.

The Omagh group wrote to Canadian ambassador Mel Cappe on Monday asking him to meet them.

Group chairman, Michael Gallagher said: “We’ve made representation to the company and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but no action has been taken to close down this obnoxious site.

“I can’t understand how a respected democratic country like Canada would allow material like this to be broadcast from its domain. It is truly shocking.

David Trimble has written to Sir Ian Blair again seeking his assistance to have those in the UK who supply the site with the threatening material prosecuted.

But in a statement yesterday the Metropolitan Police said its Anti-Terrorist branch had investigated but concluded the matter did not fall within its remit.

Mr Trimble said it was disgraceful that Real IRA supporters are able to supply a website from the UK

A spokesman for the 32 County Sovereignty Movement last night told Sunday Life it would be “almost impossible” to remove the messages of hate from the site.

Sunday Life

Unions take action in Mount Vernon

Stephen Breen
28 May 2006

PEOPLE from the loyalist stronghold where the killers of teenager Thomas Devlin (pictured) are believed to live were last night urged to reject violence.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) made the plea during a series of meetings with community leaders and residents from Belfast’s Mount Vernon estate.

The trade union delegates, including ICTU deputy president Peter Bunting, were invited to outline their message to the loyalist area by the Mount Vernon Community Development Forum.

The initiative is believed to be part of a process across Northern Ireland in which loyalist paramilitaries, many of whom are ex-prisoners and community leaders, are being urged to abandon violence and criminality.

During the talks, the loyalist community was urged to oppose violence, sectarianism and racism.

A number of workshops on conflict resolution, education, learning and employment were also held.

It is not clear if discussions were held directly between ICTU officials and senior paramilitaries in the area.

Mr Bunting confirmed that talks had been held in the estate.

He said: “We were invited into the area by the local community. Everyone knows there are paramilitaries in every area.

“We encouraged people to move away from violence and it really is quite staggering the work which has already been done in this community.

“The trade unions made it clear that violence is not the way forward and we received a very friendly reaction in the area.

Former UVF man and councillor Billy Hutchinson described the project as positive, adding: “We discussed a wide range of issues with the union members and more meetings have been planned.

“This community spoke with one voice over the murder of Thomas Devlin and we are totally opposed to this murder.”

Sunday Life

Alan Murray
28 May 2006

THE father of UVF murder victim Raymond McCord says he won’t meet the Secretary of State again even though he still wants to meet the Prime Minister to discuss alleged collusion between Loyalist paramilitaries and RUC Special Branch officers.

It’s believed that the Police Ombudsman will next month announce the outcome of her own investigation into alleged collusion between members of the UVF in north Belfast and RUC officers..

Raymond McCord snr said he is angered by the Government’s attitude to his campaign to get justice for his murdered son.

“Tony Blair’s officials have told me he can’t meet me because court cases are ongoing, enquiries are ongoing, but that hasn’t stopped him meeting the Finucane family, and the McCartney and the Hamill families.

“I’m not saying he shouldn’t have met these Nationalist families who lost their loved ones but he refuses to meet families from the Unionist/Protestant tradition who have lost their sons in the same way,” he said.

“I was permitted to meet Peter Hain but it came across to me that he wasn’t interested, didn’t know very much about the case and wanted me out of his office as soon as possible so I will not meet him again.”

He has already been filmed for a UTV special about his son’s murder and his allegations that the UVF man who orchestrated the killing and possibly up to a dozen other murders was allowed to continue to act as a Special Branch informer.

Raymond McCord Junior, a 22-year-old former RAF operator, was beaten to death and dumped in a north Belfast quarry in 1997.

Sunday Life

Alan Murray and Stephen Breen
28 May 2006

THE UDA is on the brink of a bloody feud after five senior figures in north Belfast refused to step down.

Andre and Ihab Shoukri, along with Alan McClean, are among the five refusing demands by the UDA’s ‘inner council’ for them to go.

One informed source in north Belfast said a defiant message had been returned.

“Nothing will change” was the message sent back,” he said.

“If the ‘brigade’ has to go it alone, it will. We have enough about ourselves to be confident and face the challenge.”

There remains uncertainty within the UDA about what way the south east Antrim ‘brigade’ will jump, because of its close links with north Belfast members.

One source said that there could be developments in the south east Antrim soon.

Added a senior source from that area: “Our brigade supports the position of Ihab Shoukri but we will not be offering any support to Alan McClean. North Belfast sees itself as the youngest, hardest and most militaristic of all the brigades and they are saying they can go it alone.

“McClean is claiming that he is benefiting the community, but he is running the show in terms of the criminal and drugs operations. He knows he won’t get our support.”

Jackie McDonald’s contact with the Irish President Mary McAleese and his friendship with her husband Martin has long been a source of discussion within the UDA, and now it is being used as a weapon to undermine his authority.

Many senior figures in the north Belfast blame McDonald for instigating the move against the Shoukris.

And in an ominous comment, one north Belfast figure said: “It’s now time for straight talking. If the brigade has to go it alone it will. South Belfast isn’t going to dictate who does what up here and what puppet should be installed. Jackie McDonald and his pals have their agenda and we don’t think everyone goes along with it.”

Despite concerns that the ‘inner council’s’ move could spark a feud, sources say there is broad support in the UDA for the ultimatum to north Belfast.

But one UDA source added: “‘The Mexican’ (the Derry leader) doesn’t want to see a split but he appears to have gone along with the south Belfast and east Belfast Brigades.

“If the north Belfast brigade digs its heels in, then there will be a major split in the organisation. If the south east Antrim brigade backs off from this, then the whole organisation will be well and truly split. It will be a disaster.”

Sunday Life

Ciaran McGuigan
28 May 2006

A LEADING Portadown loyalist was the ‘Mr Big’ behind a botched bank robbery that led to four of his cronies being jailed last week.

Former LVF commander Gary Fulton, who was a close associate of Billy Wright, is understood to have been the ‘main organiser’ referred to in court last week as four others were jailed.

The robbery at the Northern Bank in Tandragee in October 2002 went wrong when the getaway car, which the gang had bought a day earlier for just £130, broke down.

Judge Kevin Finnegan didn’t name Fulton, but remarked that the main organiser was not in front of the courts.

Senior security sources last night confirmed that it had been Fulton, whose cousin Mark ‘Swinger’ Fulton committed suicide in jail, who had organised the robbery.

The loyalist godfather had been quizzed by police officers about the robbery and charged in connection with the raid.

He appeared in court a number of times, but the case against him collapsed, though security sources remain convinced he was the gang’s ringleader.

Fulton also beat a major drugs rap several years earlier when a jury at Wood Green Crown Court cleared him of conspiracy to supply thousands of Ecstasy tablets.

He has previously been jailed for armed robbery.

At Belfast Crown Court last Monday, Portadown men David Brown (23), of Jervis Street and Stewart Haire (25), of Ormode Street were each jailed for eight years and ordered to spend another two on probation for carrying out the bank robbery.

They were arrested after abandoning their broken down getaway car near the Newry canal towpath.

A bag of cash, around £10,000, was recovered, along with balaclavas, gloves and a starter pistol.

Two other Portadown men, Mark Willis (34), of Tandragee Road and Wesley Allen (29), of Oakwood Place, were each jailed for four years for aiding and abetting the raid.

BN.IE

28/05/2006 - 12:19:10

An international minute’s silence will be held today to remember the one million victims of the Famine.

The tribute will take place as the Committee For The Commemoration Of Irish Famine Victims leads a solemn procession from Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance to the Famine Memorial on Custom House Quay.

Members of the Committee, dressed in peasant clothing, will lay a wreath at the Memorial and toss red roses into the River Liffey.

A piper will then play as a young girl sings ’Amazing Grace’.

The Committee is calling on people across the island of Ireland as well as Irish emigrants abroad to mark the minute’s silence at 2pm.

One million died and hundreds of thousands were forced to flee the island after the collapse of the potato harvest between 1845-1848.

Dublin City Council boosted the Committee’s campaign to designate an annual memorial day to remember Famine victims when councillors approved a Labour Party motion on the issue this week.

“The Famine was a seminal event in Ireland’s past and dramatically changed the course of our history forever,” Committee chairman Michael Blanch said.

“It was akin to the Holocaust for Jews or 9/11 for America and foreign visitors can’t believe that it is not officially recognised in Ireland.

“It only happened three generations ago and the victims were both Catholic and Protestant, so an annual commemoration will build bridges between the two communities.”

The Committee envisages that the memorial day would also be a gesture of solidarity towards all people around the world who have suffered in famines.

The Government has previously suggested that the Famine could be incorporated into the National Day of Commemoration – an annual ceremony to mark Ireland’s war dead.

But the Committee said this occasion specifically remembered dead Irish soldiers, and not civilians which comprised the Famine victims.

It has been estimated that the Famine could have indirectly halved the all-Ireland population as it was over eight million people in 1845 but had shrunk to approximately four million by the 1911 Census.

There are up to 70 million people abroad who claim Irish ancestry – many of whom are descended from emigrants who fled Ireland during the Famine.

The Committee has lobbied the British Government, the GAA and the Irish Farmers Association on the issue since it was established in 2003.

Former Riverdance star Michael Flatley has supported the campaign.

Opposition leaders Enda Kenny, Pat Rabbitte and Trevor Sargent all support calls for an annual memorial day.

Irish Examiner

Sinn Féin today rubbished claims by a former British Army intelligence officer that its chief negotiator Martin McGuinness was a British spy.

The allegation, which was carried in a Sunday newspaper, was made by former agent handler Martin Ingram.

Mr Ingram two years ago identified Belfast republican Freddie Scappaticci as the prized British agent Stakeknife, within the IRA – an allegation he denied before fleeing his home in the west of the city.

It also followed the unmasking last year of Sinn Féin’s former head of administration at Stormont Denis Donaldson as a spy.

He was gunned down in April at a remote cottage in Glenties, Co Donegal after details of where he was laying low emerged.

A Sinn Féin spokesman today dismissed claims that Mr McGuinness, who admitted in May 2001 in a submission to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry that he was the IRA’s second in command in Derry in 1971, worked for MI6 during the 1990’s.

He also rejected claims that the allegation against Mr McGuinness was supported by documentary evidence.

“We have heard this all before,” a spokesman told PA.

“It is rubbish. It is nonsense.

“Anybody with half a wit will treat it with the contempt it rightly deserves.”

Sunday Tribune

Suzanne Breen Northern Editor
28 May 2006

A SENIOR member of the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein is a long-serving British spy, according to a document which former British intelligence officer Martin Ingram is circulating.

Ingram, who outed Freddie Scappaticci as Stakeknife, says the document was given to him by a serving Special Branch officer. He claims it is a transcript of a meeting between the Provisional leader and his British intelligence handler about the human bomb tactic the IRA developed in 1990.

It is understood Ingram has shown the document to certain newspapers. He did not show it to the Sunday Tribune but gave this newspaper a transcript. The transcript carries no date and makes little sense out of context. Its veracity has not been proved and will leave many people sceptical. A Sinn Fein spokesman yesterday said: “We won’t comment on something we haven’t seen.

Who is Martin Ingram?”

Ingram says the document is one of a series and he is “hoping to produce further documents in coming months”.

The alleged Provisional informer is not named but is code-named ‘J118′. His handler is ‘G’. Ingram named the alleged informer to the Sunday Tribune but this newspaper is not printing his name because of the lack of evidence provided.

The failure to prosecute this republican figure, despite what is said to be substantial police evidence relating to the murder of an informer, has previously led to speculation in security and republican circles that he is a spy.

Sunday Business Post

By Tom McGurk
28 May 2006

There will soon be a new film showing here in Ireland that may reawaken a lot of historical arguments.

The film, The Wind That Shakes the Barley, is British film director Ken Loach’s take on the nation-defining events of the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War.

In many ways, this is the film that we have been awaiting for over 30 years - ever since the collapse of the partition settlement made during the film’s period brought the return of direct intervention in the North by London.

Loach is probably the most outstanding historical and alternative film director of his generation. His films include Kes, Land and Freedom(about the Spanish Civil War), Hidden Agenda (about British intelligence undercover activities in the North) and Black Jack.

Loach first showed his alternative credentials in 1975 with a remarkable drama series entitled Days of Hope for the BBC.

Produced by Tony Garnett - another of the radical tradition in the British film industry - the series told the story of an English family through the momentous events of 1914 to 1926.

It began with their involvement in the First World War, then took in the War of Independence in Ireland and finally back to the General Strike in Britain.

As committed socialists, Loach and Garnett saw this era as the defining moment in the abandonment of the working class by the newly emerging British Labour party.

In particular, the series delved into British class relationships and, most poignantly, the intersections between British international imperialism and native socialism. In the Irish section of the film, Loach depicted British working-class squaddies fighting Irish working-class volunteers.

In The Wind That Shakes the Barley, Loach is returning to territory he first examined in Days of Hope, the intersection between imperial ambitions and native rights.

Interestingly, at the Cannes film festival, Loach insisted that the story of Ireland’s War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War were as much a part of British history as Irish history. Of course, they are, though it’s not often seen from that perspective.

Given that Loach has – uniquely as a British artist with a socialist perspective - sought to examine the wider impact of Britain’s imperial culture on its working class history, its oldest colonial relationship, that with Ireland, is seminal.

Loach has been revolutionary in aesthetics, as well as in his politics.

From the beginning of his film career, he set himself solidly against the conventional practices of the industry, making films that beautifully detailed ordinary lives, seeing drama in the most mundane things and searching for socialist heroes in diverse places.

Within the industry, his film-making methods have been radical; Loach has never seen the script as an end-all and he has experimented successfully with using amateur actors alongside professionals.

His experiment with amateurs has given his films a gritty realism; for example, were he shooting in, say, Sheffield, he would audition local drama groups to find some of the players.

Actors in Loach films never know the ending and, since he also shoots sequentially, they are on a discovery process, like the audience, as the film progresses.

He has also been known to shoot sequences on a pure scenario basis, abandoning pre-written scripts. Having introduced the actors to where the scene is leading, he then leaves them to improvise themselves.

The Wind That Shakes the Barley - shot on location in west Cork - features rising Irish star Cillian Murphy. Given that Murphy has always admired Loach, this is a successful film pairing. The story is loosely based on the life of Ernie O’Malley, the Republican revolutionary whose remarkable books On Another Man’s Wound and The Singing Flame remain the great classics of the Irish revolutionary era. O’Malley, in his introduction to On Another Man’s Wound, described the War of Independence as ‘‘the story of a risen people taking on an empire’’.

O’Malley joined the Volunteers when he was a medical student and fought right through the independence struggle to the end of the Civil War. In fact, he was the last republican prisoner to be released from the Curragh at the end of the Civil War. He then went into exile, travelling the world.

Incidentally, Richard English has written a superb study of O’Malley entitled Ernie O’Malley - IRA Intellectual.

Loach’s film tells the story of two brothers from west Cork who fight through the War of Independence together but, after the Treaty is signed, find themselves on opposite sides in the Civil War.

The themes examined include military occupation, colonisation, the notion of the parish against the empire and, in the end, the bottomless debate about the Treaty. I suspect that no cinema audience will have seen British troops portrayed as Loach portrays them, with the film documenting the full terror of the Black and Tans.

But, as Loach said at Cannes, it is not an anti-British film, but an examination of occupation and colonisation. ‘‘There are always armies of occupation somewhere in the world being resisted by the people they are occupying,” he said.

‘‘I don’t need to tell anyone here where the British now - unfortunately forcefully and illegally - have an army of occupation.

“It’s also a story about extraordinary comradeship and heroism and a tragic conflict within that story.

‘‘It seemed to us a story that in the end we could not avoid.”

Sunday Times

Liam Clarke
May 28, 2006

A FORMER British military intelligence agent within the IRA is to be investigated for the murder of Eoin Morley, a republican shot dead by the Provisionals in Newry 16 years ago.

In an autobiography to be published later this month, Kevin Fulton admits being one of two gunmen involved in the shooting. The other was a well-known IRA bomb maker who later joined the Real IRA and moved to Dundalk.

Ailish Morley, the dead man’s mother, and his brother Ivan, have called for Fulton and the second gunman to be charged.

Last year Nuala O’Loan, the Northern Ireland police ombudsman, found there had never been a proper investigation into Morley’s murder, that the police had failed to arrest a suspect, understood to be Fulton, and that high-grade intelligence had not been acted on.

The ombudsman found that, during a meeting with a police handler, the suspect had given the impression he had carried out the murder. His fingerprint was also found on the murder weapon.

In his autobiography, Unsung Hero, Fulton does not say who fired the rifle used in the killing but does admit he was present and had a gun when the fatal shots were fired.

The Morleys are a well-known republican family who lived near Fulton’s home on Newry’s Derrybeg estate, where the murder took place. Eoin’s father, David, was an IRA officer in the Maze prison in the early 1970s after defeating Gerry Adams in an election among IRA inmates. Ivan Morley believes this created resentment towards the family.

Shortly before his death, Eoin Morley had left the IRA and, like Ivan, joined the rival Irish People’s Liberation Organisation. In his book, Fulton says it was against IRA regulations to join another grouping but that the rule was generally ignored.

But a senior IRA figure had a grudge against Morley and ordered that a punishment shooting be carried out with a high-velocity rifle. The weapon used was a Belgian FN Fal which had been re-bored for use against helicopters. Fulton says he warned the IRA that Morley was likely to be killed and says it was clear that was the intention.

Forensic records show that Morley was shot twice in the back outside the front door of his girlfriend’s house.

In his book, Fulton describes a scuffle and his fear that Morley might grab a gun. He also writes that when he told his handlers what had happened they were elated.

“When I told them Morley had been killed, their response was straightforward. ‘Nice one,’ they said. ‘Let’s hope they keep on killing their own’,” he writes.

This meeting took place in England and involved senior police, army and intelligence officers, though this fact is not mentioned in the book.

Fulton yesterday refused to confirm or deny it. “I am making no comment on the Morley killing or who debriefed me,” he said.

Ailish Morley says she met Adams in Belfast and told him of her belief that her son’s killers had been drinking and that informers were involved.

Afterwards, Martin McGuinness held an IRA inquiry in Dundalk’s Muirhevna Mor estate.

Fulton says it lasted only minutes and consisted of asking those present at the murder scene if they had been drinking. After McGuinness left, another senior IRA figure told them not to use high-calibre weapons for punishment shootings again.

A week after Morley’s death a haul of weapons, including the murder weapon, was found near Fulton’s home. “The police told me they were the weapons that had killed my son and that was before any forensic tests were carried out,” Ailish Morley said.

She later made a complaint to O’Loan about the police investigation and was assured last year it would be re-opened. Last week she complained about the lack of progress.

A PSNI spokesman said the murder was being examined by the Historical Enquiries Team.

Unsung Hero will be published by Blake on June 26, €26.45