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Ex-republican prisoners among those who gathered for the launch of a new mural designed to commemorate the hunger strikes ahead of Casement rally

By Damian McCarney

A new mural was launched this week in advance of the national hunger strike march and rally at Casement Park.

Ex-republican prisoners were among the crowd present at the Lower Falls renowned international wall to view the mural, which depicts a prisoner on blanket protest with Long Kesh’s notorious H-blocks in the background.

The mural was officially launched on Tuesday, by Jennifer McCann of the National 1980/1981 Hunger Strike Committee, who was imprisoned in Armagh women’s prison at the time of the 1981 hunger strikes.

The Twinbrook woman said: “It is fitting that this mural has been painted at the international wall as news of the hunger strikes went around the world in 1981 and served to internationalise our struggle. The names of hunger strikers became known in many places throughout the world, for instance a street in Iran has been named after Bobby Sands.

“It is important that we pay tribute to the families who lost relatives during the hunger strikes.”

Organisers of Sunday’s event expect up to 35,000 people to amass in West Belfast for the event, which will be the focal point of the 25th anniversary commemorative events.

Tuesday also marked the 25th anniversary of the death of Bellaghy hunger striker Tom McElwee. Rosa McLaughlin, chairperson of West Belfast Sinn Féin, urged people to come to support the rally to remember Tom and his comrades.

“Much preparation has taken place to organise this very significant event. West Belfast republicans have been working tirelessly to ensure that this event is a fitting tribute to the families of those who died on hunger strike 25 years ago.

“Thirty thousand personal invitations from Brendan McFarlane, former officer commanding during the hunger strike in Long Kesh, have gone to all homes in West Belfast, the communities from which three of the hunger strikers came.”
In addition to street theatre and floats, former blanketmen dressed in blankets, along with former POWs, will participate in Sunday’s march. The rally will be held in Casement Park where music will be provided by Frances Black and Francie Brolly, and Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams will be the guest speaker.

The rally meeting points are: North Belfast: Ardoyne Shops at 11am; New Lodge Road and Lepper Street Junction at 11.30am.

West Belfast: Gardenmore Road Monument at 1pm; Lenadoon Shops at 1.30pm; Busy Bee (Iceland) at 2pm; Trinity Lodge at 12.30pm; Top of Whiterock at 1pm; Dunville Park at 1pm.

South & East Belfast: Cromac Street at noon; Mountpottinger Road at 11.45am.

Journalist:: Damien McCarney

BBC

The dissident republican Real IRA has claimed responsibility for the firebomb attacks on stores in Newry this week.

Fires engulfed a number of businesses in the city

Firebombs destroyed JJB Sports and CarpetRight stores in the town whilst a TK Maxx store and MFI outlet were among those badly damaged on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the cross-border railway line between Newry and Dundalk has been closed while police carry out a search.

It follows the Real IRA’s warning in its statement that there may be unexploded devices on the line.

The firebomb attacks earlier this week are estimated to have caused damage worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Newry’s SDLP mayor Michael Carr said: “The Real IRA should examine their motives.

“Their cause is not a blow for Ireland, but a blow against their own communities.”

Mr Carr added that the businesses which had been targeted would be given every support, including an effort to have them temporarily re-located.

Belfast Telegraph

From yesterday - posted by Artybhoy - Saoirse na hÉireann

By Brian Rowan
10 August 2006

Today, a year to the day after north Belfast teenager Thomas Devlin was stabbed to death in the street while out buying sweets, his family will lay flowers at the spot where he died. Here his parents, Jim and penny, tell Brian Rowan why they hold those who are shielding his killer as responsible for their son’s killing as the man who wielded the knifeIn their eyes you can still see all of the hurt of what happened a year ago. You can hear it in their voices. You wonder what to say and not say - when to speak and not speak.

You think, yet try not to think, what it must be like for them. Try not to think, because to go there will take you somewhere no parent wants to be.

Penny has cried every day for a year and her husband Jim still sees his son amongst the kids walking home from school on Belfast’s Antrim Road - the boys with dark wavy hair who remind him of Thomas.

This is life after death. It’s in a place where you will find Jim and Penny Devlin.

Life still involves all of the routine of going to work at the Labour Relations Agency and the BBC, walking the dog, doing the shopping, doing the things that families have to do, but they are standing still in that moment, in the horrific events of a year ago.

Their son Thomas was just 15 when he was murdered - attacked by two men, stabbed five times and left to die on the street not a stone’s throw from the family home in north Belfast. Minutes later, Jim and Penny watched the efforts to save their son. And they watched him die.

Thomas and two friends had been to a garage on the Antrim Road to buy sweets and were walking home when they were attacked.

I never met the young lad, but I know his father. For years I worked with Jim at the BBC. He called me just a few days ago to remind me that today is his son’s anniversary and to ask me could I write something to remind others of what happened a year ago.

Every day, the killing of Thomas is in the thinking and in the tears of his parents.

Today will be no different.

Jim and Penny will cry with their twins - James and Megan are 20 and are students studying in Glasgow and Liverpool - and with Thomas’s friends.

They will remember the boy who liked being late for school at Belfast Royal Academy, the boy who loved music and the boy who enjoyed the company of his mates, two of whom were with him when he was attacked, and one of whom was also stabbed.

His friends still call at the Devlin home - one girl just recently to deliver a portrait of Thomas that she had drawn.

Penny talks about their kindness and their generosity, and of the hope that they give her for the future.

Then she speaks of those who killed her son and of those who have shielded them ever since.

You won’t hear bitterness in her voice, but you will hear lots of questions - questions that can only be answered by the man who used a knife to take a young life 12 months ago and by those who have protected him and his accomplice ever since.

“The people who are close to them, I hold them as responsible for this murder as the man who used the knife,” Penny tells me.

She does not accept that their silence comes from fear. That is an “excuse” she says.

“It is because they value life so little. I am not convinced that they have a conscience,” she adds.

In staying silent, Penny believes that those who know her son’s murderer are giving him permission to kill again.

“I have to have hope that somebody will at some point turn them in or that the police investigation will have a breakthrough,” she says.

The identities of the killer, his accomplice and of those who are covering for them are known. It is believed they were living in Mount Vernon at the time of Thomas’s murder and that is where the police have focused their attention.

“There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t shed a tear because we have lost so much … and for what?” Penny asks.

That is a question for Thomas’s killer, for the young man who five times stuck a knife into a boy he didn’t know.

Clearly, on that street in north Belfast a year ago, he intended to kill someone - anyone - and it happened to be Thomas.

It was premeditated murder.

“There’s no doubt about it,” Penny says, “and the viciousness of the attack demonstrated that.”

So, what do those who know Thomas’s killer see in his eyes? What do they hear in his voice? What does life after murder mean for him?

And what do those who are covering for him see when they look in the mirror? Do they see a young boy lying dead in the street? Can they see the tears in the eyes of his mother and father and his family and friends?

Do they have a conscience or does life really mean so little to them that they can, and will continue to, be silent?

Today, the Devlins and their friends will release balloons in the grounds of Belfast Castle, they will lay flowers at the spot on the Somerton Road where Thomas died and they will remember him in a memorial service at the local church of St Therese.

“I don’t think we have moved on at all,” Penny tells me. “We are still at the point where Thomas was killed.”

Today, as Thomas’s family remembers, where will his killer be? What was he thinking a year ago when he took a young boy’s life?

What is he thinking now?

What was it all about?

Has he told someone, anyone?

And how can they stay silent?

Are they giving him “permission” to kill again?

BBC

Trial by jury is set to become the norm in all court cases in Northern Ireland from July next year.

The government is abolishing the old Diplock courts, in which judges heard terrorist cases without a jury.

However, it is planned to give the Director of Public Prosecutions the power to decide that exceptional cases should be tried without a jury.

This would happen if he believes that there is still a risk of jurors being intimidated.

After last year’s decision by the IRA to end its campaign, the government promised to repeal its counter terrorist measures, including the no-jury Diplock courts, which date back to the early 1970s.

Twenty years ago more than 300 cases were being tried by Diplock judges during the year - now that figure is down to about 60.

Exceptional cases

From next summer the Diplock courts will go, but the DPP, Sir Alasdair Fraser, will still have the power to decide exceptional cases should not be put before a jury.

These could involve paramilitaries or former paramilitaries and would be cases where the DPP believed a jury would be open to paramilitary or community-based pressure.

Most cases, however, are expected to be heard by a jury.

To protect juries, the government proposes restricting access to personal information about individual jurors and to restrict the defence’s right to challenge members of a jury.

In some cases juries could sit out of sight of the public gallery.

In another change, magistrates will in the future decide if suspects should be freed on bail, not high court judges.

The government is now consulting on its proposals which it intends to put into law during the autumn.

BBC

A former RUC detective who was questioned by officers from the Police Ombudsman’s office has been released without charge.

Johnston Brown was arrested at Belfast International Airport on Wednesday.

The arrest was part of an inquiry by the ombudsman into the RUC’s investigation of the UVF murder of Raymond McCord Junior in 1997.

He was questioned about a number of matters, including attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Two other former detectives arrested on Wednesday morning were released without charge.

One of the officers arrested was former CID detective Trevor McIlwrath.

Police Ombudsman investigators questioned them over allegations of perverting the course of justice and misconduct in public office.

Two premises were also searched by the investigators, the Police Ombudsman’s office said.

Mr McCord, 22, was beaten to death by members of the UVF and his body left at a quarry in Newownabbey.

It has been claimed that at least one of those responsible for the McCord murder was working for police Special Branch at the time and this led to a major investigation by Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan.

It is understood the investigation, which has been going on for several years, has mushroomed into a wider inquiry involving police intelligence-gathering methods and the use of informers.

The ombudsman’s investigation also includes the UVF murder of Sharon McKenna in north Belfast in 1992.

The 27-year-old Newtownabbey taxi driver was shot in the sectarian attack at the home of an elderly friend whose dinner she was making.

An interim report has already been submitted to the Public Prosecution Service and a report is expected to be published next month.

Irish Examiner

By Jimmy Woulfe
11 August 2006

A CATHOLIC brother and sister have been refused free travel to the Protestant school they attend in Limerick, having been told the State-funded school bus is for Protestants only.
Limerick City Vocational Educational Committee (VEC) provides a bus for students who attend Villiers School on the North Circular Road.

Harry Gleeson, a Catholic, with a son and daughter attending Villiers, recently applied for bus passes for the bus which passes the road he lives on.

Last Thursday, he received a letter from the city VEC turning down his application. The letter stated: “Villiers School is a school under Protestant management and only children of Protestant denominations have an entitlement to transport on the special Villiers School bus service.”

Mr Gleeson said when he contacted the VEC about the reason for the refusal, he was told ‘that was it’.”

Mr Gleeson, a financial consultant, said: “I was stunned and amazed in this day and age that a public body could send out a letter like that. If I have a Protestant neighbour with children at Villiers, the State will provide them with school transport but not my children. The bus passes the end of the road we live on, but because my children are Catholic, they cannot get on it.”

He said his children had been going to Villiers for a number of years — one is in Leaving Cert and the other in transition year — and school friends told them of the free bus service.

“We decided to apply for bus passes and got the application forms from Villiers who put the school stamp on them and we sent them to the VEC, and then this letter has just come back from the VEC,” he said.

Mr Gleeson said he was also mystified how the VEC knew he was a Roman Catholic.

He said: “My grandfather was a Protestant. In this day and age, this whole situation is ridiculous.”

Mr Gleeson said while his home at Caher Road, Mungret, is in the catchment area of another secondary school, this was not given as a reason by City VEC of Limerick for the refusal of free bus passes to Villiers.

Cllr Niall Collins of Fianna Fáil said he intends to raise the mater with the VEC.

He said: “This is discrimination and not acceptable in this day and age.”

The VEC was last night unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, over 200 irate parents of four and five year-olds due to start school in a Co Meath village later this month said they do not want the children being taught in temporary classrooms at a racecourse 9 miles away.

At a meeting this week in Laytown, the principal and board of management of Scoil Oilibheir Naofa, and politicians in attendance, were chastised by the parents for failing to address the accommodation issue before now.

“The losers here are the children. In the last ten years the population in this area has trebled but the only winners are the builders and developers. Not one new school has been built here since 1979,” said AJ Cahill, who threatened to take his child out of the school.

Principal Mary Carpenter said that when the school opened last year, in portacabins in the grounds of Laytown national school, “we didn’t have enough accommodation. Now we need more accommodation because of the demand for places.”