SAOIRSE32

RTÉ

14 December 2006 17:24

Three months since it began, the prosecution case against alleged Omagh bomber, Sean Hoey, has come to a close three months after it began.

Defence QC Orlando Pownall has now opened his case with an application to stop the trial.

In claiming that Mr Hoey had no case to answer, Mr Pownall initially attacked the DNA evidence against the 37-year-old electrician from Molly’s Road in Jonesborough, south Armagh.
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The 58 counts on which he is charged include the murders of the 29 people killed in the Omagh bomb atrocity as well as other bomb, mortar and hoax bomb attacks carried out throughout Norther Ireland.

Mr Pownall claimed there was no fibre evidence to connect Mr Hoey with any of the devices nor did it corroborate any other evidence.

BN.ie

14/12/2006 - 14:19:28

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams today called on the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman to investigate a gun attack on him over 20 years ago after a newspaper claimed Special Branch knew of a plot a week in advance.

The West Belfast MP announced he had instructed his solicitor to write to Nuala O’Loan following the publication of a report in the Andersonstown News that linked the old RUC Special Branch to the gun attack on him in 1984.

Mr Adams was hit several times as he was driven away from a court in Belfast, but escaped with minor injuries. Three other people in the vehicle with him were also shot.

The newspaper claimed a retired former RUC detective had confirmed a UDA informant, who was a double agent working for Special Branch, told his handlers a week before the attack that it was to take place.

Mr Adams said: “This is not the first time that a source within the British system has confirmed that the UDA gang who carried out the attack were colluding with the Special Branch and British Military Intelligence.”

He said that in the book Big Boy’s Rules by BBC reporter Mark Urban the author confirmed some years ago that a British Military Intelligence source confirmed to him a UDA agent had tipped them off about a plan to assassinate Mr Adams.

The Sinn Féin leader added: “I have asked my solicitor to write to Nuala O’Loan and ask that this latest information be thoroughly investigated.”

A spokesman for the ombudsman said she had yet to receive the letter and therefore could not comment on whether an investigation would be undertaken.

Belfast Telegraph

[Published: Thursday 14, December 2006 - 16:18]

Telephone recordings will be used to try and convict a `disaffected republican’ for allegedly running a major counterfeit cigarette operation, a court heard today.

Seamus Mullan, 52, appeared in the dock as €450,000 worth of his assets were frozen in a separate hearing.

He was refused bail at Londonderry Magistrates’ Court after a senior detective warned he was likely to reoffend and interfere with witnesses.

The accused, of Lisnascreaghog Road, Garvagh, County Derry, denies five charges stretching back to 2000 following a police operation against the sale and distribution of counterfeit tobacco in Northern Ireland’s north-west region.

Mullan was one of nine people arrested during raids on 16 houses in Limavady and Coleraine on Tuesday.

Belfast Telegraph

[Published: Thursday 14, December 2006 - 17:48]

The Democratic Unionists were tonight accused of putting forward a crazy position paper on policing as efforts continued to break the deadlock over power-sharing.

After the second meeting of the Stormont Programme for Government Committee’s sub group on policing and justice, Sinn Fein sources claimed the Reverend Ian Paisley’s party proposed an unrealistic method for selecting a devolved minister in charge of policing and justice.

The DUP’s position paper, which it said was rejected by Sinn Fein, the nationalist SDLP and Ulster Unionists, proposed that the minister would not be appointed under the d’Hondt in the Assembly used for other ministers.

Instead it would require a 70%-plus vote in favour of the candidate within the Assembly.

The DUP also suggested that the minister would have no vote within the power-sharing executive.

A Sinn Fein source said: “This was crazy stuff.

“What they were suggesting was effectively a unionist veto and in particular a DUP veto over who would be minister. Everybody bar them thought this was unacceptable.

“There was no mention in their document of a timeframe for the devolution of policing and justice powers when everybody and their granny knows that the only way this is going to be unlocked is for a date for policing and justice powers to be transferred.'’

Under British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s plan for achieving power-sharing next March, it is envisaged that Sinn Fein will for the first time publicly declare support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The DUP wants Sinn Fein to do that first before it will form a power-sharing government.

Gerry Adams has insisted, however, that Sinn Fein will need a timeframe for the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont, agreement on the departmental model which will handle those powers and assurances that MI5 will have no role in civic policing before he can move to recommend that the party endorses the PSNI.

BBC

Anna Lo is to contest South Beflast for Alliance

The first person from an ethnic minority background to stand in the Northern Ireland assembly elections is set to announce her candidacy.

Anna Lo, who is the chief executive of the Chinese Welfare Association, has been selected to stand for the Alliance Party in south Belfast.

Ms Lo said there was a growing need for “a diversity of society in politics”.

“I hope my example will encourage many others to consider engaging in electoral politics,” she said.

‘Determined’

“It is through the ballot box and the democratic process that real change can be delivered.”

Ms Lo said she was determined “to be much more than a candidate for ethnic minorities”.

“I want to represent all of the people of south Belfast, irrespective of their background,” she said.

She added that she was delighted to have been selected by her party to contest south Belfast and she was “looking forward to the campaign”.