SAOIRSE32

BBC

Sinn Fein’s Mitchel McLaughlin has made a surprise switch of constituency for next March’s assembly election.

Mitchel McLaughlin is to stand in South Antrim

Mr McLaughlin is moving to South Antrim, where Sinn Fein does not currently have an assembly seat.

He said he believed securing a seat in South Antrim for Sinn Fein would be the best way he could serve the party’s strategy at this time.

South Antrim is currently represented by two DUP MLAs, two Ulster Unionists, one SDLP member and one Alliance.

In the 2003 assembly election the IRA veteran Martin Meehan got more first preference votes for Sinn Fein than the Alliance leader David Ford.

However, Mr Ford benefited from unionist transfers and edged Mr Meehan out by 180 votes.

In the 2005 Westminster election Sinn Fein again pushed Mr Ford into fifth position.

Mitchel McLaughlin had high hopes of capturing the Foyle seat in 2005.

But when the votes were counted the SDLP Leader Mark Durkan enjoyed a 6,000 majority.

Selections

Sinn Fein have now selected the former IRA prisoners Raymond McCartney and Martina Anderson as candidates, together with local councillor Lynn Fleming.

The announcement in South Antrim follows some surprises from Sinn Fein selection meetings elsewhere.

In Newry and Armagh the party has deselected two sitting MLAs Davy Highland and Patricia O’Rawe.

Guardian

Press Association
Friday December 22, 2006 12:23 PM

Loyalist killer Michael Stone has been remanded in custody while police compile further evidence about a bomb attack on Northern Ireland’s parliament.

Stone, 51, spoke only to confirm his name during a brief appearance via video link at Belfast Magistrates’ Court.

He was captured on camera on November 24 trying to enter the parliament and two security guards trapped him in the doors of the building.

He was charged last month with attempting to murder five people including Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, chief negotiator Martin McGuinness, the two security guards and a person unknown.

He was also charged with possessing an imitation firearm, articles for terrorist purposes and explosives.

The court heard that prosecutors were still awaiting the results of forensic examinations on articles carried by Stone, which allegedly included nail bombs.

Defence lawyer Darren Duncan said: “There is an adjourned High Court bail application. The basis of the adjournment is that we are seeking an outcome in relation to the forensic examination in relation to certain items seized in this matter.

“By four weeks, we will be seeking a timetable, if at all possible, as to when the examinations are likely to be carried out and when the results are likely to be received because the High Court application depends fully on that.”

The killer was sentenced to almost 700 years in prison for six murders, three committed during a lone gun and grenade attack on an IRA funeral in Belfast in 1988. Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain revoked an early release from prison licence granted in 2000 after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, designed to end the conflict.

His case was adjourned to January 19 next year for a further hearing and he was remanded in custody at Maghaberry Prison in Co Antrim.

BBC

By Chris Thornton
Thursday 21, December 2006

MI5 has been accused of moving goalposts in the St Andrews Agreement so they can recruit retired RUC Special Branch officers.

As negotiations continue about the agency’s future role in Northern Ireland, SDLP MLA and Policing Board member Alex Attwood claimed MI5 is attempting ” to renege on the already inadequate commitments made at St Andrews”.

Mr Attwood said the security agency cannot be trusted.

“This shows you cannot take MI5 at their word,” he said. ” That is why you need strong legal powers to hold them to account.

“It is why the SDLP does not want MI5 to have the proposed enlarged role and it is why we are calling for the Police Ombudsman to be able to investigate complaints against them in the North.”

MI5 is due to take over responsibility for national security in Northern Ireland from the PSNI in a matter of months, meaning the agency will manage all anti-terrorist operations.

Nationalist parties oppose the move, which has been the subject of intensive negotiations over recent months, often involving Downing Street.

The SDLP has argued that the change will undermine the Patten policing reforms by building an intelligence unit without effective oversight. Sinn Fein says it opposes MI5 involvement in civic policing.

At the St Andrews negotiations in October, the Government made a number of unprecedented concessions about MI5’s role.

They included an acknowledgement that former police officers would be employed by MI5, but said that for “operational reasons” they would have to have experience of “the arrangements under which the PSNI currently operate”. This was interpreted as meaning that Special Branch officers who left the police before 2001 and the full introduction of Patten reforms would not be eligible to join MI5.

But there are now reported to be indications that MI5 wants to employ officers without that experience - either former RUC officers or police from English forces.

Mr Attwood made his comments after meeting Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde last night to discuss the future security arrangements. He said the party also met MI5 and the NIO last week.

He also attacked Sinn Fein’s position, saying that divorcing MI5 from police links and police oversight “would only create a force outside the police service and recreate the problems we had with the old Special Branch” .

BN.ie

21/12/2006 - 13:37:36

The Special Criminal Court has fixed a date next month for the trial of a Cork chef arrested last year as part of a garda investigation into IRA money laundering.

Father-of-two Don Bullman (aged 31) of Fernwood Crescent, Leghanamore, Wilton, Co Cork was charged in February last year with membership of an illegal organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, otherwise Oglaigh na hÉireann, otherwise the IRA on February 16, 2005.

Today Bullman’s counsel Mr Conor Devally SC applied to the court to fix January 23 as the date for his trial.

Prosecuting counsel Mr George Birmingham SC said that date was acceptable to the State.

Last year during a bail hearing, Detective Superintendent Diarmuid O’ Sullivan of the Special Detective Unit said that gardaí had found a bag containing a Daz box containing more than €94,000 wrapped in three individual wrappings of €30,000 each when Bullman was arrested at Heuston Station in Dublin in a northern registered jeep.

The Detective Superintendent said during that hearing that Bullman was “a central individual” to the activities of the IRA prior to February 16, 2005 and that activity was “a money laundering operation for the IRA, in which he is central”.

Bullman was remanded on continuing bail until his trial on January 23.

BN.ie

21/12/2006 - 16:39:52

A new form of slavery has emerged with women and children being trafficked across Europe for sexual exploitation, it was claimed today.

Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte said human trafficking was widespread in Europe.

“A new form of slavery now exists, whereby women and children are held captive for the purposes of sexual exploitation, and are trafficked across Europe for that end,” the TD told the National Forum on Europe, sitting in Dublin Castle.

“This is an abomination, which has no place in a civilised society. It is a manifestly European problem that manifestly requires a European solution.

“The peoples of Europe expect to see their politicians, and the institutions of the union, acting firmly and consistently on this issue.

“I want to see concerted EU action in this area. Europe needs to do more to seal its borders, and to chock off this abhorrent trade.”

During his address, Mr Rabbitte said climate change was the most pressing problem facing Europe today.

“A modest investment in curtailing emissions now, will prevent runaway climate change, the dire consequences of which we can only imagine,” he said.

Referring to the UK Stern Report on climate change, Mr Rabbitte said reducing the risks of climate change would require cooperation between countries as part of an international framework.

“What is required is for a coming together, at a minimum of the US, Europe, Russia, India, China, Japan, and Brazil, where everyone has an incentive to let the others carry the burden of carbon reduction, and yet, without cooperation from all, the broader goal cannot be met.

“What is required is an unprecedented degree of collective world action to tackle an unprecedented collective world problem,” he said.

Mr Rabbitte said it was absolutely imperative that the EU takes on the leadership of this collective action against climate change.

“The most common argument against international cooperation on emissions reduction is that the incentive for free riding is too great. That India and China or the USA will use our goodwill to piggyback to greater prosperity and competitiveness.

“The incentive for free riding is greatest when the greatest number are acting alone. The more consensus there is in the international system, the greater the penalties for those outside it,” he said.

Mr Rabbitte said the size of the EU’s population at 456 million, the third largest after China and India, meant it wielded considerable economic power on the global station.

“If the EU were to choose to exercise this economic power in favour of, for example, Kyoto compliant countries, then the attractiveness of free riding would diminish,” he said.

He said an intergovernmental conference should agree a climate change protocol to be attached to the EU Constitutional Treaty.

BN.ie

21/12/2006 - 19:27:24

Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin were accused tonight of playing a game of pass the parcel over the policing issue in the North.

As the British and Irish governments continued efforts to break the deadlock over policing, nationalist SDLP Policing Board member Alex Attwood claimed the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Féin were trying to shift the blame for the impasse onto other parties.

The West Belfast MLA was commenting amid claims that the British government withdrew a proposal today to present a plan to an Assembly sub group that the SDLP and Ulster Unionists would accept senior and junior posts in a new Stormont Justice Ministry.

The paper was not presented, however, to the Programme for Government Committee’s sub-group on policing and justice, with the UUP and SDLP insisting they would not sign up blindly to any proposal.

Mr Attwood observed: “The game of pass the parcel between the DUP and Sinn Féin is continuing.

“Their politics is more about blame than about solving problems. As they stare each other out, the day-to-day needs of people in the North (of Ireland) get lost.”

Prime minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern have identified Sinn Féin support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and a DUP commitment to power sharing as the key ingredients of their bid to revive devolved government in the province by next March.

DUP leader Ian Paisley has signalled on several occasions he will share power with Sinn Féin if the IRA ends paramilitary and criminal activity and the party publicly commits itself to supporting the PSNI, the courts and upholding the rule of law.

The British and Irish governments have been focussing on getting Gerry Adams to call a meeting of his party’s national executive to give the go-ahead for a special party conference next month on a change in policy towards the PSNI.

Mr Adams has told the DUP and British and Irish governments if his party is to change its policy, a date for the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont must come first.

The DUP, however, insists republicans must move first – supporting and proving they are co-operating with the PSNI before unionists can even contemplate giving a date for the transfer of powers.

A republican source said they were expecting ongoing negotiations with the British government to continue well into the night.

The Assembly sub group today signed off its report on proposals for the devolution of policing and justice.

Sources said the report, which should be released on January 3, would merely re-state the parties’ positions.

“The real game in town is the negotiations which have been taking place away from the sub group,” the republican source said.

BBC

The father of LVF leader Billy Wright has won a ruling over how the inquiry into his son’s murder is conducted.

LVF leader Billy Wright was shot dead in the Maze Prison in 1997

Initially the inquiry was to be carried out under the Prisons Act, but it was changed to the 2005 Inquiries Act by tribunal chairman Lord McLean.

This would effectively have given a minister the right to terminate an inquiry at any time and so allow for evidence to be kept secret.

Mr Justice Deeny ruled on Thursday that this was unlawful.

The judge said Secretary of State Peter Hain had failed to take into account the importance of the inquiry’s independence.

He said he did not suspect bad faith on the part of Mr Hain but that he had been ill-advised.

The nature of the Wright inquiry has yet to be determined.

A spokesman for the NIO said the secretary of state was disappointed by the judgement and would study it carefully.

He said the the decision to convert the inquiry to the Inquiries Act was taken at the request of the independent tribunal chairman, Lord McLean.

Wright, 37, was shot dead by three INLA prisoners in the Maze Prison on 27 December 1997.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy announced the public inquiry into Wright’s killing in November 2004 following allegations of security force collusion in his murder.