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The time for true and visible Sinn Fein support for policing has arrived, the Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists has said.

MONDAY 29/01/2007 09:58:19
By:Press Association

Speaking after the historic vote yesterday, the party leader said they (the DUP) had forced republicans to recognise the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Delegates at a special Sinn Fein conference in Dublin voted overwhelmingly to work with the service.

Mr Paisley said: “The DUP has forced Sinn Fein to recognise support for the police and the rule of law as an issue of paramount importance for which there can be no other way. Sinn Fein must now walk this road.

“No post-dated action can take the place of real delivery. The postponements must come to an end.

“The time for true, visible and open support for the police and law enforcement has arrived.”

“This shift means telling police about crime, taking seats on accountability bodies like the Policing Board and District Policing Partnerships.”

Mr Paisley said anything less than full implementation of Sinn Fein`s commitments would render the meeting valueless.

“Only with real delivery can the way be cleared for a full return to democracy and a facing up to the everyday needs and requirements of the people of Northern Ireland,” he said.

“The site must be cleared before proper building can begin. All Ulster people, across both the religious and political divides, know that it is now or never.”

The DUP, the majority unionist party, will be expected to share power with Sinn Fein by the time the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive is restored on March 26.

That was part of the deal agreed last October by the British and Irish Governments at St Andrews in Scotland.

Ian Paisley`s party colleague, Nigel Dodds, has questioned whether Sinn Fein support for policing could be proved in time for the restoration of a devolved government by the end of March.

The North Belfast MP said there was potential for political progress after the Sinn Fein vote but said what was needed was delivery on the ground.

“The question today for Sinn Fein is `Why are you continuing to delay?”`

The DUP policy was that there could be no power-sharing with Sinn Fein in government until republicans had demonstrated their commitment to supporting policing and the rule of law.

Condemning the lack of a clear-cut decision, he said: “If they are going to stick to this policy then there will certainly be no delivery by 26 March and therefore there can`t be the time for the delivery or the testing.

DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson said: “We are prepared to share power in circumstances where all the parties in the Government are upholding the rule of law.

“I think it is a fairly reasonable point to make that in circumstances where Sinn Fein have indicated in words that they are prepared to support the police, that this is simply translated into practical co-operation on the ground.

“After all, with a history going back for many decades of involvement in criminality and violence, I think people want to be sure that what Sinn Fein have said they will do, they do.

“It`s now up to Sinn Fein to deliver in terms of fulfilling the pledges they made yesterday.”

However, republican critic Dr Willie McCrea from the Democratic Unionist Party, said: “Details of the outcome will bring no surprises as the whole exercise has been carefully choreographed for the Dublin pantomime.

“The heavily qualified decision on policing, law and order etc, is a kick in the teeth for all those who portray Sinn Fein as having come out of the dark ages into the light of democracy.

“The reality, however, is far different as Sinn Fein has failed the democratic test and has not moved away from the mindset of the terrorist.”

Belfast Telegraph

Monday, January 29, 2007

Former IRA prisoner Gerry McGeough has confirmed his intention to stand against Sinn Fein in the next Assembly election.

Mr McGeough has been a critic of the party’s move to endorse the PSNI, which was backed by an overwhelming majority at yesterday’s ard fheis in Dublin.

The 48-year-old, who was jailed in the United States in the early 1990s for gun-running, has responded to the vote by confirming that he will seek an Assembly seat in Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

He says he was not surprised by yesterday’s outcome as the republican movement had been “recruited into the British Crown system” and was “being used to administer and maintain British rule”.

Sunday Life

By Alan Murray
Sunday, January 28, 2007

Former RUC Special Branch officers have labelled some recommendations on agent-handling in Nuala O’Loan’s report as “unbelievably naive”.

Retired senior officers say that two instances in particular highlight a lack of understanding and knowledge of the realities of handling agents.

They say that her recommendation in the case of the sabotaged UVF attack on Sinn Fein’s Monaghan office in March 1997 that those involved should have been arrested is “astonishing”.

The former officers say that, if evidence had been processed with the intention of prosecuting the UVF men involved, then ‘Informant 1′ - Mark Haddock - would have been exposed as an RUC agent and killed.

Said one officer: “She (Mrs O’Loan) confirms that Haddock brought the bomb destined for Monaghan to Special Branch so it could be neutered.

“If prosecutions had been mounted, a forensic scientist, either in Belfast or the Republic, would have had to write up a report on the composition of the ‘bomb’ and, unless the scientist was prepared to fabricate a report for the trial, he would have had to confirm that the ‘explosives’ were no more than a mixture of putty and sawdust.

“That report would have had to be given to the defendants and they would have been able to figure out that someone doctored the bomb and easily worked out who it was. What she suggests is unbelievably naive.”

Former officers also say that, similarly, if Haddock had been pulled in about planning a hit on a “republican target” in the Antrim area in July 1994, he would have been made aware that there was at least one other informant within his Mount Vernon UVF unit.

In her report on the incident, Mrs O’Loan says “there is no record of police challenging Informant 1 about it”.

Another former officer added: “Imagine the implications of pulling Haddock about that.

“It would have told him that there was another agent within his unit and he would probably have sussed out who it was, because so few knew about this and then would probably have killed him.

“If you were to do what Mrs O’Loan suggests in these two incidents, agents wouldn’t survive more than a month - they’d be dead and then she’d probably level the charge against their handlers that they were in breach of their duty of care towards an agent.”

In response, the Police Ombudsman’s office said yesterday: “The Antrim incident referred to happened in 1994. Informant 1 was engaged in terrorist activity he hadn’t told his handlers about.

“It was one of a series of incidents which should have rung alarm bells about his activities and value as a source, yet he remained an agent for another nine years, during which intelligence linked him to multiple murders and attempted murders and police effectively protected him from prosecution.

“In relation to Monaghan, police made no attempt to mount a surveillance operation, they did not attempt to disrupt the attack, they failed to tell their counterparts in the Republic, they failed to keep records which could have been analysed and helped gain a fuller picture of UVF activity.

“These things could have been done without compromising an agent.”

Sunday Life

By Stephen Gordon and Chris Anderson
Sunday, January 28, 2007

The family of a 12-year-old girl who was shot dead by a machine gun-toting paratrooper have welcomed news that the controversial killing is to be re-investigated.

The PSNI’s Historical Enquiries Team has confirmed it is to probe the killing of south Armagh schoolgirl Majella O’Hare.

Majella was walking with friends towards St Malachy’s Church near her home in Whitecross on August 14, 1976 when she was hit by two high velocity rounds fired by a member of a foot patrol operating a vehicle checkpoint nearby.

She died in her father’s arms as she was being taken by military helicopter to hospital in Newry.

At first, the Army claimed the schoolgirl had been caught in crossfire after a gunman opened fire on soldiers. But later it contradicted the crossfire claim.

The soldier involved claimed he had shouted a warning and opened fire on a gunman he said he had spotted for two seconds in a gap in a hedge.

However, locals said there was no gunman and no warning was shouted.

When the soldier was later acquitted of Majella’s manslaughter the verdict resulted in widespread criticism from nationalists and human rights campaigners.

The PSNI cold case team’s re-investigation will get under way on May 2, this year.

Majella’s 84-year-old mother Mary O’Hare and her brother, Michael welcomed the news.

“We had become disheartened that nothing had happened,” Michael told Sunday Life.

“In 30 years the Army never contacted my mother to apologise or express any remorse at Majella’s death.

“Michael Williams, the soldier who fired the fatal shots in August 1976, never responded either. We have had to live with the Army’s unsubstantiated account of what happened that morning.

“We want to know the truth,” he said.

“We know that the Army’s account to be patently untrue and have suffered in silence. That cannot continue any longer.”

He said the Army and the British government should also apologise to his mother for the pain and distress she has endured.

In 1989, the commanding officer of the Parachute Regiment, Brigadier Peter Morton recalled that Majella O’Hare’s killing “cast a cloud which was destined to hang over 3 Para’s reputation for sometime to come”.

He added: “Inside I was really sick that one incident in the space of barely a second had almost totally wiped out the good things we had achieved in south Armagh. We received the normal clutch of formal thank you letters, but from the RUC there was silence. The taste which it all left was rather sour.”

Sunday Independent

JIM CUSACK
28 January 2007

FORMER RUC officers in the North are threatening to blow the whistle on top-level informers if any more ex-police officers are arrested or accused by Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan of collaborating with loyalists.

Retired detectives were enraged at last week’s report which they say unfairly branded the RUC as being involved in widespread collusion with loyalist paramilitaries.

They pointed out that, statistically, the force arrested and convicted far more loyalist killers than republicans.

They were particularly annoyed at the public fashion in which three retired officers were arrested last September by investigators working for Mrs O’Loan.

While the detectives were not identified in last week’s report, their former colleagues say they may as well have been.

The Police Ombudsman’s file was forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions in the North with a view to bringing charges. The DPP declined to do so, citing lack of evidence.

The O’Loan report last week caused a storm drawing intense criticism of the old RUC.

Former Branch men are now saying that if the Ombudsman continues to make public claims about them, then they are prepared to breach the Official Secrets Act and release secrets that could include the identities of high-level informers.

This could include former IRA agents run by the RUC and Garda during the Troubles, and some agents who may have since become prominent in Sinn Fein.

Sunday Life

Crusading dad’s challenge to terror boss

By Stephen Breen
Sunday, January 28, 2007

The vindicated father of UVF murder victim Raymond McCord jnr last night offered to meet the terror group’s leaders.

Raymond McCord snr - who will meet with Policing Board chairman Professor Desmond Rea to discuss his son’s case this week - has called on the UVF’s chief-of-staff to admit the loyalist grouping was “wrong” to dismiss his allegations for almost a decade.

Mr McCord issued the defiant plea after the UVF’s leadership on the Shankill remained silent on the explosive findings contained within Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan’s report.

His challenge comes after it emerged the UVF’s brigadier in south-east Antrim, who is also an informer, has gone into hiding following last week’s report.

The north Belfast man, who is set to meet with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern over the findings of the bombshell document, urged UVF godfathers to hand over the killers of his son to the police.

Said the dad-of-three: “I want to confront the UVF’s chief-of-staff, who is also an informer, face-to-face and ask him to admit I was telling the truth all along.

“I don’t see why, if the UVF claims to represent the Protestant people, they can’t hand over a gang of informers who were killing their own people.

“I have met the UVF before and they told me there would be an inquiry but nothing was ever done about because they were all informers and being controlled by Special Branch.

“I was disgusted that my son was a member of the UVF for a very short time, but there was no way I was going to turn my back on him because he was still my son. I would also like to know why the UVF leadership appears to be walking away from the findings of Mrs O’Loan’s report? Now is the time for them to speak about a killer gang of informers who were working for the police when they were killing their own people.”

The campaigning dad also told how he expected to see arrests over his son’s killing in the weeks and months ahead.

Added Mr McCord: “Every senior police officer I spoke to after my son’s killing told me lies and now is the time for the police to deliver.

“I believe the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) has made progress in relation to my son’s case and I would hope to see arrests and other developments over the coming weeks.

“If the police had told the truth from the start then there could have been arrests and these people could have been behind bars.

“People should also know that I am not attacking the RUC in my criticism of the police. I know the vast majority of officers did a great job and there was just a small group of officers who colluded with loyalist killers.

“I hate the fact my son’s murder is being used as a political football and the only thing my family will continue to seek is justice.

“Jeffrey Donaldson has called for the killers to be arrested and he also told me he wants the corrupt police officers arrested, so there should be no political rows over my son’s murder.”

BN.ie

27/01/2007 - 14:04:03

Republicans opposed to the Police Force in Northern Ireland may run ex-prisoners as candidates in this March’s elections to restore government.

Republican Sinn Féin is calling on Sinn Féin members to throw out a motion from the party leadership that they accept the province’s police service.

A special conference, or ard fheis, is being held in Dublin tomorrow to rubber stamp the historic shift which would see republicans joining the Police Service of Northern Ireland and sitting on public scrutiny bodies.

Republican Sinn Féin spokesman Ruairi Og O’Bradaigh said: “It is a British police force as far as we are concerned, it doesn’t matter if Gerry Adams is in uniform, it is who controls it and pays it and motivates it,” he said.
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Jerry Adams hopes to secure the landmark vote ahead of anticipated restored government in March and devolved powers over policing and justice by 2008.

Accepting the police was a condition which Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party had demanded before sharing power.

Republican Sinn Féin which represents the dissident Continuity IRA is set against the policing concession which it claimed would endorse British rule in Ireland.

“We have had 100 years of British police forces here and there were plenty of Catholics and it didn’t make them not a British force,” Mr O’Bradaigh added.

“This is all cosmetic to give it a veneer of respectability.”

Sunday Life

Sunday, January 28, 2007

The parents of a man savagely murdered by a notorious IRA unit led by a paid British agent have called on Nuala O’Loan to launch a McCord-style collusion inquiry into their son’s murder.

The Ombudsman’s Office is now considering the request that could lift the lid on the role of former Belfast Provo Freddie Scappaticci - aka state agent Stakeknife - inside the IRA’s ruthless internal security unit.

Scappaticci is believed to have carried out dozens of murders while leading a double life as a torturer in the IRA’s so-called ‘nutting squad’ and as an £80,000 agent with the intelligence services.

Portadown couple Pat and Irene Dignam last week wrote to the Police Ombudsman’s office requesting an inquiry into the police handling of the inquiry into the murder of their son, John, 14 years ago.

And they believe Scappaticci was one of the killers.

Dad-of-two John Dignam (32) was himself a British spy inside the IRA, as were his friends Gregory Burns and Aiden Starrs.

All three were abducted, interrogated for a week before being shot through the head in June 1992.

Their bodies were dumped on a border road in south Armagh.

The IRA said the trio had admitted being MI5/Special Branch agents and of involvement in the murder of Portdown woman, Margaret Perry.

But the Dignams believe their son was sacrificed by the intelligence services to protect Stakeknife and want the Police Ombudsman to investigate their claims police failed to properly investigate the killing in 1992.

Pat Dignam said: “Until now there has been a wall of silence about why my son was left to die at the hands of the IRA’s internal security squad. That’s no longer acceptable as far as we are concerned.

“One of the leaders of the murder squad that killed my son was the British agent Stakeknife.

“Over the years he has been well protected and paid thousands of pounds by his intelligence services paymasters.”

He added he had no doubt the itelligence services and the IRA had colluded in his son’s murder.

Irene Dignam said audio tapes existed that outline the events which resulted in her son’s murder.

The family wrote to the Ombudsman’s Office last Thursday to formally complain about the RUC investigation into their son’s murder and have asked to meet Mrs O’Loan to present their case in person.

Guardian

Sinn Fein conference will give leader 80 per cent backing

Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday January 28, 2007
The Observer

Decades of republican opposition to the forces of law and order in Northern Ireland will end today when Sinn Fein votes to recognise the province’s police service.

At the party’s highly orchestrated special meeting in Dublin, Gerry Adams, the party leader, will win the day with 80 per cent of the delegates backing the motion to support the police.

The move will pave the way for elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly in March and for Sinn Fein and Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party to work together.

Yesterday, Adams voiced what would once have been considered unthinkable when he said that any republican wanting to join the police should be supported and then added that he believed Ian Paisley was genuine in wanting to build a better future for everyone in the North of Ireland.

The Sinn Fein President said that when he heard Paisley speak at St Andrews last year about the ‘future of our children and grandchildren’ he thought the DUP leader was ‘very, very genuine’ and he intended to ‘hold him [Paisley] to that’.

Speaking ahead of the special conference in Dublin, Adams predicted the party leadership would win the debate on policing. The pressure will then be on Paisley’s DUP to enter into power-sharing government with republicans, following the Assembly elections, which are scheduled for 7 March.

Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern will announce the elections on Tuesday evening, following an Anglo-Irish summit at Downing Street.

However, hostility to the historic compromise is building outside the mainstream republican movement. Gerry McGeough, an ex-IRA gunrunner from Co Tyrone, confirmed yesterday that once Sinn Fein delegates vote to recognise the PSNI, he would definitely run as an alternative republican candidate in Fermanagh/South Tyrone.

Meanwhile, ex-IRA chief of staff and Republican Sinn Fein President Ruairi O’Bradaigh announced yesterday that a number of Continuity IRA prisoners are considering standing in other constituencies across the north. The Observer has learnt that these areas include west Belfast. O’Bradaigh called on young republicans still in Sinn Fein to vote against the policing motion today.

Adams said he understood ‘how hard this will be for some people, especially those who have suffered at the hands of the RUC, but this is an opportunity to become involved and have a say in how our country is policed.

‘I would call on all people to support any republican who wants to join the police force, but I am not going to recruit for the PSNI. They have to win our trust and prove they are an impartial service. It is up to them to persuade the people that the days of bad policing are over.’

Adams denied there was any split in his party. The 20 per cent of those opposed to the move on policing are mainly from areas around the border with the Republic. They are not expected to stage a walkout once the vote is taken.

‘There is no split, our party is united and will remain so. We have held open debates across the 32 counties, where views have both been validated and vindicated, which is very healthy for any party.’

The Sinn Fein President received a late boost yesterday after Raymond McCord, whose son was murdered by loyalists who were police agents, urged Sinn Fein to back the PSNI.

A devastating Police Ombudsman report last week found that Special Branch officers colluded with loyalist serial killer Mark Haddock, who gave the order to murder Raymond McCord Jr. McCord Sr said what had happened to his son was part of the past.

In a message to Sinn Fein delegates, McCord said: ‘I believe that the Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde is a different Chief Constable, who won’t tolerate the collusion of corrupt police officers.’

Republican Sinn Fein will mount a token protest outside their rivals’ Special ‘Ard Fheis’ at the RDS in Dublin’s Ballsbridge. There will be another demonstration by the unionist victims group Families Acting for Innocent Relatives. The group will be highlighting IRA atrocities during the Troubles and arguing that those behind these attacks are not fit for government.