SAOIRSE32

Sinn Féin
20 December, 2007

Sinn Féin MLA for Lagan Valley Paul Butler has given the Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson a detailed account of the loyalist campaign of intimidation against the Catholic people of Stoneyford stretching back fifteen years.

He also highlighted concerns not no-one has ever been arrested for this campaign of sectarian intimidation.

Mr Butler said:

“I gave the Ombudsman a detailed account of the loyalist campaign of intimidation against the Catholic people of Stoneyford stretching back fifteen years.

“I was accompanied by a catholic resident of Stoneyford who is on the receiving end of this campaign and whose family has recently received a death threat from loyalists living in the village.

“My concern and indeed the concern of the catholic people of Stoneyford is that this gang is operating freely.

“The PSNI have not arrested a single person responsible for this sectarian intimidation despite knowing who is responsible for these attacks.

“A month ago Assistant Chief Constable Duncan Mc Causland told me that the main person behind these attacks was not a ‘protected species’ in other words not an informer.

“However I still believe that someone is protecting those involved in this campaign.

“The policing of Stoneyford is undoubtedly a test for the PSNI’s commitment to police impartially.

“I am willing to co-operate with the PSNI in the discharge of their duty and I am encouraging people to assist the.

“But they have to deliver and bring an end to this threatening situation for the Catholics of Stoneyford.” ENDS

Belfast Telegraph
Friday 21, December 2007

British police have suspended the use of some types of DNA evidence following the acquittal of Sean Gerard Hoey of all charges of any involvement in the Omagh bombing.

The 38 year old walked free the Belfast Crown Court after the judge ruled that the so called low copy DNA evidence against Mr Hoey didn’t stand up to scrutiny.

It’s used when investigators only have a very small amount of DNA to work with.

Today the British Crown Prosecution Service is to now review all current cases in England and Wales using the technique.

Yesterday the truth emerged: there were warnings and the police ignored them

Rosie Cowan and Nick Hopkins
*Friday December 7, 2001
The Guardian

A devastating report on the police inquiry into the Omagh bombing will reveal that warnings were received and ignored, crucial intelligence was not passed to the inquiry team, key suspects were never questioned and the investigation itself was riddled with hundreds of errors.

One of the warnings, 11 days before the atrocity in 1998, named the Co Tyrone town as the target for a terrorist attack and gave the date as August 15, the day that 29 people were killed by a Real IRA car bomb.

The anonymous telephone caller named four people who were planning the attack. Yet, astonishingly, they were never questioned and special branch later claimed the warning had nothing to do with the bomb.

Another warning, from a double agent whose cover name was Kevin Fulton, was unspecific about the target but named the suspected bomb-maker. Special branch also ignored his warning and the man named has never been questioned in connection with Omagh.

Investigators cannot say for certain that the bomb could have been prevented. But they believe it is possible, had appropriate action been taken when the warnings were received.

The findings will be disclosed next week in a detailed 150-page report, prepared by detectives working for Northern Ireland’s new independent police ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan.

It will be utterly humiliating for Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, formerly the RUC. He has consistently denied that the force received any warnings and vowed to leave no stone unturned in the search for the perpetrators of the province’s worst terrorist outrage.

He has consistently rubbished claims that the police had received warnings days before the Omagh attack, saying that it was “an outrageous untruth”.

When the Guardian revealed details of a warning provided by Kevin Fulton, the RUC was dismissive, saying that it hoped the ombudsman’s report would provide “reassurance” to the families of the victims.

On July 30, Sir Ronnie insisted that any suggestions that the RUC had received advance warnings from an agent were “rubbish”. In an interview with the Press Association, he said: “They are without foundation, they are also irresponsible and add to the anguish of the victims’ families who have already suffered so much.

“The RUC would not ever ignore intelligence about a bombing in order to protect any special branch interests.”

Last night, however, the force’s position had changed significantly. For the first time, it has accepted that there had been warnings, but said that they could not have prevented the bombing.

Some of the ombudsman’s findings confirmed what Sir Ronnie has known, but not confided publicly, for 18 months. He received a secret, internal police review of the murder investigation.

This document, uncovered by Mrs O’Loan, highlighted how special branch failed to hand over potentially crucial intelligence to the murder squad and made more than 250 recommendations as to how the inquiry should proceed. But the ombudsman discovered that the vast majority of the proposals were ignored and senior officers had savaged the report’s author.

The Guardian has learned that:

–a respected detective in Omagh received a 15-minute anonymous phone call 11 days before the bomb, stating that four men were planning some form of gun and rocket attack on police in the town on August 15. He passed the details to special branch but no action was taken.

–the double agent, Kevin Fulton, gave two warnings to his police handler about the suspected bomb-maker, known as Mike. The first, three weeks before the attack, was general information about his involvement with the dissident republican terror group, the Real IRA. Three days before the bomb, Fulton contacted his handler again to tell him that Mike was making a big bomb.

Mike had told him that “something big” was being planned for a town in Northern Ireland. The ombudsman found that all this information was correctly forwarded to special branch. No action was taken and special branch deny ever having received it.

–Mike rang one of the bombers 45 minutes before the blast, as the bomber was parking the car in a busy street. Mike was an obvious target for detectives because of his suspected involvement in two previous bombings in Newry and Banbridge.

–None of the intelligence about Mike, or the four other suspects mentioned in the anonymous call was passed from special branch to the murder squad.

The ombudsman will blame poor leadership for a raft of errors. Possibly the most serious was the loss of the red Vauxhall Cavalier, which contained 500lb of home-made explosives. Instead of being preserved in case it yielded DNA clues, it disappeared and was found two years later, rusting in the corner of a forensic science laboratory car park

The Guardian has learned that the chief constable has threatened legal action to delay the publication of the report next Wednesday. But the ombudsman, who gave a copy to him a week ago, is determined to press ahead.

A spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland said last night that the ombudsman’s report was full of inaccuracies and misunder standings and he absolutely rejected any suggestion that the information provided by an agent or anonymous caller could have prevented the atrocity.

The spokesman confirmed that the chief constable had asked for more time to respond to the report, insisting that the murder investigation was very much alive and that the police’s main concern was for the families.

“We consider this report contains so many significant factual inaccuracies, unwarranted misunderstanding and a material omission that a request has been made to the ombudsman’s office for a reasonable period of time to respond in detail to what we see as serious deficiencies in this report,” he said.

A spokesman for the Police Federation of Northern Ireland said: “Her report is not based on anything which could properly be called evidence. The allegations which she makes were not put to the officers concerned, in flagrant breach of their human rights.”

Stanley McCombe, whose wife, Ann, was killed in the bomb, said: “I am a very angry person today. It’s unbelievable that if they had this information, they didn’t act on it.”

A spokesman for Nuala O’Loan said it would be wrong to comment on the report before it has been presented to victims’ families.

They will be also be appalled to learn about the damning internal police inquiry into the Omagh investigation, carried out by senior officer, Brian McVicar, 18 months ago. The ombudsman found that he came under pressure to rewrite it but refused.

Mr McVicar’s recommendations, including a proposal that intelligence handling be reviewed, were largely ignored and the murder investigation was effectively shelved in February last year. It was only reopened in August, when the ombudsman began to delve into Kevin Fulton’s claims.

The officer who received the anonymous warning naming Omagh as a terrorist target, has been severely traumatised.

When he reminded special branch of his warning he was told it had no relevance to what happened.

The ombudsman discovered that the chief constable rang Fulton’s handler, who works for the anti-racketeering squad, CI6, to reproach him for admitting that a warning had been received.

The ombudsman will make it clear that police officers at Omagh on the day of the bomb and many of those in the investigation acted bravely and competently.

But she will paint a picture of incompetence and poor leadership that drastically undermined the chances of finding the Omagh killers.

BBC
*18 August 2001

It has been claimed the police ombudsman has been given evidence alleging the RUC knew about a planned attack in Northern Ireland two days before the Omagh bombing.

A former intelligence agent has told the BBC that the ombudsman Nuala O’Loan has a transcript of a tape which proves the police were given information.

‘Kevin Fulton’ whose real name is Peter Keely [sometimes spelt ‘Keeley’] - from SAOIRSE32 archives

The Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan described as “preposterous” allegations that the RUC had prior knowledge of the 1998 bombing which killed 29 people.

Mrs O’Loan’s investigation was launched after the agent claimed in newspaper interviews that he had tipped off the RUC about plans by dissident republicans to plant a huge bomb somewhere in Northern Ireland.

The man, using the cover name Kevin Fulton, said he gave information to his police handler two days before the Omagh bomb.

‘Preposterous’

Speaking on the BBC on Friday, Sir Ronnie said the security forces were aware of the threat of the Real IRA, but had no specific information about the bombing in Omagh.

“We had information and we had a belief that the Real IRA were very active,” he said.

“The suggestion that we had any information, which if acted upon could have prevented Omagh, is an absolutely preposterous suggestion. There is no substance in it.”

Willy Carlin, who acts as a spokesman for a group of former intelligence agents, claimed the authorities were trying to mount a cover-up.

In an interview with the BBC, he said the police ombudsman had been given a tape recording of a conversation between Kevin Fulton and his RUC handler.

The Secretary of State, Dr John Reid, said any such tape should be investigated by the ombudsman.

Senior police sources confirmed that Kevin Fulton had worked for the RUC as an intelligence agent, but they strenuously denied any suggestion that they had been given prior warning about the Omagh bomb.

On Friday, Mrs O’Loan said the investigation was “highly sensitive”.

“The relatives of the Omagh victims, the secretary of state, the chief constable and the police authority have all stated their support for my decision, and my focus now is on carrying out the investigation as quickly and as rigorously as possible,” she said.

The investigation comes two days after the third anniversary of the atrocity in County Tyrone on 15 August 1998.

Civil action

Imran Khan, the lawyer representing the man at the centre of the allegations, said it was important the ombudsman examined the claims.

“Clearly the allegation is very serious and there is a real responsibility on the ombudsman, particularly to the families who have suffered as a result of Omagh, that this allegation is checked and double checked and investigated thoroughly and quickly.”

Victims’ relatives formally launched a civil action against five men with alleged links to the paramilitary group, claiming it was “their last hope for justice”.

Michael Gallagher, who lost his son Aidan in the bombing, also welcomed the move and said he hoped the inquiry would move swiftly.

Daily Mail
20th December 2007

One of the chief suspects in the Omagh bomb massacre is now dead, it was revealed today.

The man, from Dundalk, Co Louth, co-ordinated a series of telephone warnings made just before the explosion which killed 29 people, police have established.

He was among 17 terrorists and their associates identified by detectives in the team who were part of the plot to blow up the town.

The dissident republican went on the run after the August 1998 atrocity, only to be struck down by cancer from which he never recovered.

At one stage detectives were ready to exhume his body to collect DNA.

The plan was called off when police found his profile from a previous arrest.

Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, the man in charge of the Omagh inquiry, said the dead dissident republican played a significant part in the attack.

“The bombers in Omagh phoned him when the bomb was planted,” he said.

“He then phoned people at coin-boxes, co-ordinating the bomb warnings.”

Three alerts, containing conflicting information, were sent through before a Vauxhall Cavalier car packed with 500lb of explosives was detonated.

The first warning, at 2.29pm, was to Ulster Television in Belfast, from a phone box at a crossroads in Forkhill, Co Armagh.

The caller, using the recognised dissident republican codewords Martha Pope, said: “Hello newsroom - bomb, court house, Omagh Main Street, 500lb, explosion 30 minutes.”

The station received a second call at 2.31pm, this time from a crossroads in Newtownhamilton, Co Armagh.

This time the message was: “Martha Pope, 15 minutes, bomb Omagh town.” At the same time the Forkhill caller contacted the Samaritans in Omagh, only to be diverted to its office in Coleraine, Co Londonderry, because no staff were available.

The caller asked: “Am I through to Omagh? This is a bomb warning.

“It’s going to go off in the centre of Omagh in 30 minutes’ time. Martha Pope. Main Street, about 200 yards up from the courthouse.”

At 3.04pm a huge explosion ripped through the town, murdering 29 people and injuring hundreds more.

The police hunt for the killers has been plagued by scathing criticisms of how the original investigation was handled.

But the exhaustive inquiry overseen by Mr Baxter has drawn up a comprehensive list of those at the heart of the terrorist strike and others who aided them.

“There were 17 in the team that knew of the Omagh bomb plot,” said Mr Baxter.

By STEPHEN WRIGHT
21st December 2007
Daily Mail

Relatives of the Omagh bomb victims were stunned last night after the only man to be directly accused over the atrocity was cleared.

Their torment was compounded by cheering from Republicans in the public gallery at Belfast Crown Court as Sean Hoey walked free.

And their grief gave way to fury last night as the implications of a withering judgment on police handling of the case began to sink in.

Sean Hoey was cleared of all charges relating to the Omagh bombing

Mr Justice Weir accused the Royal Ulster Constabulary of a “thoughtless and slapdash approach” and a “cavalier disregard” for key evidence.

Relatives of the 29 people killed in Ulster’s worst atrocity made it clear last night that they felt Hoey had cheated justice. And they accused his supporters of “total disrespect” for their grief in cheering the verdict.

Hoey, 38, was cleared of 56 charges, including 29 murders and making the 500lb Real IRA car bomb which ripped through the market town in August 1998. He did not give evidence in the 56-day trial.

He was also cleared of involvement in a series of other attacks on police and military bases in the run-up to the bombing.

The judgment means that nearly ten years on and £16million of taxpayers’ money later, no one has been convicted for the atrocity. And the nature of the judge’s comments left the RUC firmly in the frame for that outcome.

The force has already been accused of bungling the original inquiry. Yesterday Mr Justice Weir was sharply critical of the subsequent re-investigation and said two officers who probed another alleged attack involving Hoey had been guilty of a “calculated and deliberate deception”.

The judge accepted defence claims that DNA evidence used to link Hoey to explosive parts could have been contaminated because of the lack of care by police and forensic officers.

The devastation after the bombing was likened to ‘a killing field’

Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son Aidan was killed in the bombing, condemned Sir Ronnie Flanagan, former head of the RUC and now Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, for the handling of the inquiry.

“I think he needs to accept what he has done is wrong - but how can a Prime Minister appoint such a man to look after policing in all of Britain after he made such a mess of this mass murder? This was a man who was facing 56 charges and has walked away without a single one being upheld.”

Speaking about his emotions as the verdict was passed, he said: “When his family and friends started cheering, that was a very difficult moment. I found it very difficult then to contain my feelings.

“They will get their son back for Christmas, but we families will never get our loved ones back.

“I will try and use my anger in a positive way. We will try to embarrass the authorities - our backs are against the wall but we will fight this as long as it takes.”

The last hope of justice for the families is an unprecedented civil action for damages, backed by a Daily Mail campaign, against the Real IRA and five individuals. It is due to start in Belfast in April.

Lawyer Victor Barker, whose 12-year-old son James died in the bombing, said the families were “very disappointed”.

“It is my view and the view of my family that Sean Hoey was one of the conspirators involved in the Omagh bomb.”

He too blamed the former police chief. “It is the appalling inefficiency of Sir Ronnie Flanagan that has meant his successors have not been able to secure a conviction.”

He said the initial investigation had been deeply flawed. “He said he would fall on his sword if anything was wrong with this investigation - I will give him the sword.”

Sir Ronnie has consistently refused to discuss what went wrong.

Mr Barker was also infuriated by the reaction from the public gallery. “When the judge delivered his final comment that Hoey was not guilty, and there was no reason that he shouldn’t be released, there was an enormous cheer from Hoey’s supporters.

“Some of the comments made in that court showed a total disrespect for the families of the deceased people.”

Lawrence Rush, whose wife Elizabeth, 57, died, said: “It’s devastating. It’s a disaster the way that this investigation was held and I can say no more about it.”

Stanley McCombe, whose wife, Ann, 48, was another of the victims, said: “I’m flabbergasted, dumbfounded. I do not know what to think. All the resources over the last nine and a half years have not got us anywhere. Hoey has done four and a half years and I’m sure his compensation will be far greater than we had to fight and embarrass ourselves into getting.”

Dressed yesterday in a grey and white open-necked shirt and charcoal jacket, Hoey was never called to give evidence at any stage during the trial.

The victims of the Omagh bombing. A further 220 people were injured in the blast

This is despite the fact he had made statements to police claiming that if his DNA was found on any evidence then it was either there innocently, or had been planted by police or some other agency.

Because of the nature of the case, it was not held in front of a jury.

Detailing his criticisms of the police and prosecution, the judge said he was not satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that fibres found in glue used to assemble power units could be linked to Hoey or, as the Crown claimed, that just one person was involved.

He was highly critical of the process of bagging, labelling and recording of exhibits and hit out at the “slapdash approach” and “cavalier disregard” the police and some forensic experts had for the integrity of forensic items.

The judge claimed that two police officers had told untruths in a deliberate attempt to beef up statements and said there had been a deliberate and calculated deception which made it impossible for him to accept their evidence.

Those two officers are now under investigation by the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland.

In a statement, police said officers would study Mr Justice Weir’s judgment in detail and would work to ensure that any organisational or procedural shortcomings were addressed.

The only other man to face court over the tragedy, Hoey’s uncle, Colm Murphy, faces a retrial after the quashing of a 14-year jail term imposed in Dublin for a conspiracy conviction connected to the blast.

Demands from victims’ families that Ronnie Flanagan be held to account

Esther Addley
Friday December 21, 2007
Guardian

Renewed demands for a cross-border public inquiry into the Omagh bombing were growing last night after a judge made sweeping criticisms of the police and the evidence they brought against a man he acquitted of all charges in connection with the atrocity.

Sean Hoey, 38, was cleared of 29 counts of murder and 27 further terrorist charges by the trial judge, Mr Justice Weir, who issued a scathing judgment on the “slapdash” investigation into the 1998 bombing.

The ruling, the victims’ families believe, means no one will ever be convicted of the murders of the 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, who died in the deadliest single atrocity in the history of the Troubles.

The scale of the judge’s criticism shocked relatives of the victims. The judge attacked the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the province’s forensic science service (FSNI) and an experimental DNA technique once heralded as a breakthrough in crimefighting.

Last night, the families also called for Sir Ronnie Flanagan, chief constable of the force at the time, to take responsibility for the failure of the police to bring convictions. Flanagan, who is now Chief Inspector of Constabulary, responsible for overseeing police forces across the UK, maintained his silence last night.

“He said years ago that he would fall on his sword if anything was found to be wrong with the investigation. Well I’ll give him the sword,” said Victor Barker, whose 12-year-old son James was one of 11 children killed in the bombing.

Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year old son Aidan was among those killed, said: “Now both governments, given what we have experienced today and over the last nine and a half years, cannot refuse the families a cross-border public inquiry so we can get to some degree of the truth.”

The Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission also called for a cross-border review into the need for a public inquiry.

Ruling on a case described as a “disgrace” by one of the victim’s families, the judge detailed a number of catastrophic failures by the PSNI and FSNI.

They included:

–Two “mendacious” police officers, one a detective chief inspector, who “beefed up” evidence and lied in court about how forensic material had been gathered.

–A “thoughtless and slapdash” approach to the investigation by the PSNI and scene-of-crime officers in collecting, storing and passing on evidence while showing a “cavalier disregard” for its integrity.

–Forensic scientists who failed to wear masks and possibly gloves while handling evidence, and who admitted losing key evidence, including a car.

–Failings in the “low copy number” DNA technique meant it should not be admissible as evidence in British courts.

Speaking outside the court after the verdict, Barker condemned the “appalling inefficiency” of the original investigation into the atrocity, conducted by Flanagan. “It is my view that Sean Hoey is one of the conspirators who made the Omagh bomb,” he said. In court the judge quoted a ruling that referred to evidence “which might be true and to a considerable extent probably is true” but which did not reach the standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

Gallagher called the case “a disgrace by any standards”. He added: “As a result there are people who will not be brought to justice. That is an awful price to pay.”

The verdict was greeted in court by cheers from Hoey’s supporters, to the distress of many of the victims’ relatives who were also present.

Belfast Telegraph
21 December 2007

The man cleared of the 29 murders in the Omagh bomb tragedy is to seek damages from the father of a young boy killed in the atrocity.

Lawyers for Sean Hoey (38) are also considering taking legal action against the Public Prosecution Service for taking the case against him.

Mr Hoey has been angered by comments made by Victor Barker, whose 12-year-old son James died in the 1998 bomb, after yesterday’s judgment.

Kevin Winters, Mr Hoey’s legal representative, said Mr Barker’s remarks, which were carried by certain media outlets, were actionable.

“Sean Hoey refutes completely the allegations made by Victor Barker when he persists in blaming him for Omagh,” said Mr Winters.

“Mr Hoey is an innocent man and the court’s judgment is an emphatic endorsement of his innocence. We will not hesitate to use the courts again to protect his name.

“The comments made yesterday and repeated in some newspapers today will be actionable. In addition we are considering a malicious prosecution civil action against the prosecuting authorities following yesterday’s judgment.”

Mr Hoey, an electrician from Jonesborough, was cleared of 56 charges relating to Omagh and other dissident republican bomb attacks in Belfast Crown Court yesterday.

In setting Mr Hoey free, Justice Weir delivered a damning appraisal of the police handling of the case.

Past and present police chiefs were today facing a string of questions in the wake of the not guilty verdicts.

The Northern Ireland Policing Board is now seeking an early meeting with PSNI Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde.

And ex-RUC head Sir Ronnie Flanagan is under fire from angry relatives of Omagh victims over the original bomb investigation.

The families are today continuing to press for a full scale cross-border public inquiry.

BBC

NI Secretary Shaun Woodward has failed to give public support to the former RUC chief constable after damning comments over the Omagh bomb inquiry.

On Thursday, Sean Hoey was cleared of 58 charges, including the murders of 29 people in the Real IRA attack in 1998.

The body that holds the police to account wants to meet the current Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde to discuss scathing comments by the trial judge.

Mr Woodward said the judge’s comments needed serious investigation.

Sean Hoey, 38, of Molly Road, Jonesborough in south Armagh, was the only person to have been charged with the Omagh murders. It was one of the worst atrocities of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

As he was giving his verdict, Mr Justice Weir said two officers working on the Omagh case were guilty of a “deliberate and calculated deception”.

Sir Ronnie was head of the RUC at the time of the Omagh bombing.

Afterwards, Victor Barker, who lost his 12-year-old son, James, in the bombing, said Sir Ronnie could not be allowed to continue as head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.

The body reports on and encourages efficiency and effectiveness of policing in England, Wales and Northern Ireland

But when asked by the BBC if Sir Ronnie still had the confidence of the government, the Northern Ireland Secretary would not be drawn.

“The lessons to be learned from this judgement are far and wide. It is important that we look at this very, very carefully,” Mr Woodward told BBC Radio Ulster.

“It wouldn’t do any kind of justice to the 29 people who were murdered in the bomb and the two unborn children for me to give you a phlegmatic response.”

Policing Board Chairman Sir Desmond Rea said they wanted to discuss the case.

“Copies of the judgement and verdict were being sent to all board members,” he said.

He said having carefully studied the judgement, the board will discuss Mr Justice Weir’s findings.

Human Rights Commissions on both sides of the border have called for the British and Irish governments to set up an independent judicial inquiry into the bombing.

The Chief Commissioner in Northern Ireland, Monica McWilliams, said it was an “unprecedented call”.

“Both commissions are mandated to meet as a consequence of the Good Friday Agreement on various issues that affect both the Republic and Northern Ireland,” she said.

At the heart of the case were the bomb timers used in the attacks. Forensic scientists had examined them for both fibres and Low Copy Number (LCN) DNA.

LCN is a relatively recent development of DNA science which allows analysis of tiny samples of skin cells, sweat and other bodily fluids.

The prosecution claimed that the forensic examination had shown links to the south Armagh electrician.

Mr Hoey’s solicitor said on Thursday: “Today’s judgement - a reasoned, lengthy and well considered judgement - completely vindicated this position that he (Mr Hoey) maintained. Sean Hoey is an innocent man.”

BBC

NI’s Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde has said it is “highly unlikely” anyone will be convicted for the Omagh bomb.

On Thursday, Sean Hoey was cleared of 58 charges, including the murders of 29 people in the Real IRA attack in 1998.

Orde has defended the performance of police

The body that holds the police to account is to meet Sir Hugh to discuss scathing comments by the trial judge.

But Sir Hugh defended the performance of police adding that detectives were hindered by mistakes during the initial investigation after the bombing.

In an interview for the BBC, Mr Orde conceded that exhibits were “not to the standard and were not packaged in the way we would do it now”.

But he added: “It was an absolutely genuine attempt to do our very best with what little we had.

“I think we discharged that responsibility to the best of our ability with what was available.”

Mr Hoey, 38, of Molly Road, Jonesborough in south Armagh, was the only person to have been charged with the Omagh murders - one of the worst atrocities of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

As he was giving his verdict, Mr Justice Weir said two officers working on the Omagh case were guilty of a “deliberate and calculated deception”

Afterwards, Victor Barker, who lost his son, James, in the bombing, said ex-RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan could not be allowed to continue as head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.

Sir Ronnie was head of the RUC at the time of the Omagh bombing.

Sir Ronnie heads up the Inspectorate of Constabulary

Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward failed to give public support to Sir Ronnie, following the damning comments.

When asked by the BBC if Sir Ronnie still had the confidence of the government, the Northern Ireland Secretary would not be drawn.

“The lessons to be learned from this judgement are far and wide. It is important that we look at this very, very carefully,” Mr Woodward told BBC Radio Ulster.

At a news conference later on Friday, Mr Woodward said: “I think it is extremely important that nobody reaches premature conclusions or makes any premature judgements.

“That obviously includes any implications for the then chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

“So my comments this morning have to be seen in that context.”

Policing Board Chairman Sir Desmond Rea said they wanted to discuss the case.

“Copies of the judgement and verdict were being sent to all board members,” he said.

Human Rights Commissions on both sides of the border have called for the British and Irish governments to set up an independent judicial inquiry into the bombing.

At the heart of the case were the bomb timers used in the attacks. Forensic scientists had examined them for both fibres and Low Copy Number (LCN) DNA.

LCN is a relatively recent development of DNA science which allows analysis of tiny samples of skin cells, sweat and other bodily fluids.

The prosecution claimed that the forensic examination had shown links to the south Armagh electrician.

An Phoblacht
20 December 2007

Irish Republican Brotherhood 150th anniversary

With 2008 marking the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, Mícheál MacDonncha recalls a forgotten Fenian whose life spanned the decades from before the Great Hunger to within living memory of our own time.

The Fenian Rising of 1867 was a military fiasco but it had profound long-term political consequences. The personal consequences for individual Fenians were equally profound. For the Fenians immediately involved in the Rising it entailed death for some, imprisonment for many and exile for countless numbers. Those of whom we know least are the rank and file who remained in Ireland and led lives of poverty because of their dedication to Irish freedom. But one such forgotten freedom fighter emerges from the past and his story conveys to us something of the defiant spirit of Fenianism.

Photo: Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa

Edmond Houlihan was born in Darnstown, Kilmallock, County Limerick in 1839, the year of a storm that devastated much of Ireland, giving it the title Bliain na Gaoithe Móire. His family must have been spared the worst horrors of the Great Hunger but being in the heart of Munster they would have witnessed the disease, the starvation, the evictions and the mass exodus of the destitute. The Irish people had been told by their political leader Daniel O’Connell and by the Catholic Hierarchy that bloodshed for a political cause was a sin against God and that private property was sacred. So they starved while hardly a stick or a stone was lifted to prevent the export of Irish crops, meat and livestock to feed industrial England and to pay rents to landlords.
This experience bred a fierce spirit of resistance and a determination to reassert the rights of the Irish people. The political manifestation of that spirit and that determination was the Irish Republican Brotherhood, founded in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day 1858. It spread quickly throughout the country. The members of the clandestine IRB also organised in open societies such as the National Brotherhood of St. Patrick which had a branch in Kilmallock founded by a Baptist minister about 1860.
By 1865 the Fenians were well established in the district and had an arms depot at Kilmallock. The local Fenian ‘centre’ or leader was Willie Wall and he was deported from Ireland by the British in that year. In 1866 another local IRB man, Nicholas Gaffney, went to America to avoid arrest and took part in the Fenian raid on Canada led by Colonel John O’Neill.
Hundreds of Irishmen who had served in the American armies during the Civil War returned to Ireland to take part in the Fenian Rising. They were sent around the country to lead the local forces when the long-postponed insurrection was set for March 1867. Captain John Dunne, a native of Ráth Lúirc on the Cork-Limerick border, took command of the south-east Limerick area and planned to capture the heavily fortified RIC barracks in Kilmallock.
Dunne led a large force to Kilmallock on 6 March. One of them was Edmond Houlihan. The Fenians had scores of long-handled pikes but few firearms and no explosives with which to attack the fortified barracks. They fired on the building with their few guns and attempted to set the door alight. The siege went on for hours but the building remained impregnable. Then RIC reinforcements arrived and the Fenians were forced to withdraw under heavy fire.
Three Fenians died in the Kilmallock siege – Dr. Clery, Daniel Blake of Bruree and a third man whose name is uncertain and who is remembered on a memorial in the local graveyard as ‘the Unknown Fenian’. Poet Michael Hogan wrote about him:

Who was he at Kilmallock, that brave-hearted stranger,
Who daringly breasted the fire of the foe?
Like a veteran inured to the battle’s grim danger
He fought ‘til the red hail of death laid him low.

After the fight some of the Fenians, including Dunne, escaped to America. But a large number were rounded up and tried by a Special Commission in May 1867. They were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years penal servitude to five years. Sentenced to ten years, Daniel Bradley, told the court:
“I am satisfied to abide by the result. I am sure I did right when I took up arms for the Irish Republic.”
A very different sentence awaited Edmond Houlihan. In the fight at Kilmallock he was wounded and lost his sight. Clearly of independent spirit this young Fenian was determined not to face a life in the poorhouse or be a future dependent on already hard-pressed relatives. So he took to the roads of Ireland as a wandering singer and musician. He is described as a tall man with an athletic figure and a rich baritone voice. He played the fiddle and with this instrument and with his powerful singing voice he earned a living travelling the country, mainly around the Midlands, where he became legendary as ‘Rambling Jack’.
Edmond Houlihan’s mission was not only to earn a living. What we know of him comes from an acquaintance, Patrick Fanning of Ferbane, who wrote:
“The fiddle, which before the Kilmallock accident, had been his amusement, became for him afterwards, through more than 50 years, an instrument in the cause of Irish independence. When he could no longer use the sword, no power on earth could prevent him using his powerful baritone voice.” (Offaly Independent, 10 January 1953).
In a country where literacy was limited and where newspapers had not yet reached a mass audience the travelling ballad singers played an important role in conveying news and opinions. In a nation often in political ferment as Ireland was in the late 19th and early 20th century this role was even more significant. Many a singer, including, we are told, Edmond Houlihan, was arrested by the RIC for singing ‘seditious’ songs.
A national teacher with 13 years service in County Tipperary was dismissed from her post in 1868 when the RIC found in her mother’s house a copy of a ballad on the prison escape of Fenian leader James Stephens:

Perhaps you’d like to know, says the Shan Van Vocht
Which way did Stephens go, says the Shan Van Vocht
When from Richmond snug and tight
He walked off out of sight
And never said ‘good night!’, says the Shan Van Vocht.

We know many of the songs such as this which Rambling Jack sang or was likely to have sung. “Who that ever heard him can forget him at the Smashing of the Van?” wrote Fanning. The three Manchester Martyrs Allen, Larkin and O’Brien were executed in the November of the year Rambling Jack was blinded. No doubt this song would have meant much to him and to his listeners:

Attend you gallant Irishmen and listen for a while
I’ll sing to you the praises of the sons of Erin’s Isle
It’s of those gallant heroes who voluntarily ran
To release two Irish Fenians from an English prison van.
On the eighteenth of September, it was a dreadful year
When sorrow and excitement ran throughout all Lancashire
At a gathering of the Irish boys they volunteered each man
To release those Irish prisoners out of the prison van.

Closer still to Houlihan’s heart and closer to home would have been The Ballad of Peter O’Neill Crowley the Fenian leader killed in the fight at Kilclooney Wood, County Cork, not far distant from Kilmallock on 31 March 1867.

Then tell me Peter Crowley, come tell me, tell me true
Who stepped into Kilclooney Wood that day along with you
Who stood behind that broad oak tree and fired that signal gun
Who fought and died for Ireland, ‘twas you my darling son.

God rest you Peter Crowley, you sleep beneath the clay
But some day you’ll return again to lead us in the fray
With a thousand men at your command be they all both brave and true
And we’ll drive the English from our land as Irishmen can do.

The anti-recruiting ballad is one of the great strains of Irish resistance songs. The story is told that in Ferbane, County Offaly, Rambling Jack defied the British Army when he sang an anti-recruiting song as a recruiting meeting was about to begin in the main street. The song was one of the finest, Patrick Sheehan, by Charles Joseph Kickham, the Tipperary Fenian who was the foremost writer on the IRB newspaper The Irish People. Both Kickham, who was partially blind and deaf, and Edmond Houlihan, would have identified with the character in this song, a young Irishman blinded fighting in the British Army in the Crimea:

My name is Patrick Sheehan, and my years are thirty-four;
Tipperary is my native place, not far from Galtymore;
I came of honest parents, but now they’re lying low;
Though’ many’s the pleasant days we spent in the Glen of Aherlow.
Bereft of home and kith and kin, with plenty all around,
I starved within my cabin, and slept upon the ground;
But cruel as my lot was, I never did hardship know,
Till I joined the English army, far away from Aherlow.
I tried to find my musket, how dark I thought the night!
O blessed God! It wasn’t dark, it was the broad daylight!
And when I found that I was blind, my tears began to flow,
And I longed for even a pauper’s grave in the Glen of Aherlow.
So Irish youths, dear countrymen, take heed of what I say;
For if you join the English ranks, you’ll surely rue the day
And whenever you are tempted, a-soldiering to go.
Remember poor blind Sheehan from the Glen of Aherlow.

The manager of The Irish People was Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa the Cork Fenian who endured horrific conditions in English prisons before exile in America. The song about Rossa is listed by Fanning as one of Rambling Jack’s standards. Unusually for a rebel ballad it lists a number of informers, the bane of the Fenian Movement:

My curse attend those traitors who did our cause betray
I’d throw a rope around their necks and drown them in the bay.
There was Nagle, Massey, Corydon and Talbot – he makes four
Like demons for their thirst for gold they’re punished evermore.
Let no man blame the turnkey nor any of the men
There’s no one knows but two of us the man who served my friend
I robbed no man, I spilt no blood tho’ they sent me to jail
Because I was O’Donovan Rossa and a son of Granuaile.

Not mentioned in that song is another informer, James Carey, who turned Queen’s evidence against the Invincibles who were responsible for the assassination of senior British officials Cavendish and Burke in the Phoenix Park in 1882. Pat O’Donnell of Mín an Chladaigh, County Donegal pursued Carey when he was brought to supposed safety on board ship to South Africa. O’Donnell shot Carey dead, was arrested and executed in London in December 1883. He shouted in court: “Three cheers for old Ireland! Hurrah for the United States! To hell with the British Crown!”

My name is Pat O’Donnell and I come from Donegal
I am you know a venomous foe to traitors one and all.
For the shooting of James Carey I was tried in London town
And now upon the gallows high my life I must lay down.
I sailed on board the ship Melrose, in August eighty-three
Before I landed in Cape Town it came well-known to me
When I saw he was James Carey we had angry words and blows
The villain, he tried to take my life on board the ship Melrose.

We know that Rambling Jack sang this song and that, like O’Donnell, he was a fluent Irish speaker and sang in Irish as well as in English. What songs in Irish he had we are not told but we may be virtually certain that he sang Sliabh na mBan which commemorates the 1798 Rising in Tipperary when the United Irishmen were routed by the British on the slopes of the mountain.

Is oth liom féinig bualadh an lé úd
Do dhul ar Ghaeil bhochta is na céadta slad
Mar tá na méirligh ag déanamh game dinn
á rá nach aon ní leo pike nó sleá
Níor tháinig ár major i dtús an lae chugainn
Is ní rabhamar féin ann i gcóir ná i gceart
Ach mar sheolfaí aoireacht bó gan aoire
Ar thaoth na gréine de Shliabh na mBan.

Is tá an Francach faobhrach is an loingeas gléasta
Le cranna géara acu ar muir le seal
‘Sé an síorscéal go bhfuil a dtriall ar éirinn
Is go gcuirfid Gaeil bhocht arís ‘na gceart
Dá mba dhóigh liom féineach go mb’fhíor an scéal úd
Bheadh mo chroí chomh héadrom le lon an sceach
Go mbeadh cloí ar mheirligh, is an adharc á séideadh
Ar thaobh na gréine de Shliabh na mBan.

One of the most remarkable things about Rambling Jack was his longevity. At the age of 76 he was still travelling the roads because we know that in that year he played his way across the country to attend the funeral of O’Donovan Rossa in August 1915. He heard Pearse’s oration in Glasnevin Cemetery and often quoted from it. And he was still defying the British Army recruiters and their supporters. In a Westmeath village in 1915 or 1916 his fiddle was seized and smashed when a group of West Britons objected to his rebel songs.
Rambling Jack ended his travels when he fell ill in 1929. He returned to County Limerick where he lived out the last two years of his life and died on 27 December 1931. He is buried in Kilbreedy Cemetery, a few miles east of Kilmallock. He was himself one of those of whom he so often sang - The Bold Fenian Men:

Side by side for the cause have our forefathers battled
When our hills never echoed the tread of a slave
On many green hills where the leaden hail rattled
Through the red gap of glory they marched to their grave,
And we who inherit
Their name and their spirit
Will march ‘neath their banners of liberty then
All who love Saxon law
Native or Sassenach
Must out and make way for the Bold Fenian Men.

An Phoblacht
20 December 2007

THE IRA unit in the Wexford Town area was re-formed in 1954 when Seamus Mac Suain returned home from abroad, taking over from the former Curragh internees and ex-prisoners who had kept the organisation intact through an underground network of meetings similar to the IRB organisation of a past generation.

Photo: Charlie Murphy consoling Fergal O’Hanlon’s mother with cousins Teresa, Nuala, Tommy and Frank, also included is neighbour Noel Kavanagh

Their main objective was to hold the Army intact until a younger generation of Volunteers was ready to take over. These veterans had, by the mid-1950s, married and settled down to domestic life with all the mundane problems of young families and had neither the energy nor time for the serious effort required. Besides, it was considered that they had endured enough hardship. Mac Suain’s initial support came from Liam McGarry, Tommy ‘Brownie’ Nolan, Richard ‘Mangans’ Hynes, Jimmy ‘Wheesie’ Murphy and Aidan Duggan.
There had not been a Sinn Féin cumann in the county for many years and few were interested in forming one. Despite the weak state of the Republican Movement in the aftermath of the mass imprisonments and heavy tactics of the government during the 1940s, the local Easter Commemoration Committee still continued to enjoy enthusiastic support with a substantial annual turn-out at the Crosstown Memorial Plot.
After several abortive attempts, the Paddy McGrath Sinn Féin Cumann was eventually formed in 1955 and has been in operation since (though the name has changed).
The radio news that followed the series of border raids of 12 December 1956 at first filled us with feelings of elation followed later by a sense of disappointment of not having taken part: a repeat of the 1916 Rising when Wexford Town had failed to rise. Despite that setback, a strong Sinn Féin cumann had been formed in Wexford Town in 1956 and young people were again openly promoting the republican cause through sales of The United Irishman newspaper and other activities.
Despite the shortage of numbers in the Republican Movement, most Wexford people were quietly proud of their republican heritage and resistance to British rule. The fields and streets of our county had run red with the blood of thousands in 1798 and we were constantly reminded of that struggle.
The numbers of active IRA Volunteers in the unit over the period from ‘54 to ‘58 came to approximately 30 but they were supported by many background workers. There seemed to be no shortage of arms for training purposes. We could do everything with the various weapons except what they were designed for, there being a chronic shortage of ammunition.
In 1954, the IRA staged a spectacular raid when they cleaned out the British armoury at Gough Barracks in Armagh. It was major news and had a profound effect on republican morale throughout the country. We were later to be supplied with some of the arms seized.
Then, in October, another spectacular occurred when the Omagh Barracks was raided and Volunteers (some later to be nationally well-known) were captured and imprisoned.
Emigration took its toll and this, together with ‘doing what comes naturally’ and other factors, combined to deplete our numbers in early ‘56. Jack Dunne, a veteran republican returned home from Kilkenny to work in the Wexford Gas Company and despite his hearing handicap, was totally committed and a steadying influence.
Sinn Féin did little to address the many social problems at the time, concentrating instead on “breaking the connection with England”. Selling papers, Easter Lilies, tickets, commemorations and ceilithe was quite enough to go on with. Selling dozens of the United Irishman around the pubs each month was a soul-destroying task facing cumann members and it did more to drive people out of the Movement than any hostile laws. But the commemorations and ceilithe became social occasions, particularly Easter Sunday and the annual pilgrimage to Wolfe Tone’s grave at Bodenstown, County Kildare. Open-air rallies were common both in the Bull Ring and the Square in Enniscorthy where we became experts at the rent-a-crowd tactic. At the height of the resistance campaign there were 16 Sinn Féin cumainn in the county.
Due to a communications breakdown the Wexford unit did not participate in the 12 December 1956 attacks on installations but the Enniscorthy unit did and they acquitted themselves admirably. The Radio Éireann news bulletins on the morning after the attacks did raise our spirits and we were determined not to be left out of the next wave.
Then the Coalition Government fell and Fianna Fáil regained power. The Establishment closed ranks once again and republicanism was effectively ostracised in both states on the island of Ireland. The Special Powers Act was in full force in the North and the repressive Offences Against the State Act was reactivated in the South. The jails were filling up and republicans were under surveillance at every turn of the road. However most of the gardaí in Wexford had taken part in the earlier fight for freedom and would have understood our aims. Older Republicans were used by gardaí as their conduit if we were seen or rumoured to be breaking the law.

The Church in Wexford, ever part of the Establishment, acted to form though some clerics were initially supportive. After the Edentubber tragedy, the then Bishop of Ferns sent priests out to selected secondary schools, warning of the dangers to the faith. In contrast, priests from the border areas came and ministered to us.
Paddy Parle and Liam McCarthy (Liam McGarry was then based in Mayo) got things moving again and the unit was re-activated. Parle had returned from abroad and was working in English’s Printing Company.
The main strategy was to strike a blow against the British Army of occupation in the hope that the Irish people would eventually unite and demand freedom. None of us expected to win the battle, but we hoped to stir the national consciousness.
September 1957 dawned and we were called up at last. Frank Armstrong led us to a training camp at the Cull Bank, where it was a case of training all night and sleeping all day for security reasons.
The following weekend, Seán Hennessy picked us up and we arrived in Dublin, in the dead of the night to be collected the following day and brought to Frank and Vera Lanny’s home at Anyart, outside the town of Castleblayney in County Monaghan, the first of the many safe houses we were to know so well. There we were presented with the special anorak with Tricolour flash on the arm which we were told was required to comply with the Geneva Convention.
From ‘Blaney we were billeted in a succession of farms, houses and barns all along the borderline from Dundalk to Monaghan. The people were very kind to us and we felt at times that they were doing without themselves to feed their guests.
There were eight from Wexford and some Armagh Volunteers in the group which assembled on old Jim Finn’s farm, near Iniskeen, under the command of Limerickman Paddy Kelleher and aptly named ‘The Vinegar Hill Column’ by the Chief of Staff, Charlie Murphy, a Dublin man with Boolavogue connections. That was the last contact I had with either Paddy Parle or George Keegan, who would both be dead within weeks
The other Wexford Volunteers present were P Berry, from Duncormack; Bob Kehoe, Galbally; Liam McCarthy, a native of Mallow working in Wexford Post Office; Ned Ryan, Oulart; Frank Armstrong, Boolavogue; and myself. From Iniskeen we split up and departed to other locations near the Armagh border.
That little farm on the border at Iniskeen was probably the last of the Flying Column camps we had heard so much about from the Tan War. There was nothing romantic, however, about 20 young men sleeping rough in a barn on a bachelor’s small farm in the middle of nowhere. We did not expect hotel fare, nor did we get it, but there is nothing like the experience of the real thing.
Paddy Parle led everything from the Rosary, the singing and the general banter whilst the technicians working on the large kitchen table primed grenades and very heavy mines which we had on occasions to lug back and forth across the border.
The first of the Soviet Union’s Sputniks had been launched in space in October and could be seen each night in the Northern sky. We found it difficult to understand the Northern accent, especially the Ulster Scots words used in rural areas. The opposite sex was the most popular topic of conversion though girls were neither seen nor heard. Frank Armstrong, a seasoned Army man, expressed his surprise in ‘56 going into action with Seán Garland and him bemoaning the fact that he was missing a good dance that night in the Crystal Ballroom.
Volunteers were considered very fortunate to be billeted in a house with a TV but, due to the security situation, we were usually ‘confined to barracks’ and reading matter became a problem.
One house I was billeted in had a complete set of Annie Smithson books and a copy of Ethel Mannin’s famous book, Late Have I Loved Thee. These I had disposed of within days and was hungry for more. Emigrant family members regularly posted home banned magazines such as Reveille, Tit Bits, and The Daily Sketch.
My closest comrade across the fields was not too fortunate as his host, a retired sailor, had never learned to read and had no stock of literature, not even a newspaper. Due to his perceived anti-clerical reputation, the local branch of the Legion of Mary continually plied him with religious literature, which he used to kindle the turf fire.
Castleblayney then was a typical market town with little sign of life during the week. It was well-known for its ballroom, Muckno Lakes (‘The Killarney of the North’), Faugh’s Football Club, furniture manufacturing and, as in all areas close to the border, smuggling. Unlike today, there were few if any cars and parking did not create a problem.
My ‘farmhouse holiday’ came to a sudden end on the night of 10 November when we were assembled at the Lanny home at Annyart, near Castleblayney, for a proposed attack on the barracks at Crossmaglen. Our mission, part of a three-pronged attack on installations was planned as a diversionary tactic, to draw the enemy towards that area, away from Middletown and the Newry area where the other operations were planned.
There were only four in our party, led by Paddy Kelleher. George Poyntz, our driver, was an ex-Irish-Army man who lived and worked in Castleblayney. Then there was Eugene McGuinness, from County Armagh, and myself. After receiving instructions, chewing gum for the nerves and reciting the obligatory Rosary with Vera, the woman of the house, Poyntz had the engine of the van running and we took off towards our destination.
At Cullaville, the road was blocked but a local man was more than happy to surrender his van which took us to the perimeter of Crossmaglen.
There we were ordered to make a few dummy mines with the large old-style Jacob’s biscuit tins. These would be later spread across the main road, wired and primed with sod and stones. It was an exceptionally bright, moonlit night as we set about our task when the horizon was suddenly lit up, accompanied by two loud bangs like claps of thunder from the Newry direction. McGuinness remarked: “There goes the transformers but they’re too early.” It was five minutes to one o’clock on 11 November: Armistice Day. The fact that there were two loud explosions gives rise to the theory that the deaths may have been deliberate and Bob Kehoe insists that there was only one mine.
The reason I am attempting to relate all these minor details is to give an insight into what later transpired regarding George Poyntz, our driver, who was exposed as a British agent during the long war, in the 1980s. The local people we stayed with did not trust him and they were right about others also. The question is: was he an agent back then?
When our task had been completed, the van was abandoned at the border, where we then split into pairs, taking to the countryside towards Castleblayney. For long hours we tramped over and around “the little hills of Monaghan” until we reached safety at dawn. We were not expected but as the barn door was invitingly open we settled into an exhausted sleep on the barley animal feed.
Our sleep was shattered some hours later when the son of the family woke us in a state of shock to tell us the radio had reported several men had been killed in an explosion near Newry.
There were few details and it was some days before all five were identified as some bodies had been badly mutilated. An undertaker told me how he picked pieces of flesh off the bushes around the area of the house which was completely destroyed.
The deaths at Edentubber were a tragic setback to the resistance campaign and we found ourselves scattered and confined to safe houses in the major towns of Dundalk, Drogheda and Dublin City for some time afterwards.

‘round lonely Edentubber,
The banshee loudly wails
For five brave Volunteers who died,
The pride of Granuaile.

An Phoblacht
20 December 2007

ELLA O’DWYER is from County Tipperary. MARTINA ANDERSON is from the Bogside in Derry. Both were arrested in Glasgow in June 1985 with Gerry ‘Blute’ McDonnell, Peter Sherry and Pat Magee, ‘The Brighton Bomber’. Ella was 26 years old. Martina was 23.
The following year, on 11 June 1986, all five were given life sentences at the Old Bailey in London for planning IRA attacks. Ella and Martina served their time in Brixton Prison and Durham Prison before being transferred to Maghaberry Prison, near Derry, in 1994. After serving 13 years in jail, they were both released on 10 November 1998 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Photo: Martina and Ella at Ard Fheis

Ella is now a staff writer with An Phoblacht and her book, The Rising of the Moon: The Language of Power (Pluto Press, London), on literature, language and Irish history, is based on the MA and PhD she completed in jail.
Martina got a first class honours degree in social science while in prison. She was elected as a Sinn Féin Assembly member for Foyle earlier this year and is a member of the Policing Board. She is the party’s spokesperson on Equality.

Ella’s account

BEARING in mind that it’s 22 years since Gerry McDonnell, Pat Magee, Peter Sherry, Martina Anderson and myself were arrested, some of the finer details, especially of Christmases, are lost on me, and it wasn’t from hooch – at least not until the Christmas of 1994 when we were transferred back to Ireland where our comrades in Maghaberry Prison had prepared a party of note.
We were lifted in Glasgow in June 1985 and transferred to London.
Our first night in Brixton Prison was awesome. I had a real bed and a room with a view. Just as I was bedding down for the night I heard a voice from the cell below asking me if I wanted a fag. He advised me to unravel threads from the blanket, knot them together to make ‘a line’. I did just that and dropped the line down to the window below and, a few seconds later, I was smoking blissfully to the tune of, “Every little thing is gonna be alright,” rendered by the Good Samaritan below.
As far as the prison regime was concerned, Martina and I were persona non grata. When an alleged spy from East Germany called Sonia arrived at Brixton she was told as much. If she kept away from us she’d be ‘all-rightish’, but if she befriended us she’d get the same treatment as we were getting – up to five strip-searches, around six body-searches a day, relentless cell-searches and usually 23 hours’ lock-up a day. Sonia befriended us nevertheless, right to the end. She was with us for our first Christmas in Brixton Prison and it snowed that morning. We got out to the yard and, like mad children, drew Christmas messages on the snow to people who’d never get to see them. We exchanged presents and read the greetings in An Phoblacht – Ann and Rab of the POW Department, our families and God knows how many others. We even got our faces on the front page of the paper one Christmas. What a blast!
But Brixton wasn’t exactly a pantomime. As one member of the Board of Visitors said: “The only thing you are entitled to here is to be fed, wear clothes and get an hour out of the cell per day.” And that basically was our gettings. But my mother used to always tell me growing up that a bit of hardship toughens you for things to come. She was always a bit of a wizard that woman and, sure enough, Brixton was the training ground for even bigger things – H-Wing, Durham.
In our naiveté we’d been kind of looking forward to the move to H-Wing after the ongoing conflict with the screws in Brixton and the sometimes very abusive manner of the male prisoners there. My first sighting of H-Wing gave me the distinct impression of a big dirty chimney but I still didn’t know how the hell Santa Claus was ever going to get down it.
The first person I remember seeing as we went onto the wing was an old lady of about 70. She was remarkable for the fact that she’d push a sweeping brush a few feet, stop suddenly and say, “Half-past four,” in a broad Cockney accent then continue to push forward another bit.
The word ‘smoke’ must have been written on my forehead even then because she made a beeline for me to ask for a light. No problem, I thought, until a screw came up and told me she was an arsonist and not to be given a light under any circumstances!
The ‘half-past four’ thing emerged from the fact that she was meant to have been hung a number of years previously at half-past four and got reprieved to Durham. Some reprieve.
Soon we had two Martinas with the arrival of Dubliner Martina Shanahan, one of the Winchester Three, in 1987.
We were thrilled at the arrival of one of our own but a bit despairing too in the knowledge of what lay ahead of her. We three became close – she was our baby though she had more sense than the two of us put together.
Martina Shanahan was only in the place a day or two when Anderson and myself were for the block for something we’d done before her arrival. Shanahan was inconsolable: her two closest friends in the place were being locked up and she wasn’t. We’d a bit of a job convincing her of the importance of the responsibility we were now placing on her young shoulders. She’d have to be out on the wing to write out letters about our ‘dreadful’ plight and hold the fort ‘till our ‘release’ while we suffered great toils and torments! We could hardly hold the laughter in. Pretty soon, she was for the block too.
Then the Winchester Three won their appeal in 1990 and we were wracked by conflicting emotions: joy at seeing her released and yet the sadness of letting her go.
There were times throughout the Durham period when we’d have run-ins with the other prisoners but we made it clear that neither the system nor the prisoners could come between us - and that clarity was sometimes delivered in less than gentle ways. They say that if you’ve a reputation of getting up early you can get up at mid-day.
But this again is a Christmas tale and when we were transferred to Maghaberry we had a Christmas never to be forgotten.
We were met on the first visit with the delighted faces of our families – the people who had gone through so much hardship on our behalf for all those years.
While walking around that exercise in Durham under the dingey, grey chimney of H-Wing I’d sworn that if I ever got back under an Irish sky I’d kiss the ground on the first Christmas there. If the Pope was good enough to kiss it, so was I. And that’s how I’d begun Christmas morning, 1994. It was one hell of a Christmas.
I remember saying to the O/C, Mary McArdle, that people outside would have paid to come into a party like this. “I doubt it,” said Mary. Marie Wright (RIP) complained that the hooch was below par and nothing like the usual quality. Martina and I disagreed. It was like fine wine. 1994: a good year — vintage stuff.

Martina’s account

BY THE TIME we arrived at Brixton, after ten days’ interrogation, I was shattered tired and couldn’t care less about my new surroundings. I needed sleep without expecting the door to open for more questioning. So while Ella was on a full-scale op’ trying to get fags through her window, I was out for the count.
We spent most of the next 13 months with no clothes on, with all the strip-searches we were getting. By way of protest we were for refusing to put the clothes back on after the next strip-search and just wear dressing gowns but for the wise intervention of Mitchel McLaughlin. More often than once, Mitchel helped us see the light during the many visits he made to us in jail.
Another time we refused to put our cells back together after two cell-searches in the one day and we spent the night sleeping on the heating pipes. But again we could see where that kind of protest would take us and we were still only on remand.
Then we wanted to batter – if not worse – one of the screws but were again advised against it. But we did have the consolation of seeing the state the screws would get into after a two-week shift on the wing. They’d be utterly shattered and couldn’t wait to get away form us. We were hard work all right.
My role in jail was of entertainer. I’d sing every night out the window in response to the endless requests of the men in the surrounding blocks. The acoustics of the exercise yard in A-Wing were a model for aspiring talent like mine but the next day the screws would come to the door and put me on report for ‘disturbing the neighbours’. They said there were complaints! The ingratitude of it all.
Myself and Ella were always a bit nuts so we can’t blame long-term imprisonment. We decided that for the last day of the trial at the Old Bailey we’d try and dress like Tricolours. We literally wore green, white and gold. Luckily nobody noticed! Boreham was the name of the judge handing out the life sentences and half the time he was asleep during the proceedings. He was so old he should have been at home praying for a happy death!
In the middle of the constant bombardment with strip-searches, cell-searches and ongoing harassment we found a friend, a woman called Nina Hutchinson, who has sadly died since. Nina visited us regularly and was the instigator of a strong campaign around prison conditions in Brixton and later in Durham.
As for Durham! It took me a whole week to realise I wasn’t in a hospital. In fact it took me a week to even talk really. But that wasn’t too bad. There was a woman who’d been there for years and she never spoke at all. Another woman used to burn herself with fags. There were so many unwell women in H-Wing who, instead of being sent to jail, should have been sent for psychiatric care.
One of the first people we met in Durham was Judith Ward [convicted of bombing a British Army coach on the M62 in England].
She bounced up to us and asked us if we’d like to come to her cell for a drink. A drink! Ella and I exchanged wide-eyed glances. Hooch, we figured. Could it really be? We moved swiftly to Judith’s cell. In fact, I think we got there before her. She produced a flask, three tea bags and a jar of coffee. Not quite the same thing as hooch but she did have some traditional Irish music that the Gillespie sisters had left with her on their release.
Another person we met the first day in Durham was a Scottish woman who greeted us with “I’m a prostitute, a lesbian and I’m in for murder – and how are you?” We became friends and, thankfully, she left it until the day before we left H-Wing for good to tell me she fancied me! I was a happily married woman.
Both Ella and I had jail weddings. Ella’s was a nice day but my wedding in 1989 [to IRA POW Paul Kavanagh] was more like an obstacle course. By the time I’d been driven a mile a minute on the four-hour journey to Full Sutton Jail, near York, vomiting all the way and given a couple of brief hours to get the business done and rushed back to H-Wing again, I was totally bewildered and upset. Ella jumped to the wrong conclusion at the sight of me. “Don’t worry, all’s not lost – we’ll get you a divorce!” That really did it and I didn’t sleep a wink that night.
We didn’t just celebrate weddings. We made a big thing of Christmases and birthdays. In fact, I remember Ella’s first mid-life crisis – she was 30 and was utterly miserable. On such occasions we’d exchange gifts and get spoilt by our families when they’d come on visits. If one of us got something, the other one did too. The Andersons to this day will never forget traipsing around the streets looking for prawns for Ella. Prawns! You can imagine the searching the screws did on the big basin of prawns that was enough to feed an army.
My mother, Betty, was the rock in our household right throughout my sentence. I will always love her.
But it wasn’t all partying and we spent the first six months of our time in Durham on ‘lock-up’, meaning everything, including the mattress, would be taken out of the cell and you saw nobody except the screw who came to let you ‘slop out’. We didn’t even get to see each other.
The governor let us know that he had been governor of Wakefield when Frank Stagg died and he’d happily send us home in boxes.
If you needed a lesson on the inhumanity and brutality at the core of imperialism you only had to look at the way prisoners were treated – even the sick and vulnerable ones we saw in Durham. We wanted to change it all, change the world we were living in, and in a way we did just that.
By the time we’d been transferred from H-Wing, the jail had been refurbished to a relatively habitable state with toilets and hand-basins in each cell. After threatening to wreck these pristine abodes if we weren’t allowed to inhabit the ones on the upper floors, they agreed to let us onto the top landing. So, for the first time in about eight years, we had a view of normal daylight from our cells. I remember waking up the first morning and banging on the door, shouting to the women to look out the window. It was a great big beautiful orange ball – the sun was rising. It was magic!

An Phoblacht
20 December 2007

The ‘Iceman’ melteth

GERRY KELLY (54) took an interesting journey to become a junior Minister in the Six County Executive. After involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, active service with the IRA, imprisonment, hunger strike and numerous escape attempts, Kelly became a member of the North’s Assembly. He chats to ELLA O’DWYER about the road he’s travelled.

Gerry, you’ll hate me for saying this but you give off an impression of being tall, stiff, and a bit serious.

[Gerry Kelly laughs loudly] I’ve done serious things and I take my politics very seriously.
During the negotiations the media used to refer to me as ‘The Ice Man’. Part of it was to do with the beginning of the talks with the Brits. My job was really as a kind of a ‘political sweeper’: I’d go in well briefed up and I’d stand back, observe and pass notes and generally make sure all the points were covered. So the Brits got the impression that I was very stoic and didn’t engage.

As a boy what were you like?

I was born at Easter Sunday, and between first, Confirmation and surnames I ended up with Gerard Francis Kelly, roughly translating as ‘Strong-arm Spear-throwing Warrior! So I was rightly hammered from the start [laughs].
I’m from Raglan Street in the Lower Falls. I went to school in St Finian’s Primary on the Falls Road, just next to where our Sinn Féin office in Sevastopol Street is now. Gerry Adams went to the same school but he was about five years older than me and had gone by then – written out of primary school history [laughs].
We lived right beside the school so it was impossible to ‘mitch’ [play truant] as the teachers would know your whereabouts. Sometimes I just fell out of bed when the bell went and be late and the teachers used to go spare because they knew I lived next door.
There were 11 of us in the family: four boys and seven girls. I was fifth in the family. Both my parents came from the Falls. They weren’t particularly political though grandfather Kelly was a Labour supporter. I enjoyed primary school at St Finian’s. Even at a time when very little Irish history was taught in the North, our school took pride in Irishness and we were taught some Irish history.
When I was young I wanted to be a priest – thankfully I didn’t make it [laughs].
After primary I went to St Peter’s Secondary School, got my O-Levels and then at 17 took my first job, in the Civil Service as a clerical officer with the Belfast Corporation Electricity Department.

So you were moving out into the world.

As a 17-year-old with my first wage I was enjoying life just like other young people. I got on well with the people I worked with regardless of whichever community they came from.
We’d have a bit of banter amongst ourselves. They had this old joke for newcomers called ‘The Long Stand’. A fella would send you off to another office to get something. When you’d arrive in the office to ask the guy at the desk for a long stand, he’d say ‘fine’ and then leave you standing. After a couple of rounds of it you’d clock that you’d been given ‘the long stand’.
That was the good-natured and fun working atmosphere for the most part, that is until the period leading up to The Twelfth. Then the entire atmosphere would change. It’d get icy. It was a very strange phenomenon.
I remember the 1966 anniversary of the 1916 Rising and, of course, houses being raided. Things like that make you aware, they radicalise you.

And then you got involved in the republican struggle.

Yes. I’d become aware of sectarianism from the workplace and then I remember being stopped by older kids on the street and asked if I was Catholic or Protestant. I was brought up to be proud of my background so, of course, I said I’m Catholic. I got a bit of a hiding [laughs].
That wasn’t such a big deal but I remember when Paisley got the RUC to take the Tricolour down from a Sinn Féin office in the Divis in 1964. But I was only about 11 then and I don’t remember much about it. There was four days of riots afterwards and then there were the Divis riots of 1969. It’s the events on the ground that make you politically aware.
I joined Fianna Éireann and was arrested in Omeath, County Louth, in August 1971, caught with Fianna weapons [laughs]. I was sentenced to two years and put in Mountjoy which then consisted of three sections: one for men, one for women and another for young people. Conditions in Mountjoy were dreadful. You’d see young lads being beaten and the food was very bad. Two years back then seemed like a very long time and I escaped.

I believe you camped up a tree for while in the process.

[Laughs] Yes, for a few hours, though that wasn’t part of the initial plan!
In January 1972, myself and another fella called Noel Moore, from Derry, hatched a plan to get me out through a workshop in the women’s wing. Noel wasn’t for escaping because he’d only six months to do.
The workshop, which was used for making mats, was being renovated and a hole was being broken out in one end of it in order to install a toilet. I used to be taken to do woodwork in the mat shop to make benches during the renovation.
When my Dad came on a visit one day I told him of my plan. He had mixed feelings about it because while I was in jail at least I wouldn’t be getting involved in the mounting struggle on the streets of Belfast. Anyway, he said he’d arrange to have a car outside to collect me on the day I was to escape. As it turned out, I had to postpone the escape because on the day I wasn’t taken for the woodwork class because the instructor didn’t come to work. So that put paid to the escape for that day. A couple of days later I decided I was going anyway, even though there’d be no car waiting outside for me.
Noel and myself were in the mat shop. I’d secured a painter’s white overalls and a white shirt so that I could change out of the prison-issue clothing.
We were in the mat shop and there were a lot of Screws about, looking to see the progress on the renovations. At one stage the entourage of Screws viewed the work and there was a Screw left in charge of me. “Stay there,” he said to me. “I’m just running over there to get some wood glue. I’ll be back in two minutes.” No sooner had he left than I gave Noel the nod. “I’m going now,” I said. There was another prisoner standing nearby, a Cork fella. “Do me a favour,” I said. “When the Screw comes back tell him I’ve gone to the toilet.”
Noel and I went out through a window, into the women’s exercise yard and to the 16-foot high wall. I climbed on Noel’s shoulders, got onto the wall and dropped myself down to the other side and headed off. Noel rushed back inside.
My plan had been to find a church somewhere and hide in a confession box until dark when I would go to an address I’d been given where I’d get help. I didn’t know Dublin and I couldn’t find a church. Eventually I found myself walking beside the Royal Canal in Dublin, trying to look like an ordinary painter walking about my business. I kept looking out for a church but couldn’t find one. I arrived at Glasnevin Graveyard, got into the grounds and headed for a tree. I climbed the tree and stayed there until it was dark.
To make a long story shorter, I eventually arrived at the address I’d been given, that of a woman called Mary Doyle who, ironically enough, lived in Parnell Square. I told her the story and before long I was sitting down to a big feed. I stayed in Dublin for a week. I was to get a lift with a taxi man to the border and the driver actually gave me £15 and drove me right to my own home in Belfast. I was there a couple of hours when a Saracen slammed to a halt outside. I ran straight out the back and that was me on the run in the North.

And you joined the IRA and went on active service?

Immediately after that I joined the IRA and operated in the Whiterock/Ballymurphy area – that’d be January 1972.
We were sent over to bomb London in March ‘73 – it was known as the Old Bailey bombings. This was really the start of the campaign in England.
Ted Heath was the Secretary of State at the time and Whitelaw was Prime Minister. There was a referendum on the border set for 8 March. Nationalists boycotted the referendum and only 57 per cent of the electorate took part in the poll. The car bombs were set to go off for 8 March – the date of the referendum.
It was a Belfast Brigade operation for GHQ. Two car bombs were defused but two went off – one at the Old Bailey and one at Scotland Yard. I got two life sentences and 20 years.

A group of you went on hunger strike for repatriation to jails in Ireland.

Yes. We were sentenced on 14 November ‘73 and immediately a group of us went on hunger strike. After a while it ended up with four of us on it – Dolours and Marian Price, Hugh Feeney and myself – and even with the force-feeding to try and break the strike we lasted a long time – 206 days.
They started force-feeding me around the 19th day and I was force-fed 167 times. You’d be held down by between six and eight Screws, pinned to the bed with your head held over the bed-end and they’d try to force open your mouth.
They’d run forceps up and down your gums to try to prise open your mouth. They had another method too – a tube would be pushed up your nose where it would hit off a particularly sensitive membrane, which automatically made you open your mouth. The sensation of the tube up the nose was like having a pin stuck into the corner of your eye.
When they’d your mouth forced open they’d stick a thing like a horse-bit with a hole in the middle of it in to keep your mouth open. Then they’d get another tube which would be lubricated with paraffin oil and stick it down your throat. That tube would be filled with a high protein substance like Complan. You’d frequently vomit and that too would be forced back down your throat.

The Brits finally did a deal.

Yes, they did a deal and then they broke it. They said we’d be repatriated before Christmas. Then the Birmingham bombs went off in November that year and I was told then that we wouldn’t be repatriated. I made an escape attempt soon after that. I got as far as the top of the outside wall when the alarm went off and I was caught.
Paul Holmes, Frank Stagg and Michael Gaughan were on hunger strike in solidarity with us. Then between ‘74 and ‘75 there were talks between the Brits and the IRA and as a gesture of good faith a group of us were to be repatriated. First the two girls got back in early ‘75 and then, in April, Hugh and myself got back.
The next two that were to be brought back were Paul Holmes and Frank Stagg but then the talks between the Brits and the IRA broke down. It was hard to leave the other lads behind, especially with Frank’s death – he died on 3 June. The Brits effectively killed him through the force-feeding. We were devastated. But we’d won and we’d broken the Brits’ practice of force-feeding

And you made other escape attempts.

Yes I made an attempt again in ‘82 while I was out at hospital for an X-ray but it didn’t come off. I was about to feel a failure as a potential escapee when a very complex and highly organsied escape plan from the H-Blocks of Long Kesh was devised in 1983 – what they call ‘The Great Escape’.
The job was well organised and although it almost went wrong as we reached the outside gate we managed to get away.

So you were on the run again and ended up operating on the Continent.

Yes. Myself and Bik McFarlane were arrested in Amsterdam and charged with possession. There was a big extradition case mounted against us which we beat and ended up only charged with matters relating to the escape and again we were back in the Kesh.

You were finally released in 1989 and got involved with the negotiations around the Good Friday Agreement. What did you think of the likes of Blair and Clinton?

We were fortunate in that the combination of Reynolds, Blair and Clinton fell into place.
In terms of British prime ministers, Blair was ahead of the rest in relation to Ireland and Clinton gave a lot of time and attention to the Peace Process.
He developed a personal interest in Ireland. I think the likes of Albert Reynolds and John Hume saw that it was a historic moment. They were in the right place at the right time.

Now you’re a Junior Minister in the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

Yes. Martin [McGuinness] has the same power as Ian Paisley and what you see is what you get with those men.
Myself and Ian Junior work together – almost joined at the hip. The work is diverse. We’ve been doing work on issues around children and suicide prevention for instance.

Yours has been a varied life path from armed struggle to your role as negotiator and now your ministerial role. Was it hard to adapt?

I think you have to be adaptable. Also when you come from a community like mine, where people have gone through so much and yet always picked themselves up, you take strength and courage from that. Coming from such a community empowers you in that sense.
Also I think it’s important to lighten up and have a sense of humour. I’ve a family – my partner Margaret and my six children. I’m also a grandfather and I love kids. [Chuckles] Who doesn’t love kids? They keep you young!

BY ART Mac EOIN
An Phoblacht
20 December 2007

For republicans, December is traditionally prisoners’ month. Unfortunately this year is no different as there are republicans languishing in three septate jails across Ireland.
Speaking to An Phoblacht this week Ann O’Sullivan, of the Sinn Féin POW Department said that following the IRA’s declaration of an end to its armed campaign all IRA prisoners should have been released but that instead, almost a decade after the Good Friday Agreement, and over two-and-a-half years since the formal ending of the IRA campaign, republican prisoners remained in jail. She said that their continued incarceration was the result of a lack of political will, especially by the Dublin government, and that this should be challenged.
O’Sullivan welcomed a recent call from Barry McColgan of Ógra Shinn Féin in which he urged Ógra members to be particularly active on the prisoners issue during the month of December and to remember those republican prisoners who are still held in jail this Christmas.
“I would ask that people remember and highlight the oppression of prisoners across the world and in particular to remember Irish republican POWs, held not only in Castlerea, but also Portlaoise Prison in County Laois and Maghaberry Prison in County Antrim”, O’Sullivan said.

By Aine McEntee
Irelandclick
21 December 2007

The Police Ombudsman has delivered a damning report of the RUC after their investigations in the loyalist murder of a young North Belfast Catholic lasted a mere two days.
‘Negligent’ and ‘poor’ are just two words the police watchdog used in its report to describe the RUC probe into the murder of 23-year-old Paddy McMahon.

October 1993

The amateur boxer was shot dead in October 1993 by a UDA gunman in front of his girlfriend and three-year-old son in Newington Avenue.
The gunman, understood to be part of cocaine addict Stephen McKeag’s murder gang, slid down a drainpipe of a derelict house, escaping down an alley and into Tiger’s Bay.
The Ombudsman’s three-year probe has come back to Paddy’s parents Emily and James with a highly critical opinion of how the RUC officers, now retired, carried out their work.
“The murder file is considered to have been poorly maintained and it has been difficult to establish the methodology used during this investigation.”

Conclusions

A senior Ombudsman officer adds: “Our overall conclusions… was that the investigation was not thorough… it was my view that this satisfied the meaning of negligent, in that the investigation lacked attention and care that one would have expected from such a murder investigation.”
Paddy’s mother Emily said the family felt hugely let down by the police.

Two days

“We are disappointed, so would you be if you found out the police spent two days looking into your son’s murder.
“I lost a whole year of my life after our Paddy was murdered. I couldn’t do a thing.
“I didn’t cross the door. It nearly killed me when our Paddy went.
“Nothing can ever replace a life, it’s like you’ve lost a precious jewel that you’ll never ever get back. Every day in life I never forget my Patrick.”
Paddy’s inquest was held three months later, the papers of which are now missing the Ombudsman has now revealed.

Lack of effort

According to Emily the coroner said during that January 1994 hearing that he was appalled at the lack of police effort.
“It turned up in court that the weapon was a ex-policeman’s gun, and that it had been used in three previous murders and five attempted murders.
“The gun was recovered two years ago but we’ve been told not one person has been arrested in connection with it.
“I’ve never in my life witnessed anything like this.
“Why didn’t the police do their job, knock on the doors, ask questions, do the forensics, do anything? It’s terrible.”

Civil action

Paddy Murray of Kevin Winter’s Solicitors said the family were now investigating launching civil action proceedings against the police.
“We welcome the ombudsman’s findings first of all. We are now considering civil action against the PSNI as a result of their report.
“We’re talking about 1993 here, not the ‘70s and yet a murder investigation garnered two days of investigation.
“It’s abundantly clear the family did not get the investigation they deserved.”

BBC

Cases using a controversial DNA testing technique in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are to be reviewed.

It follows the Omagh bomb verdict, when Sean Hoey was cleared of 58 charges, including the murders of 29 people.

The Crown Prosecution Service said it would review live prosecutions in England and Wales involving Low Copy Number (LCN) DNA.

Northern Ireland’s Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Orde, also said he had instigated an immediate review.

The Forensic Science Quality Regulator, set up by the Home Office, will be carrying out the examinations.

The BBC’s Michael Buchanan said that the Association of Chief Police Officers produced a confidential report in August which called for the technique to be urgently reviewed.

‘Vital ingredient’

LCN is a relatively recent development of DNA science which allows analysis of tiny samples of skin cells, sweat and other bodily fluids.

At the heart of the case against Mr Hoey were the bomb timers used in the attacks.

Forensic scientists had examined them for both fibres and DNA using the LCN technique.

The prosecution claimed the forensic examination had shown links to Mr Hoey, a south Armagh electrician.

The judge in the Omagh trial rejected LCN because it was not seen to be at a sufficiently scientific level as yet to be considered evidence.

Sir Hugh said: “I have asked for an urgent review of all cases that rely in any way, shape or form on Low Copy Number DNA.”

He said it was at the very cutting edge of science and had been used in the trial because of his determination to build a case.

But Sir Hugh said: “It is a vital ingredient of cases in the future which will bring very guilty people to justice.”

Previous cases

LCN testing has been used in a number of other high-profile cases.

It has been reported that it was this technique which was used by the FSS in Birmingham to examine DNA samples from the car hired by the McCanns.

And in 2000 Ian Lowther was convicted of the murder of Mary Gregson, who was walking along the Leeds-Liverpool canal towpath in August 1977.

The DNA LCN technique allowed scientists to go back and generate a DNA profile from an old semen stain originally found on the clothing.

BBC

**EDIT: You may still view the archive video of the 2007 solstice by going to >>this page and clicking on the ‘view the archive’ link at the bottom

**This is the link for the live stream, but the site was too busy too reach when I tried it. heritageireland.ie

Live images of an ancient “solar clock” are about to be beamed to a global audience from an ancient tomb in Ireland.

There has been a lot of interest in the Newgrange “clock”

For five days around the 21 December winter solstice - the shortest day of the year - the sun shines deep into a tomb in County Meath, flooding the chamber with light.

The Newgrange tomb, now one of Ireland’s top tourist attractions, dates to about 3200 BC - 1,000 years before Britain’s Stonehenge was built and 500 years before Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza.

For the first time, the phenomenon is being streamed live on the internet and will also be offered free-to-air on television by satellite from 0830 GMT on 21 and 22 December.

If there is no midwinter sun, the solstice “clock” doesn’t work.

Claire Tuffy, manager of Newgrange, said she was delighted that they would have a clear sunrise.

“People watching on the web-cast will be able to experience the same anxiety as people who will be there hoping for a glorious dawn,” she said.

“It is quite a leap of faith for some international visitors to travel thousands of miles to get here on the off-chance of clear skies. It is a big commitment time-wise and financially.

“But people don’t really care about the weather. It is the anticipation that is the most exciting part of the event.”

This year, a record 28,106 people from around the world applied to be one of the 50 lucky people allowed into Newgrange’s cramped chamber, on one of the five days surrounding the solstice.

They are travelling from the United States, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, Poland and Britain for the experience.

The prehistoric tomb was carefully aligned by its Neolithic builders so the sun only cuts through the gloom of the chamber at sunrise through a small window above the entrance.

If skies are clear, the rising sun slowly shines all the way down the 19-metre long chamber into the centre of the tomb, lighting it for up to 17 minutes before the rays disappear and darkness returns.

Excitement

The sun lights up where the cremated ashes of the dead were laid on large stone basins deep inside the tomb.

Ms Tuffy added: “I was speaking to two women from Yorkshire who told me they were unable to sleep the night before because they were so excited.

“They kept calling each other in the night. It is a bit like waiting for Santa Claus.”

Newgrange is believed to be the world’s oldest continuously roofed building.

When the tomb’s solstice phenomenon was discovered in 1967, archaeologists were astonished Stone Age builders had the architectural skills and scientific understanding of the sun’s movement that was needed to construct it.

The grass-roofed tomb is about 13 metres high and 85 metres in diameter, and covers almost half a hectare.

About 200,000 tonnes of stone and earth were used to build it.

BBC

The parents of the murdered County Armagh man Paul Quinn are expected to meet the Secretary of State later on Friday.

They will hold talks with Shaun Woodward at Hillsborough Castle.

Mr Quinn, 21, was beaten to death in a shed in County Monaghan in October. His family have said IRA members were involved.

Sinn Fein denies any republican involvement. No-one has been charged with the murder.

Earlier this week, Stephen and Briege Quinn met Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern to discuss their son’s murder.

They said Mr Ahern told them the Irish government does not believe her son was a criminal.

Mr Quinn’s family said the IRA killed the 21-year-old after he had defied an order to leave the country.

Last week, more than 300 people attended a meeting in south Armagh in support of the Quinn family.

Friday December 21, 2007
Guardian

The Omagh bomb was the most terrible single event of the Troubles. The Real IRA attack in August 1998 killed 29 people and wounded hundreds more. It was, said Tony Blair at the time, an “appalling act of savagery and evil”. He promised justice and truth. It will never come. Yesterday in Belfast the case against Sean Hoey, the only person ever charged with murder over the attack, was thrown out after the judge ruled that the police case rested on flawed evidence, the result of an incompetent and deceitful travesty of an investigation.

From the start, Omagh victims’ families have behaved with a decency lacking from the official handling of the case. Yesterday Mr Justice Weir poured scorn on the police. The case against Mr Hoey rested on forensic evidence that was shown to be of a disgracefully low standard. The collection of DNA samples was bungled. Some evidence was lost. The remains of the red Vauxhall car used in the attack were lost for a year, only to be found decaying in a police car park. Police officers lied about how they had handled forensic samples, and forensic scientists neglected to use even basic precautions such as hats and masks when handling evidence.

This would have been bad enough had failings not been reported before. It is worse that the police seem to have made little effort to correct errors exposed by the investigation of the ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan. She found that a failure of leadership ran through the police’s handling of the atrocity. Instead of accepting this, the then head of policing in Northern Ireland, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, dismissed her report. “If these [findings] were true … I would not only resign, I would go out and commit suicide,” he declared. The Police Association for Northern Ireland attempted to block the report in court. Yesterday’s miserable outcome shows that Ms O’Loan was right and Sir Ronnie was wrong. She is owed an apology. But the position of Omagh families is far worse. They have been fighting to secure justice despite police ineptitude. Yesterday Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was one of those killed, accepted that they have little chance now of securing it.

Mr Justice Weir’s ruling also has implications for other attempts to use the form of DNA evidence rejected yesterday. Low copy number DNA profiling depends on tiny samples. Yesterday the judge questioned its reliability in criminal trials, even when forensic samples are handled well. There must be an urgent study into the use of the technique, before other cases collapse. The families, who question why intelligence from informers was not used in the Omagh trial, want a cross-border inquiry into the whole disaster. But the bombers and those who helped them are still likely to go free.