SAOIRSE32

Irish Democrat
By Theo Russell
4 February 2008

SUPPORTERS OF the Bloody Sunday justice campaign met on Sunday 27 January at the London Irish Centre in Camden to mark the 36th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and to discuss the wider struggle over collusion and the murder of civilians during the conflict. The meeting was organised by the London-based Wolfe Tone Society.

Cathall McEllhinny, whose brother Kevin died on Bloody Sunday, said he found it “hard to believe that 36 years later we are still waiting to hear the truth which I, the people of Derry and the people of Ireland know to be true. “The families never gave up the struggle for justice, even when no-one was listening, when they were going through hardship, suffering and personal and family breakdowns,” he said.

Concerns are growing over the delay in delivering the Bloody Sunday Inquiry’s report, 4-and-a-half years after the main sessions ended. McEllhinny said it was expected “in the summer”, but adding “which summer?”. He said this time compared to Widgery, “there are not so many lies, just massive memory loss”.

“We know from John major that there were no gunmen or bombers on the march, and we know from Tony Blair that the marchers were innocent. If the truth had been told in 1972 not only the £20m cost of the inquiry, but over 3,000 lives lost in the conflict could also have been saved,” said McEllhinny.

Two representatives of another campaign now gaining momentum, the Ballymurphy Eleven, also spoke. Relatives Briege Voyle and Alice Harper have been on a speaking tour of Liverpool, Birmingham and London.

The Ballymurphy 11 were murdered in their own streets by the Parachute Regiment during the first three days of internment in 1971. No-one has ever been brought to justice for the shootings, which unlike Bloody Sunday were not witnessed by TV cameras or journalists.

Briege’s father was shot 14 times and then kicked to death and his family could only recognise him from his hair. Catholic priest, Fr Hugh Mullan, was shot dead while trying to help an injured man, despite having spoken to the army. Frank Quinn was then shot trying to help Father Mullan.

Another victim was finished off at point-blank range after being wounded. This was another example of cold-blooded murder by the infamous Paras.

The families of the dead were later subjected to raids, beatings and taunts about their loved ones.

Harper said the families want an independent investigation into the killings, a statement of the victims’ innocence, and a public apology. “Just tell us the truth - that’s all we want, just the truth”.

Jennifer McCann, a Sinn Féin MLA from West Belfast, looked at the wider issue of justice for all those caught up in the conflict. She condemned the “hierarchy of victims” with the families of the RUC and British military at the top, and said “all victims of the conflict and their families should be treated in the same way, and all are entitled to the truth about what happened”. “In the early 80s Thatcher embarked on a campaign to wipe out any opposition in Northern Ireland, and the British cabinet rubber-stamped the loyalist death squads. Hundreds of Irish people were murdered by loyalist death squads who were armed and directed by the British armed forces. What we have here is a state which was involved in organised murder,” she said.

Under intense pressure from collusion campaigners, the British government and Northern Ireland Executive are being forced to act. Peter Hain’s appointment as of the wife of a part-time RUC reservist killed as the Victim’s Commissioner for Northern Ireland in 2005 caused uproar.

This week four Victims’ Commissioners have been appointed representing both sides of the conflict, after agreement between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness. McCann said: “There is a need to be pushing the British state. The IRA has acknowledged its role in killing civilians but Britain has never done that. It’s a hard job but you have to keep at it.”

Hain was also responsible for set up another group, the Consultative Group on the Past. Made up of seven unionists, one person from the nationalist community and two token international representatives, the group will report to the British government.

Last week a broad coalition of victims groups released a statement calling for an international independent truth commission. Asked what form such an inquiry could take, McCann said Sinn Féin and the campaigners would support a body run by Canadian judge Paul Cory.

Speaking on behalf of the Troops Out Movement, Mary Pearson said: “British as taxpayers have a right to know what the British army have been doing in our name. We’ve been lied to for generations about what the British are doing in Ireland. “We still need to be calling for a British withdrawal from Ireland, and a new MI5 headquarters has been built to move their people out of the PSNI now that Sinn Féin are on the Policing Board”.

Shelagh Connor of the Wolfe Tone Society said that collusion campaigners should organise meetings with Ken Livingstone and sympathetic Labour MPs. She said support should be mobilised in the Irish community for Livingstone’s mayoral campaign as he was one of the first to take up Irish issues, and had set up the annual Saint Patrick’s Parade to mark the contribution of Irish people to London.

Irelandclick
02/08/2008

A new report published this week showed there is a huge desire in interface areas in Belfast for the ‘peace’ walls to come down. Over 80 per cent of people polled right across the city by the US Ireland Alliance want the walls to come down with support running at high levels in areas like Tiger’s Bay despite ongoing problems around the North Queen Street/Duncairn Gardens interface.
The so-called ‘peace line’ developed in the aftermath of the 1969 pogroms and the corrugated iron barriers were originally intended to be a temporary fix in the same way walls erected in the 1930s in the Sailortown area had been.
By the mid ‘70s however, the walls took on a more permanent character with brick walls and buffer zones replacing the corrugated iron and razor wire fences. And despite the peace process and ceasefires of the last ten years or more the walls continue to go up in North Belfast.
Only this week work is going on to erect a fence in the grounds of Hazelwood Primary School at the request of residents in the Throne Park area who have suffered a series of attacks on their homes over recent years. And rightly so, everyone should have the right to live free from intimidation and fear.
However, the new poll shows that there is huge support out there for the walls to come down and people believe that politicians can do a lot more to help bring the walls down.
While this is a difficult and complex problem, with no one size fits all solution, there is no doubt political and community leaders can do more to kick start a process where the walls can be consigned to the dustbin of history.
There are many peace walls in North Belfast where changes in demographics have now rendered them redundant for the purpose they were first built.
Let’s start with getting rid of them to break the mind set that the walls will remain whether there are actually ‘invaders’ to repel or not.
Local politicians, church and inter-community leaders need to begin to be creative along interface areas, not just simply talk about it, to reassure people that there the threat along most interfaces continues to diminish.
There are now only a small number of interfaces where there has been sustained trouble in recent years.
The PSNI needs to be more effective in dealing with the handful of people, anti-social elements motivated by sectarianism, who are responsible for 90 per cent of what happens on these interfaces.
If we can start a process which begins to make people feel more secure along interface areas it would go a long way to achieving an end to the divided walled city which blights the life first and foremost of the people who live here and which makes Belfast a harder place to sell as a tourist or investment opportunity.

Irish News
09/02/08

Roy McShane is the latest in a line of exposed republican informers.

While Sinn Fein is downplaying how much he could have known, the revelation that he was working as a spy is still a major blow – as was the unmasking of other high-profile informers before him.

Denis Donaldson caused shock waves when he confessed to having worked as an informer for MI5 and the RUC Special Branch. Mr Donaldson had a long history of involvement in republicanism, including playing a part in the defence of Short Strand in 1970 and a friendship with republican hero Bobby Sands.

He was appointed to his last job for Sinn Fein as the head administrator in their Stormont offices. In October 2002 he was arrested in a raid on the offices as part of a high-profile police investigation into an alleged spy ring. However, in December 2005 the Public Prosecution Service dropped the charges against Donaldson, saying it would not be in the public interest to proceed with the case. Later that month Sinn Fein held a press conference to announce he had been a spy. Mr Donaldson made a confession on RTE shortly afterwards. He was tracked down by reporters to a remote cottage in Donegal in March. He was shot dead there just over a fortnight later.

Alfredo ‘Freddie’ Scappaticci, known by the codename Stakeknife, is thought to have joined the IRA in the 1970s.

By 1980 he was said to have been a leading member of the IRA’s internal security unit, also known as the ‘nutting squad’.

In this role he investigated leaks within the IRA and suspected informers.

He consistently denied claims that he was the agent known as Stakeknife before he fled the country. He is now rumoured to be living in Italy.

Co Kerry republican Sean O’Callaghan became an informer for the Garda in 1976.

He has claimed, both in print and under oath before a Dublin jury, that he was the head of the IRA’s southern command and a substitute delegate on the IRA army council.

Mr O’Callaghan has published a book about his experiences but republicans have strongly criticised the claims made in it and subsequent newspaper articles.

He now lives relatively openly in England, having refused to adopt a new identity, and works as a security consultant, occasional advisor to the UUP and media pundit.

Independent.ie
By Jim Cusack
Sunday February 10 2008

Adams’ meetings and secret talks with Irish Government were all known to MI5 agent

If Sinn Fein is correct to claim that Gerry Adams’ former driver and bodyguard, Roy McShane, was working as a British agent, then almost all the key meetings and movements of the republican leader were known to the British for the past 20 years.

ROY McSHANE: Has been taken into protective custody

This would include secret meetings with the Irish Government leading up to the ceasefires.

Mr McShane was rarely far from Mr Adams’ side from the time the Sinn Fein leader entered the public arena in the mid-Eighties.

It would also mean that at least two figures who acted as Mr Adams’ closest personal aides, Mr McShane and Denis Donaldson, were reporting back to their handlers.

It is believed both were among the small army of double agents inside the IRA recruited by the RUC Special Branch from the 1980s onwards, under the direction of former Special Branch boss and subsequent RUC Chief Constable, Ronnie Flanagan.

Mr Flanagan’s officers infiltrated republican and loyalist terror groups to an extent that is only now becoming apparent.

All the agents recruited by the RUC Special Branch were handed over to the British domestic intelligence agency MI5 as part of the policing deal leading up to the 2006 political settlement between Sinn Fein and the DUP. MI5 now handles “political” intelligence gathering, leaving “ordinary” policing to the PSNI.

MI5’s main target now is the dissident, ex-Provisional IRA members who are threatening to began a campaign of assassinations and attacks on shops and commercial premises.

Mr McShane’s alleged role as an agent was made public on Friday by Sinn Fein, who claimed he had said his goodbyes to his family in west Belfast and had been taken into protective custody — presumably by his MI5 handlers.

Sinn Fein’s Alex Maskey said Mr McShane had nothing to fear from republicans. “Let’s face it, the war is over.”

Suspicion appears to have fallen on Mr McShane, 58, and some of the other drivers from top Sinn Fein figures two or three years ago. In September 2004, a number of bugging devices were discovered at Sinn Fein’s head offices on the Falls Road in Belfast and in a car used by Mr Adams.

It is believed that there was a “security audit” and Mr McShane and a number of others were moved away from driving and body guard duties. In the past 18 months, Sinn Fein said that Mr McShane had been driving a taxi in west Belfast.

As well as Denis Donaldson, who was shot dead at his holiday home in Donegal in April 2006, other figures who have at times been part of Mr Adams’ inner circle included former “internal security” boss, Freddie Scappaticci, who was also exposed as an RUC mole in 2003.

Republican sources in Belfast yesterday claimed that Mr McShane and Mr Scappaticci were close friends.

- Jim Cusack

Sunday, 10 February 2008
rte.ie

The deputy leader of the DUP, Peter Robinson, has said there can be no transfer of policing and justice powers to the Northern Assembly while the IRA Army Council continues to exist.

He was responding to a call from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for Northern Ireland’s politicians to move on the devolution of policing and justice powers.

In a statement, Northern Ireland First Minister, Ian Paisley, also said he would not be proposing the transfer of policing and justice powers to Stormont because the necessary conditions do not exist.

Earlier Bertie Ahern and Gordon Brown said they believe the time is right for political parties in Northern Ireland to take the final steps towards complete devolution and normality.

At a meeting near Manchester this morning Mr Ahern and Mr Brown also confirmed they intended to participate in the International Investment Conference in Belfast in May.

The meeting took place in an unusual setting, a conference room on the edge of Manchester airport.

Mr Ahern and Mr Brown reviewed progress in the Northern Ireland since the establishment of a power sharing administration last year.

They said in a statement afterwards they were convinced the time was right for the political parties to take the final steps towards full devolution and normality.

This is a reference to devolving the powers of justice and policing, over which Westminster still has control.

Northern Ireland’s security minister Paul Goggins, who is a Manchester MP, also attended the meeting.

The time scale for this process is, however, still being debated by the parties.

Both leaders also confirmed they would be attending the International Investment Conference in Belfast in May.

They called the conference ‘an opportunity for Northern Ireland to demonstrate to the world that the peace and stability it now enjoys is here to stay’.

Mr Ahern afterwards described his third bilateral meeting with Mr Brown as ‘very positive’.

This afternoon, the two leaders attend the United and City derby match at Old Trafford.

A minute’s silence was held before the game to mark the 50th anniversary of the Munich air disaster.