SAOIRSE32

22 February 2008
Derry Journal

Three men have been arrested in Strabane this morning in connection with the investigation into the murder of Andrew Burns outside Doneyloop Church in Donegal last week.
The 27 year-old was shot dead outside the church close to the border between Tyrone and Donegal shortly after being abducted from Strabane town centre.

The PSNI said three men aged 18, 33, and 42 have been arrested in the Strabane area in connection with the murder investigation and have been taken to the serious crime suite at Antrim PSNI station.

Both the PSNI and the Gardaí have said they have not yet established a motive for the 27 year-old’s murder but dissident republicans have been blamed. The Real IRA and the INLA have denied involvement in the killing.

BBC

The first and deputy first ministers hope to have the legislation to allow the Victims’ Commissioners to fulfil their duties in place by late spring.

They were criticised by the SDLP and UUP after some of the commissioners said they were told not to meet victims until the legislation was passed.

But the ministers said it was a “misunderstanding” and they support commissioners meeting victims.

Current laws are for one commissioner, so the commission has no legal status.

One of the victims’ commissioners, Mike Nesbitt, said legal loopholes were holding them back.

Both he and another commissioner, Patricia McBride, said they have met victims since their appointment, but were cautioned by civil servants to stop doing so because of their lack of legal status.

However, on Friday, the Office of the First and Deputy First Minister said there was no barrier to commissioners meeting victims and survivor.

The four commissioners include ex-interim victims’ commissioner Bertha McDougall and Brendan McAllister of Mediation NI.

FRIDAY 22/02/2008
:::u.tv:::

UTV can reveal that Sinn Fein is planning a tribute to a convicted IRA bomber inside Parliament Buildings at Stormont.

But Unionists have vowed to block the celebration of the life of Mairead Farrell who was one of three IRA members shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988

BBC

The group looking at how best to deal with the past has held talks with the security services in London.

It is understood that co-chairmen Denis Bradley and Lord Robin Eames want MI5 to reveal details of its activities during the Troubles.

Denis Bradley and Lord Robin Eames met the MI5 chief

MI5 operated in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles - running large numbers of agents and informers.

There have been allegations that it was involved in collusion with republican and loyalist paramilitaries.

Lord Eames and Mr Bradley want all groups involved in the Troubles to tell the truth about their role.

They met the Director General of MI5 in London on Friday afternoon to discuss how much it is prepared to reveal.

The consultative group has confirmed that a meeting took place, but said it will not reveal details of the talks.

Earlier this month, the group also met the UVF leadership to discuss how it might co-operate.

The focus is now on the IRA. Republicans have called on the government and security forces to reveal details of their activities during the troubles.

But the consultative group has met with the relatives of hundreds of IRA victims who want the truth about what happened to their loved ones. The group wants to meet the IRA leadership to discuss its willingness to co-operate.

:::u.tv:::
**This also should have been posted earlier

Brendan `The Dark` Hughes, once one of Belfast`s most feared IRA gunmen, died at the weekend after a short illness aged 59.

Crowds swelled to more than 2,000 as his coffin - draped in the Irish Tricolour and topped with black beret and gloves, was carried from his home in west Belfast to St Peter`s Catholic Cathedral in the Divis Street area of the city.

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams today carried the coffin of a former IRA hunger striker who fell out with the party over the peace process.

Hughes spent 53 days on hunger strike in the top security Maze Prison in 1980 and fellow faster Raymond McCartney , who is now a Sinn Fein Assembly member, was among the mourners at the biggest republican funeral seen in Belfast for some years.

Hughes was Officer Commanding the IRA men in the Maze during the battle of wills over prisoner of war status and the men`s refusal to wear prison uniform.

He led the dirty protest - when the men wore nothing but a blanket and smeared their cell walls with their own excrement.
That developed into the hunger strike led by Hughes but called off after 53 days when one of the men, Sean McKenna, was near death.

Bobby Sands took over as OC and in 1981 ordered another hunger strike which first claimed his own life and then nine more republicans.

Hughes was released from jail in 1986 and resumed active republicanism again but became disillusioned with the direction of the Sinn Fein leadership in the run up to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and dismissed them as `the Armani suit brigade`.

He accused them of betraying core republican principles and their working class background.

Despite the fallout a former comrade loyal to the Sinn Fein leadership said: “There was still a lot of respect and fondness for Brendan despite all the things he said in recent years.”

Mr Adams` decision to carry the coffin was a clear sign any rift had been healed.

The Herald
**I know this article is out of sync, but I found I hadn’t posted on Blogsome, so here it is

Former Provisional IRA commander;
Born October 1948;
Died February 16, 2008.

BRENDAN Hughes, who has died aged 59, was a a one-time commander with the Provisional Irish Republican Army who broke with former comrades when they pursued peace in Northern Ireland.

Hughes spent his final years criticising Sinn Fein leaders for accepting Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord and said that, while the IRA should not return to violence, its political leaders made people suffer needlessly for decades when the British government had offered similar peace terms as long ago as 1975.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, a longtime comrade of Hughes inside and outside prison, helped carry his coffin outside St Peter’s Cathedral in west Belfast, where both men joined the IRA as teenagers. Veterans of the IRA and dissident groups were among more than 2000 mourners.

Hughes specified before dying that he wanted to be cremated rather than buried in the IRA’s roll of honour section in Milltown Cemetery, west Belfast, where dozens of his comrades lie.

Hughes and Adams were arrested together in July 1973 and both interned without trial. Hughes, reputed to be one of the IRA’s most determined gunmen and bank robbers, escaped six months later.

He returned to Belfast posing as a toy salesman and operated from an apartment in the wealthiest district of the city, where he directed IRA operations in the city.

Police raided Hughes’s safe house in May 1974 and arrested him. He became the IRA’s commanding officer inside the Maze prison, where he oversaw a six-year campaign to force British authorities to concede them status as “political prisoners.”

The protest involved going naked rather than wearing prison uniforms, smearing their own excrement on cell walls - and finally mounting the 1980 hunger strike. Hughes and six others refused food for 53 days before Hughes ordered the hunger strike to end in bitterly disputed circumstances.

Hughes was replaced by Bobby Sands as IRA commander inside the prison. Sands and nine other inmates starved to death in the 1981 hunger strike that also failed to achieve their demands.

Hughes resumed IRA activity after his 1986 parole, but grew disillusioned when former colleagues turned full-time to politics and pursued compromise after the 1997 IRA ceasefire.

He said Sinn Fein leaders had turned their backs on the working class, preferring to take good paying government jobs in a Northern Ireland that remained British territory. Hughes called the IRA’s 1975 ceasefire an opportunity lost.

“Think of all the lives that could have been saved had we accepted the 1975 truce. That alone would have justified acceptance. We fought on and for what? What we rejected in 1975,” he said in 2000.

Hughes and his wife, who had a son and daughter, separated while he was in prison. All survive him.

Derry Journal
20 February 2008

SUPERGRASS Raymond Gilmour wants a British Agent’s pension in return for his work as an IRA informer in Derry in the 1980s.

The Creggan man, who infiltrated both the INLA and IRA in the city in the 1970s and 80s, has also warned future agents to ensure they have written contracts with their handlers to ensure they are not “discarded” when their work in completed.

The 47 year-old former RUC Special Branch and MI5 spy said he has been “blackballed” and forgotten about as nothing more than an “embarrassment” to the security forces.

Gilmour has been hunted by former comrades in Derry over the past 25 years and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and a heart condition which required surgery a few years ago. Speaking from a secret location in England, the virtually penniless Gilmour said he feels betrayed.

“The people I have dealt with over the last few years, I assume, are from MI5, and they basically don’t give a shit about me. A couple of years ago they stopped paying for a counsellor that helped me deal with the flashbacks and the post-traumatic stress I have had to suffer.

“Even my old RUC contacts have stopped returning calls. It’s as if I have been blackballed. You risk your life to stop others getting murdered and maimed, but in the end you are forgotten about. You are an embarrassment from the past; you are no longer useful.

“I always thought that, once my career as an agent was over, I would be looked after for the rest of my life. I was an agent of the state, but the state doesn’t want to know.”

Queen’s medal

Gilmour believes he deserves recognition for his “important” work. “I am not asking for a house, all I want is a pension. But when I first started s
pying on the INLA, and later the IRA, I honestly believed that one day the Queen would give me a medal.”

And he warned prospective agents about the “dangerous” pitfalls. “Anyone thinking of infiltrating or working on the inside to bring down terrorist organisations should get it nailed down, on paper, legally binding, that they will receive a pension long after they have retired from this deadly game.

“If I was a young kid, say from the Muslim community in Britain, thinking of working for the State inside one of the Islamic terrorist groups, I would make sure I obtained a contract. Because what happened to me would discourage anyone from signing up as an agent.”

From the age of 16, Gilmour served the state as an informer in Derry. In 1983 he gave evidence against dozens of alleged Derry IRA members as a supergrass, although the courts later dismissed his testimony as unreliable.

‘Bid to kill’ RIRA man

Click on thumbnail to view image
Derry Journal
By Ian Cullen
19 February 2008

DISSIDENT republicans in Derry have stepped up their security after what they believe was an assassination attempt on a senior Real IRA figure, the ‘Journal’ has learned.

It’s been claimed that an undercover British security force operative called to the paramilitary figure’s home while he was out.

Neighbours reported seeing a masked man with a wig and a peaked cap at the dissident republican’s front door on Saturday night.

A spokesman for the 32 County Sovereignty Movement told the ‘Journal’ last night: “When the neighbours opened the door, the man became anxious and turned away. He then started rummaging with something in his hand which was concealed under his coat.

“He quickly moved to the getaway car which had done a u-turn while he was at the door. He got in and the car sped off. We’re putting it down to an assassination attempt by the British forces. We have all stepped up our security in light of what has happened.”

He added that the incident ties in with reports of undercover British army activity in East Tyrone in recent weeks involving incidents in which similar estate cars were seen in suspicious circumstances near the homes of dissident republicans.

Pledge

The Real IRA recently pledged to step up attacks on the PSNI. The organisation claimed responsibility for the shootings in November of off-duty Derry policeman Jim Doherty and an officer in Dungannon in November.

Derry Journal
20 February 2008

Reports that dissident republican paramilitary groups are holding talks with a view to joining forces have been rubbished.

In recent weeks reports circulated that meetings took place between representatives of the INLA, RIRA, CIRA and disillusioned Provisionals to agree a new ‘armed struggle’ strategy. Such meetings were reported to have taken place in Co. Donegal and in Co. Louth.

However, a spokesperson for the 32 County Sovereignty Movement in Derry said: “This is absolute rubbish. These meetings have not taken place and never will.

“The INLA is supposed to be on ceasefire whereas the Continuity IRA is in disarray. While we may have some common ground, any talk of a merger is absolute nonsense.”

The full article contains 121 words and appears in Foyle News newspaper.
Last Updated: 3:34 PM

Belfast Telegraph
Thursday, February 21, 2008
By Sam Lister

Gordon Brown has insisted criminals will not be allowed to derail the peace process despite claims of growing concerns about the stability of devolution.

The Prime Minister told MPs he wanted to “send out a message” that progress would not be stopped by dissidents.

But, during questions in the Commons, he side-stepped calls to set out how he would deal with any party linked to criminal activity.

North Belfast DUP MP Nigel Dodds said serious allegations of IRA involvement in the murder of Paul Quinn had cast a shadow over the stability of devolved institutions.

“Will the Prime Minister reiterate the commitment already given that if any party, in this case Sinn Fein, is found to be in default, that he will not punish all of the parties in Northern Ireland but he will ensure devolution continues?”

Mr Brown said: “There is no evidence that IRA people are involved but of course that has got to be investigated in full.

“No criminals should be allowed to derail a peace process that has got the support of millions in Northern Ireland.”

BBC
21 Feb 2008

Sports Minister Edwin Poots has refused to confirm whether a new multi-sports stadium will be located at the Maze.

A Stormont committee has been asking him about a leaked feasibility study which recommended the Maze as the best location for the all-seater stadium.

Sports Minister Edwin Poots insisted there would be no terrorism shrine

Consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said the venue had the potential to generate significant revenue.

However, Mr Poots, whose Lagan Valley constituency includes the Maze site, said he was considering all options.

In an angry exchange with Ulster Unionist MLA David McNarry, Mr Poots insisted there will not be a “shrine” to former terrorists beside any stadium at the Maze.

The DUP assembly member insisted that plans for a conflict transformation centre at the Maze were nothing to do with his department or the committee but that he would not be associated with a so-called “shrine”.

The Maze site is opposed by some unionists because of the planned museum.

Opposition has also come from many Northern Ireland soccer fans who want any new stadium to be in Belfast.

The Gaelic Athletic Association, Irish Football Association and Ulster Rugby have all confirmed they would play games at any Maze stadium.

The site is just outside Lisburn in County Antrim.

Overall cost

According to the Press Association which obtained the report, the consultants claimed that the overall cost to the taxpayer after the first four years of operation would be £37m.

This was based on the 38,500-seat stadium hosting 23 major sporting and music events in a year and attracting just under 500,000 paying spectators.

Other options examined included a hypothetical stadium in north Belfast and the refurbishment of the three sporting bodies’ existing venues.

The report said there would be many benefits to a venue at Belfast’s north foreshore, but ruled it out on cost grounds.

“Hypothetically such an option would generate high visitor spending benefits because it is located closer to the city centre, but these are outweighed by the capital and infrastructure costs and the higher value of this site,” the report is quoted as saying.

BBC
21 February 2008

A complaint has been made to the parliamentary standards commissioner about First Minister Ian Paisley employing his son as a researcher.

Ian Paisley Snr employed his son as a parliamentary researcher

Ian Paisley Jnr was receiving a salary from his father’s Westminster allowance of between £9,000 and £11,000.

He was receiving the payment as well as £62,000 a year for his posts as a NI junior minister and an MLA.

Commissioner John Lyon will examine the complaint before deciding whether it merits a full investigation.

Mr Paisley Jnr has been working as a research assistant for his MP father since 1998.

Meanwhile, East Londonderry MLA and MP Gregory Campbell has confirmed he is renting a constituency office in Coleraine from his wife.

Mr Campbell is using assembly allowances to pay more than £12,000 per year to his wife for use of a property in the town’s Bushmills Road.

Paying relatives for rent is not allowed under Westminster rules, but is permitted by rules governing Stormont.

Last weekend, it was revealed Ian Paisley Jnr was paying rent on a property owned by a company directed by his father-in-law.

A total of 27 family members are employed by the DUP.

DUP representatives who employ family members:

• Gregory Campbell, wife (full-time);
• Nigel Dodds, wife (full-time) and son (part-time);
• Jeffrey Donaldson, wife (part-time);
• William Hay, son-in-law (full-time);
• William Irwin, daughter (full-time);
• Nelson McCausland, nephew (part-time);
• Ian McCrea, wife, (part-time);
• William McCrea, son and daughter (full-time);
• Michelle McIlveen, brother (full-time);
• Adrian McQuillan, sister-in-law (full-time);
• Maurice Morrow, sister-in-law (full-time);
• Robin Newton, wife (full-time) and son (part-time);
• Edwin Poots, wife (part-time);
• Ian Paisley Snr, son (part-time) and two daughters (full-time);
• George Robinson, son (full-time) and nephew (part-time);
• Iris Robinson, son (full-time) and daughter-in-law (part-time);
• Peter Robinson, son (full-time) and daughter (full-time);
• Jimmy Spratt, wife (part-time);
• Jim Wells, daughter (part-time).

Belfast Telegraph
Thursday 21, February 2008

Working in Belfast during forging of the Good Friday agreement and the tense implementation years that followed, making sense of the peace process often necessitated talking to former paramilitaries on both sides.

So when Brendan Hughes, a revered IRA icon to many Irish-Americans, went public with criticisms of Sinn Fein’s peace strategy in early 2000, I immediately sought an interview.

I’d read about the ruthless IRA operative, the mattress-roll escapee and the 1980 republican hunger strike leader. So I half expected a massive ego to greet me when I arrived at former IRA prisoner Anthony McIntyre’s Ballymurphy home to interview him.

However, Hughes was totally without airs. He answered all questions, including pointed queries as to the plausibility of his alternatives to Sinn Fein’s strategy.

He said that he’d long held reservations about the peace process but had remained quiet out of “loyalty to the republican leadership”.

Hughes said that when he joined the Provisional IRA in the early 70s, ” there was a simplicity about it - that we would fight the Brits and force them down Belfast Lough and out.”

When that didn’t happen, he later became an ardent supporter of the radicalisation of the republican movement that evolved from mid-70s debates among Long Kesh internees.

“Our whole philosophy within the prison was to bring about a 32-county, democratic socialist republic,” he said.

“And that’s mainly my objection now, and my concerns with the republican movement: that it is developing into a purely middle-class movement, that it has dropped the 32-county democratic socialist republican principles.”

Hughes believed that most American supporters never grasped the republican movement’s late-70s leftward shift. After being released from the Maze, he was sent on a fundraising trip to US in the late 1980s, where he said he was shocked at how conservative many supporters in groups like Irish Northern Aid (NORAID) were.

“I remember sitting in a hotel room with a bunch of these guys, and they were all pretty well-off,” he said.

“There was a briefcase with the money in it on the table. And they were banging the table. This guy, what did he call himself - the ‘OC of the Irish-American Republican Army’ - was banging the table demanding that I shoot the Queen, that we shoot postmen, that we shoot anyone with the crown on their caps.”

Hughes believed the peace process back home had involved similar republican efforts to court moderates and conservatives, and that that strategy had taken the movement into a cul-de-sac, and far from a united Ireland.

Of Gerry Adams, often pegged as a chief architect of that strategy, he said: “Nobody works harder in this movement than Gerry. And I have great admiration for him in that regards. And he’s my friend, my comrade.”

But, he added, a flood of British peace money had left many republicans ” making a living out of politics here now, and people who are in a position of power and influence. And it becomes enjoyable … (but) a lot of people are left behind, a lot of the ordinary working republicans are left behind.”

Hughes insisted that only “open debate and open criticism” could save republicanism.

“The leadership has to allow itself to be open to criticism from people like me - not negative criticism, positive criticism,” he said.