SAOIRSE32

News Letter
By Colin O’Carroll
24 March 2008

THE daughter of a man killed in an IRA bomb attack by Frank ‘Bap’ McGreevy, who died after being savagely beaten just over a week ago, says she forgave the bomber and feels pity for his family.

Jean Morrison, whose father John Smiley, 55, died in the blast at the Klondyke Bar on Sandy Row in south Belfast in January 1976, said that despite forgiving her father’s killers, she wanted the victims of the numerous tragedies of the Troubles to be remembered.

Mrs Morrison, who still lives in Sandy Row, told a Sunday newspaper that she held no hatred or spite against her father’s killer, but felt that he and others had been forgotten.

“That man suffered a bad death, but so did my daddy.”

She said she felt for the McGreevy family. It was the people left behind who had to carry on, she said, and her family was still dealing with the grief over her father’s murder.

“It is the people who are left behind who have to carry the burden, and we are still carrying that burden of tragedy and sorrow and grief.”

McGreevy was convicted of murder and other offences after the Klondyke bar attack during one of the bloodiest years of the Troubles.

Many people were also left seriously injured, including a barmaid who lost an eye.

She later gave evidence against McGreevy, but was said to have never fully recovered from the attack and died three years later.

The bomber served 17 years in prison before being released in the early 1990s.

Frank McGreevy, 51, died after being beaten at his home in Ross Street in the lower Falls area of west Belfast on Saturday, March 15.

He was discovered lying injured by his 15-year-old son, Francis. He was taken to hospital and put on a life support machine, but died on Tuesday.

He has another son, Tiernan, aged nine.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams gave a eulogy at his funeral on Saturday.
The coffin was draped in an Irish tricolour and had a beret and gloves placed on top, indicating his membership of the IRA.

Mr Adams told mourners at the funeral at St Peter’s C
athedral that Mr McGreevy was a well-known and well-respected figure in the area who he had known since the early 1970s.

“I never for a moment thought that I would be standing here on Easter Saturday morning giving an oration at the graveside of Bap McGreevy,” he said.

“He loved his clan. He loved music. He loved Celtic. He was extremely proud of his two sons. Those who murdered him have no concept of any of this.

“His terrible death has created a storm.”

Mr McGreevy’s killing and the subsequent community anger at the attack echo the murder of another man in west Belfast last year.

Greengrocer Harry Holland died after being stabbed with a screwdriver when he confronted teenagers trying to steal his car from outside the family home in Andersonstown.

Thomas Valliday, 20, who handed himself into police following the attack on Mr McGreevy, has been charged with his murder.

Belfast Telegraph
25 March 2008

Four Derry men charged with IRA membership have been remanded in custody by the Special Criminal Court today.

Thirty-eight-year-old Gary Donnelly, with an address at Kildrum Gardens, 28-year-old Michael Gallagher, from Sackville Court, Martin Francis O’Neill, of Colmcille Court, and 39-year-old Patrick John McDaid, from Marlborough Street, all from Derry city, are charged with membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army, on March 16th.

They were arrested during a garda operation into the activities of dissident republicans in Co Donegal.

The case will be mentioned again in four weeks.

BBC
25 March 2008
By Linda Pressly

BBC Radio 4’s Law In Action looks at how organisations with their roots in the Troubles still have a role in Northern Ireland’s justice system.

Margaret did not report the incident to the police

“I’ve come because some people have come to the door with guns demanding money, and I haven’t got the money to give them.”

Margaret - who did not want to be identified - was anxious and tearful. She was one of the first to appear at the offices of Community Restorative Justice Ireland (CRJ) on the Twinbrook Estate, a Catholic area of West Belfast, that morning.

Margaret did not consider calling the police after she and her family were threatened by those two armed men.

Like many in this part of Belfast, she is deeply mistrustful of the police. Instead, Margaret rang Jim McCarthy - one of the leading lights of CRJ.

CRJ and its counterparts in the Protestant community were organisations founded in the early 1990s - a non-violent response to punishment beatings and shootings.

They began to deal with criminal and anti-social behaviour at a time when normal policing was almost absent.

These days CRJ deals with everything from neighbour disputes and anti-social behaviour to domestic violence and more serious crimes.

Republican connections

The two men who appeared at Margaret’s door demanding £10,000 claimed to be from a Republican group.

Jim McCarthy is a former Republican prisoner who works for CRJ

Jim McCarthy is well connected, and one of several former Republican prisoners who work for CRJ. He checked the men’s claims with his contacts.

They were false. Margaret was relieved because anyone on the wrong side of organisations like the IRA still faces ostracism in the Catholic community.

Jim McCarthy thought the family was singled out for extortion because Margaret’s partner Barry once had a run-in with republicans years ago.

“They know that Margaret and Barry won’t go to the police,” he said. “They think that Barry wouldn’t come to us either because of the conflict he had with Republicans 20 years ago.

So these men see the family as an easy touch - here’s money that can be extorted and it won’t be reported.”

Jim McCarthy tried to persuade Margaret to report the men to the police. She refused.

“I don’t have any involvement with the police, and I don’t want to,” she said.

Police Involvement

While Margaret and Jim McCarthy talked in the front office, in the kitchen at the back the other CRJ workers were chatting with a visitor.

A police officer, Sgt Peter Brannigan from Lisburn Area Command, discussed some of the other on-going cases at CRJ over a cup of tea.

It is only since Sinn Fein signed up to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) last year that Sgt Brannigan has had a formal relationship with CRJ.

“If you look at what’s been achieved in a short space of time it’s nothing short of impressive,” he said.

According to Sgt Brannigan, in the last year CRJ has brought a significant number of cases to the police. CRJ workers have also accompanied officers to victims’ homes to give them the confidence to make a statement.

Criticisms

But some within the Nationalist community are suspicious of CRJ. Two and a half years ago Bernadette O’Rawe’s nephew was called to a meeting at a CRJ office after he was involved in a local dispute. She says her nephew was coerced.

“It’s a well-known fact that many people in CRJ come from IRA backgrounds. And people in the community see a bit of muscle there. People are still frightened of the IRA; there’s no doubt about that.”

At the Twinbrook office, Jim McCarthy denied CRJ uses coercion to get results.

He and Sgt Brannigan swapped notes on Margaret’s story. But unless she was willing to make a statement, there was no case. Jim McCarthy insisted that any information that came his way about the two armed men would go straight to the police.

Generations of mistrust

CRJ has been criticised for being selective about the information it gives to the police about crime.

This is something Northern Ireland’s Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice, Kit Chivers, will be addressing.

He is currently inspecting CRJ with a view to accrediting it, and bringing it under the auspices of the criminal justice system. Similar Protestant organisations in Northern Ireland have already been accredited.

Margaret left CRJ’s Twinbrook office that morning feeling safer. Jim McCarthy had arranged for a number of well-known Republicans to drop in on her family at home. They hoped these public visits would scare away the extortionists.

In Nationalist communities, the PSNI is confronting generations of mistrust that hardened through decades of the Troubles.

Margaret felt it was only CRJ that offered her any kind of recourse to justice. And until people like her decide to report crime to the police, the justice gap in Northern Ireland will remain.