SAOIRSE32

Finucanes not told of probe delay due ‘admin issue’

By Chris Thornton
Belfast Telegraph
Friday 25, April 2008

Pat Finucane’s family were not told that preparations for an inquiry into the solicitor’s murder had been suspended because it was considered an ” internal administrative issue”, officials dealing with the inquiry have claimed.

Mr Finucane’s widow Geraldine revealed yesterday that former Secretary of State Peter Hain ordered a halt to the inquiry preparations 18 months ago without telling her. She only learned of the move from an official letter to her solicitor two weeks ago.

Preparatory work was stopped because of a stand-off between the family and the NIO over the legislation under which the inquiry would be run into the murder of the solicitor — branded an act of collusion by former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens.

Mr Finucane was shot dead in front of his family by the UDA. But in the years since it has been established that the gunman, the man who supplied the weapon and at least one other loyalist involved in the plot were security force informers.

A retired Canadian Supreme Court Justice recommended an inquiry into the murder in 2003. The Government sat on his report for six months, publishing it in 2004 and agreeing to an inquiry at that stage. But the new Inquiries Act was rushed through Parliament in 2005 to increase the powers available to ministers to withhold parts of the findings.

After meeting the family in late 2006, Mr Hain ordered a halt to preparation.

“In the autumn of 2006, the then Secretary of State took the decision that, in light of the Finucane family’s continued opposition, it was no longer justifiable to continue to devote public money to preparations for an inquiry which the family would refuse to accept under the terms of the Inquiries Act,” an official wrote to Mrs Finucane’s solicitor, Peter Madden two weeks ago.

Mrs Finucane was furious at the decision.

“I have long doubted whether the British Government had any real intention of ever establishing a genuinely independent public inquiry into Pat’s murder,” she said before meeting Taoiseach Bertie Ahern yesterday.

Both sides have indicated they are prepared to discuss the situation, but Michael Finucane, the murdered solicitor’s eldest son, said yesterday that the Government has turned down several requests for further meetings.

“We do see a point and would like to discuss it,” he said.

“In fact, we’ve asked for that opportunity twice now, with the Prime Minister and between our lawyers and theirs. Our suggestion about a lawyer/lawyer meeting was rejected.”

Belfast Telegraph
Friday 25, April 2008

Democratic Unionist MP Peter Robinson, and his wife Iris, were both named on a list of more than 100 politicians who employ family members.

Democratic Unionist MP Peter Robinson, and his wife Iris, were both named on a list of more than 100 politicians who employ family members.

But the couple were also among just five MPs who have given jobs to more than one family member.

Mrs Robinson employs their son, Jonathan Robinson, as an office manager, and daughter-in-law Ellen Robinson as a part-time secretary.

Mr Robinson employs his daughter, Rebekah Robinson, as “office manager and private secretary” and their other son, Gareth Robinson, as parliamentary assistant.

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain was also named as an MP employing a relative.

The list featured the head of the House of Commons anti-sleaze committee and one of the MPs in charge of reviewing the expenses regime.

It included three ministers, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn and Housing Minister Caroline Flint.

The disclosure of 106 MPs who employ relatives follows MP Derek Conway’s suspension from the Commons over payments to his son.

There is no suggestion that those who have volunteered the information so far have broken the rules.

Derry Journal
Published Date: 22 April 2008

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement is expected to open an office in the city next week. The office will be located in the Shantallow area of the city where a new cumann of the 32 CSM was established last week.

The new cumann is named after IRA volunteer Phil O’Donnell, who died in 1982. The chairperson of the new cumann, Seamus Breslin, said the new group was formed after interest from republicans in the Shantallow area.

“As a senior staff officer, Phil O’Donnell undertook the task of training the Derry Brigade of the IRA; he was interned in 1971 for eight months and later spent several years in Portlaoise on membership and weapons charges.

“After his release, he reported back to the republican movement. Sadly, Phil contracted cancer and died at the age of 50 on Christmas Eve 1982 and was a huge loss to his family and the republican cause,” he said.

Mr. Breslin also said the cumann would “name and shame” drug dealers operating in the Shantallow area. “We will not hesitate, whenever necessary, to name and shame known local drug dealers and anti-social elements that plague the community.

“The RUC/PSNI is an implement of British political control and has proven itself to be a deeply sectarian force incapable of dealing with these issues.

” We are urging the people of Shantallow to stand behind us,” he said.

Irish News
23/04/08

The paramilitary organisation behind the Omagh bomb massacre had up to 400 members plotting to wreck the fragile peace established in Northern Ireland, the High Court heard yesterday.

A government dossier revealed at the civil trial of five men being sued over the attack which killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, also claimed key Real IRA men held dual membership within its political wing, the 32 County Sovereignty Movement.

Weapons were brought in from the former Republic of Yugoslavia, with sporadic acquaintances rather than procurement processes exploited by the dissident republicans, it stated.

One link was allegedly established while a sympathiser was working with an aid agency in the war-torn Balkan region.

The intelligence files, sent to US authorities analysing the Real IRA, detailed its formation following a split with the established Provisional movement in 1997, recruitment, and areas of strength along the border in north Louth and south Armagh.

On Day 10 of the hearing in Belfast Brett Lockhart QC, for the Omagh bomb victims’ families seeking multi-million pound damages, read out the assessment from David Watkins, a senior director for police and security within the Northern Ireland Office.

His analysis, compiled around three years after the August 1998 explosion which devastated Omagh, also set out how fundraising came through wealthy benefactors and crime.

Up to $150,000 (£121,000) a year was believed to be coming into the organisation from US supporters – significantly less than its gains through smuggling, the court heard.

The document estimated that the Real IRA consisted of 150 members directly involved in or supporting terrorist attacks, with another 250 members prepared to assist through other methods including finance and criminal activity.

Experienced Provisional IRA men defected to the dissident grouping after it formed in late 1997 and then set out to thwart the following year’s Good Friday Agreement.

The dossier disclosed to the court made clear the Real IRA’s “raison d’etre” was to continue the armed struggle in Ireland and to supplant the PIRA as the main republican organisation.

A campaign of violence resumed following a ceasefire called in the aftermath of Omagh was described as presenting “a real threat to the fragile peace developed over many years”.

And turning to the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, which always denied links to the Real IRA, the intelligence assessment said: “A number of key individuals within the group appear to hold dual membership.”

The ties included senior 32 County members attending the funeral of Real IRA man JJ O’Connor in October 2000, the court heard.

Dermott Fee QC, for Seamus Daly and Colm Murphy – who are being sued along with Michael McKevitt, Liam Campbell and Seamus McKenna, contested the admissibility of the extracts.

He claimed the identities of the sources and experts used in Mr Watkins papers should be known to the hearing.

“It’s not appropriate, in a case which has been described on numerous occasions as one of the most important cases coming before these courts, to simply read out unattributed material,” Mr Fee said.

But the judge, Mr Justice Declan Morgan, declared it could be admitted under legislation.

The trial was adjourned until Monday.

Irish Independent
By Kevin Myers
Thursday April 24 2008

Garret FitzGerald — our former Taoiseach — recently condemned journalists for not publicly naming Gerry Adams as being a member of the IRA. Excellent! But when he was either Minister for Foreign Affairs, leader of the Opposition or Taoiseach, throughout so many years of the Troubles, he had ample opportunity to name all sorts of people as IRA men, and in the privilege of the Dail. However, he chose not to do so.

‘Slab’ Murphy, for example, was known to the authorities since 1970 as the most deadly IRA terrorist in the Louth area — but Dr FitzGerald never named him. One might adjudge such reticence as prudent reluctance to prejudice a forthcoming trial: except, of course, there was no such trial. ‘Slab’ Murphy was only charged, for the first time in his life, earlier this year.

Now, I do not single out Dr FitzGerald for mention because he was especially negligent or hypocritical or insufficiently forceful in his attitude towards the IRA. I do so because he mentioned the failure of journalists to do our duty in outing prominent members of the IRA.

And he is right. Journalists have their fair share of the moral responsibility for the catastrophe of the Troubles. So too do lawyers, both for their timidity in interpreting the libel laws, for the role of some as sympathetic legal advisers to the IRA, and most of all, as a profession, for their failure to pro-actively defend the rights of the victims of terrorism.

It could have been otherwise. Take the Veronica Guerin murder, when the state, the media and the legal profession moved heaven and earth to ensure the culprits were caught. But the same combined will was never evident in dealing with the IRA, or indeed, with other terrorists.

How was it possible that the government in which Garret FitzGerald was foreign minister did not seek the extradition of the UVF men responsible for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in 1974? An Garda Siochana had the names of nine of them. Was it for fear that if this state successfully brought Northern loyalists to book in the Republic, we should then have to extradite republican terrorists to the North? And of course, this was not what we were prepared to do.

In the round, as a society, we preferred for the IRA campaign to continue, rather than for us to take the necessary measures to quash it. No one can single out any individual or group here. It was a generalised condition. But Garret FitzGerald was Minister for Foreign Affairs when the IRA arms vessel the ‘Claudia’ was captured by the Naval Service in 1973.

The response of the government of the day was contemptibly abject.

“A protest might spur Col Gadafy to provide further supplies,” said a Department of Foreign Affairs internal memo. Libyan involvement with the IRA was probably “due to a misunderstanding by Colonel Gadafy of the position in Ireland”.

Good. So Dr FitzGerald said nothing. Our ambassador did not confront that Gadafy goon in his den to clear up that misunderstanding. He did not declare that in arming the IRA, he was arming the enemies of the government of Ireland, ones that had already murdered one of Dr FitzGerald’s Oireachtas colleagues, Senator Billy Fox.

The result of our do-nothing policy was that Gadafy was to supply another 130 tons of guns and explosives to the IRA in the next 25 years. Another three thousand people died in the course of a campaign largely maintained by Libya. La Mon, Warrenpoint, Mullaghmore, Enniskillen: all done with Gadafy’s Semtex. Hmmm. Quite a foreign policy triumph.

Moreover, the government — in which, may I remind you, Dr FitzGerald was foreign minister — allowed the gun-smuggling crew of the ‘Claudia’ to depart, without charge.

The IRA leader, Joe Cahill — arrested in the course of this seminal arms-smuggling operation — was later given a mere three years’ imprisonment by that risible anti-terrorist instrument, the Special Criminal Court, before which not even a kindergarten infant would quail.

As it happened, he didn’t even do that time (a poor heart, the poor dear), was soon released, and returned to his happy life of organising murder and grieving for another two-and-a-half decades.

Two years after the ‘Claudia’ debacle, and still while Dr FitzGerald was in government, the IRA murdered the British ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs and his secretary Judith Cooke, despite garda intelligence that such an attack was likely. It was one of just many atrocities which should have led to the state rolling up the entire apparatus of the IRA.

But no one was ever arrested for this heinous crime against civilisation. However, a garda was later found to have been passing information about the Ewart-Biggs/Cooke murder inquiry to the IRA.

He was charged under the Official Secrets Act and appeared before the Kilmainham District Court, where he admitted supplying numerous confidential documents to the IRA. Having heard his guilty plea, the court let him walk free, under the Probation Act.

And that’s one example of how the Republic treated treason and terrorism, at the very time that Garret FitzGerald was in government.

kmyers@independent.ie

- Kevin Myers

Jennifer Campbell
Ottawa Citizen
**Via Newshound
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

While the peace agreement in Northern Ireland might not be seen as a Commonwealth issue, it’s certainly of interest to Commonwealth countries. To that end, the organizers of Royal Commonwealth Society’s annual humanitarian gala have asked retired general John de Chastelain to speak about his continuing role in the decommissioning of arms in Northern Ireland. His talk comes about three weeks after the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement.

In an interview in advance of his speech, Mr. de Chastelain said the big remaining issue for him is the decommissioning of arms and he’ll address that in Friday’s talk.

“The IRA completed it in 2005 but the two major loyalist groups — the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) and the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) — haven’t started yet,” he said. “That remains an issue because the whole concept of the agreement was that arms would be taken out of the process and even though both the UVF and the UDA are in ceasefire and their arms aren’t being used for paramilitary purposes, the fact remains that they still have to be taken out of the issue and that hasn’t happened yet.”

In addition, he’s concerned about Republican paramilitary groups that are active and that never have declared ceasefires or accepted the agreement. They include the Irish National Liberation Army, the Continuity Irish Republican Army and the Real Irish Republican Army.

Finally, he’ll speak about one aspect of the Good Friday Agreement that hasn’t been enacted — the devolution of justice from Britain to Northern Ireland.

“Almost all other aspects of governing the province have been devolved from Westminster to Belfast but not the devolution of justice,” Mr. de Chastelain said.

Mr. de Chastelain first got involved in the Irish peace negotiations after being Canada’s chief of defence staff, a job he was due to leave in December 1995. But that October, he was asked to take part in a two-month study group on paramilitary arms. He initially said no because he figured he would appear biased as he was British, Protestant, and his parents were both involved in espionage in Britain during the war. But when John Major (then British prime minister) and John Bruton (then Irish prime minister) came calling, and confirmed that the Irish agreed with his appointment, he couldn’t say no. The group, consisting of an American and a Finn, was given a two-month mandate. And yet, 13 years later, Mr. de Chastelain is still involved, now as chairman of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning in Northern Ireland.

Jennifer Campbell is a freelance writer and editor in Ottawa. Reach her at Diplomatica@sympatico.ca.

BBC

An independent review of how the Parades Commission operates is to recommend it is replaced by a number of different panels, the BBC understands.

The Parades Commission was set up in 1997

It is thought it favours splitting the processes of mediation and ruling when a dispute cannot be resolved.

March organisers will be asked to give notice to their local district council 35 days before their planned event.

If mediation failed, the dispute would be referred to a three-strong panel appointed by the OFMDFM.

The panel would hold a hearing 15 days before a march and base their judgments on human rights, standards of behaviour and the applicant’s past behaviour.

Rules on marches could involve no alcohol, no paramilitary trappings, no marching after 11pm and the provision of one steward to every 50 people.

A seven-strong team led by Lord Ashdown has been examining the commission’s work for the past year.

The review team hopes the new structures would foster local dialogue and help to prevent parading being a political battlefield.

The current Parades Commission was set up in 1997 to make decisions on whether controversial parades should be restricted.

BBC
24 April 2008

Hundreds of RAF personnel are to be moved out of Northern Ireland, Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth has said.

Puma helicopters are currently based at RAF Aldergrove

He said it had been decided to relocate 230 Squadron, based at RAF Aldergrove, to RAF Benson in Oxfordshire.

“This will establish a coherent Puma (helicopter) force on a single site, enabling the improvement of Puma force capability,” Mr Ainsworth said.

About 140 of the 420 civilian staff at the County Antrim base will be made redundant because of the move.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said they were attempting to minimise compulsory redundancies.

Negotiations have begun with the trade unions about voluntary redundancies and possible moves to other government departments in Northern Ireland.

There will also be jobs available at RAF Benson for those who are prepared to move to England.

About 600 of the 700 RAF personnel on the Aldergrove base will be moved to England, along with most of the current 500 dependants.

The MoD then intends to relocate 38 Engineer Regiment from Massereene Barracks in Antrim to RAF Aldergorve. It will then be closed.

The relocations are expected to be completed by the end of 2010.

The cut-back is unconnected with the peace process reductions in troop levels and base closures which were finally completed in Northern Ireland by the MoD last autumn.

Mr Ainsworth said: “These changes will not impact on our commitments in support of the civilian authorities in Northern Ireland.

“Aldergrove will remain a military flying station for the Army Air Corps for the foreseeable future.”

He said the RAF would continue to use Northern Ireland airspace for training and a limited number of RAF personnel would remain in joint or specialist appointments in units in Northern Ireland.