SAOIRSE32

–Received via email from Dawn Michele Duarte - Ireland’s OWN

On 8 May 1997, a 25-year-old father of two Robert Hamill (a third child was born after his death) died from injuries received from an attack on him in Portadown city centre on 27 April 1997. A gang of more than 30 loyalists savagely beat and kicked Robert Hamill and Gregory Girvan while their two female companions attempted to intervene.

An eyewitness said Robert Hamill was “danced on” and called a “Fenian bastard” by members of the 30-strong mob as he lay on the ground just 15 feet from four police officers in an RUC Land Rover. When six men were finally arrested after Robert’s death, five of them were almost instantly released without charges. The sixth has has still not faced prosecution. And, the RUC (now known as the PSNI) remains unaccountable for allowing a defenseless man to be pummeled to death in their presence.

By Brian Rowan
Monday 28, April 2008
Belfast Telegraph

The Independent Monitoring Commission is expected to deliver its next report within days — and publication will come before the US:NI Investment Conference, which is scheduled for May 7-9.

One year on from the Paisley-McGuinness political deal at Stormont, the trends in the paramilitary world are as expected, with the biggest question whether the UDA leadership can “deliver in the way the other organisations have”.

“They have a real problem,” one source commented. “And I’m not sure how soluble it is,” he continued.

Security and intelligence reports show the IRA continuing “to effectively slip away” — “not with a bang but a whimper” , a source observed.

The organisation, he said, was “gradually fading out”.

And the UVF is “doing pretty much what they said they would do” in their endgame statement of May 3 last year.

The question of the future existence of the IRA Army Council is unresolved, as is the issue of loyalist guns.

It is expected the four-man IMC will complete its assessments this week and deliver its report to the British and Irish governments for publication soon afterwards.

At their next news conference, the commissioners, Lord Alderdice, Joe Brosnan, Dick Kerr and John Grieve, are expecting questions on the future of the Commission itself — in other words, for how much longer is the IMC needed in its monitoring role?

There is no suggestion that they will offer their own “timescales” in response to that question, but they are expecting that “flag” will be “run up the pole”.

The IMC may yet be needed to help break the Stormont deadlock on the issue of the devolution of policing and justice powers — it may yet require further assessments from the commissioners to bring this issue over the line.

The DUP will want to be convinced that all IRA activities have ceased and that its structure has been dismantled.

Unfinished business for monitoring body

As the Independent Monitoring Commission prepares to deliver its next report, security writer Brian Rowan looks at the key questions it will cover

So often the IMC has been part of the storm, seen by republicans as part of the ’securocrat’ apparatus.

There are no tremors as the IMC prepares to gives its next assessment, only a few days away.

There is a different context now — there is working politics, the war is over, weapons “beyond use” and time has passed since the Northern Bank robbery and other IRA linked actions.

The big IRA issue now has to do with its Army Council, the leadership that sits at the top of that organisation.

It is a big issue for unionists — big for the DUP, which maybe needs a “victory” to allow it to step over that policing and justice line, the win of being able to say that the Army Council has gone.

But what would that really mean?

There is a higher authority inside the structure of the IRA, what it calls the General Army Convention.

It is where the biggest decisions are made.

Whatever it is called there will be, for the foreseeable future, an IRA leadership, albeit a leadership of a different organisation.

Its role now is to prop up and support the Adams and McGuinness peace and political projects.

There is another “Council”, the UDA “Inner Council” of brigadiers that still sits in leadership over a paramilitary organisation that in recent days spoke to justify the continuing need for its weapons and explain why there would not be decommissioning.

And, in a few days’ time, when the IMC is asked, it will explain the many questions and doubts it has when it comes to the UDA.

It is not sure that the Inner Council can deliver in a way that the Army Council has — not sure that the UDA leadership has the authority to make its organisation do as it is told.

And there is maybe an argument that the IMC is still needed, for this purpose, to keep a focus and a watch on the loyalists and on the unfinished business of the UDA and the UVF.

Irish News
**Via Newshound
By Allison Morris
23/04/08

Police have lost a high-ly sensitive file containing personal details of more than 40 informants – but no officers have been disciplined or charged over the blunder.

In the biggest breach of security since the Castlereagh break-in six years ago copies of the ‘sensitive disclosure schedule’ were handed over to a gang charged in connection with the cold-blooded murder of a north Belfast man.

Police attempted to retrieve the top-secret material but one full file of names and addresses remains missing three years on.

The police only became aware of the loss when career criminal Louis ‘Luger’ Maguire handed a page to a senior officer during a court hearing before his trial for the 2003 murder of David ‘Digger’ Barnes.

Maguire, who was later convicted, even made paper aeroplanes from the highly sensitive pages during a court appearance.

At one stage the 42-year-old represented himself after dismissing his legal team and would have had access to the files. There is no suggestion of improper conduct by lawyers in the case.

A Belfast Crown Court judge has ordered an investigation.

No officers have been charged or disciplined over the breach.

“Certain matters are the subject of discussion between police and the Public Prosecution Service, therefore it would be inappropriate to comment at this time,” a police spokesman said last night.

Copies of the disclosure schedule – including personal details of informants, witnesses and covert surveillance relating to the case – were handed out to defence lawyers and defendants during the murder trial.

Police later raided the homes of some of the accused and recovered all but one of the copies.

Reporting restrictions meant that much of the lengthy trial went unrecorded and so the security blunder was not made public.

However, statements seen by The Irish News from a senior police officer reveal how Maguire handed him a page from the “uniquely identifiable sensitive disclosure schedule” in a Belfast courtroom in April 2005.

“I immediately recognised it as material to which Maguire should not have had access or possession,’’ he said.

“Maguire shouted a death threat in respect to a man whose name appeared on the document.

“I later established that an entire sensitive disclosure schedule [and not just the page handed to me by Louis Maguire] was

in the possession of all eight defence counsel and Louis Maguire himself along with the other defendants.

“I later became aware from my enquiries that a copy of the inadvertently disclosed sensitive schedule was in the public domain and remains so to date.”

Irish News
**Via Newshound
By Allison Morris
26/04/08

Loyalists may be offered ratepayer-funded cash rewards for not burning the Irish tricolour on Eleventh Night bonfires.

Breach: A bonfire site in the Village area of south Belfast where collection of materials for the pyre has already begun, well ahead of the July 1 start date specified in the guidelines for organisers wishing to benefit from Belfast City Council’s sponsorship scheme. PICTURE: Mal McCann

For four years Belfast City Council has sponsored 14 bonfire sites across the city to reduce the sectarian element and environmental im-pact of the long-standing loyalist tradition.

Cash awards are given to communities that meet guidelines laid down in a council charter with a view to turn-ing the July bonfire tradition into a more “cultural family-orientated event”.

Criteria to achieve the cash incentives include:

–not collecting material until a designated date

–agreeing not to burn highly toxic tyres

–removal of paramilitary displays and ‘shows of strength’.

However, a council-commissioned report, conducted by the Institute for Conflict Re-search and seen by The Irish News, has suggested that guidelines should include a new incentive to discourage communities from burning the Irish tricolour.

“The burning of the tricolour continues to be a consistent theme at the majority of sites,” the report notes.

“Discussions need to begin about the potential for limiting this aspect to the bonfire celebration.

“For future bonfire management programmes it may be appropriate to include an in-dicator that refers to the burning of tricolours within the evaluation.”

The report found that several of the sponsored sites continued to flout the guidelines four years into the controversial scheme.

In 2005 there were calls for funding to the Pitt Park bonfire at Inverary playing fields in east Belfast to be withdrawn after a UVF ‘show of strength’ in which a volley of shots was fired.

The latest report shows that last year Pitt Park was one of three sites whose organisers breached guidelines by allowing wood to be collected before July 1.

The two other sites were in south Belfast – at Taughmonagh and Finaghy.

The report notes that discouraging communities from collecting material too early was still “the most problematic element” of the scheme.

It says most communities feel the July 1 start date has been imposed upon them without prior consultation.

Loyalist bonfires costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to police and clean up every year. It has been estimated that about 500,000 tyres are burned in Northern Ireland during the annual July bonfires, causing widespread environmental damage.

Over the past year several sites traditionally used for loyalist bonfires have been sold off for development, in-cluding the site at the lower Shankill which was in the past one of the largest bonfires in Belfast.

Belfast Telegraph
Saturday 26, April 2008

A newspaper has issued an apology to an alleged top ranking British agent within the IRA for flouting a ban imposed to protect his whereabouts.

The Sunday World’s publishers also agreed to pay Freddie Scappaticci’s £30,000 legal bill and make a £10,000 donation to charity as part of the settlement at Belfast High Court yesterday.

Scappaticci, who denies claims that he was the spy codenamed Stakeknife, took action against the paper after a report referred to his living arrangements and medical condition. Both were covered by an injunction he secured amid fears his life could be threatened. Lawyers for Sunday Newspapers Ltd, its director and the journalist who wrote the story accepted its terms were breached.

Michael Lavery QC, for Scappaticci, claimed the article contained a ‘plethora of information’ which could give clues to where his client’s current location.

He said: “So long as people keep testing the limits of the injunction they always run the risk they will go too far and on some occasion will actually lead to the loss of this man’s life.”

The 63-year-old west Belfast man was thrust into the spotlight in 2003 when British and Irish media claimed he was the double agent Stakeknife, an allegation he categorically denied.

Brian Fee QC, for the Sunday World, accepted the paper had made a misjudgment over the medical details it published.

But he insisted the information contained in the report was so limited that it did not flout the prohibition in disclosing Scappaticci’s current whereabouts.

Mr Fee likened the restrictions to the order imposed to protect the identity of Maxine Carr, the ex-girlfriend of Soham killer Ian Hunley, after she served a jail sentence for lying in the case. He claimed the Press have reported how she has undergone cosmetic surgery since her release without action.

But Mr Justice Weir, who heard the case, suggested the information printed about Scappaticci could be exploited by someone who read it.

“Maybe they phone some nefarious organisation and say we have read this in the Sunday World and we know something more about this,” the judge said.

He added that a photograph of Scappaticci carried with the article was of ” quite a distinctive” man. “He’s not by any means a run-of-the-mill looking person,” Mr Justice Weir said.

But with Mr Lavery stressing his client’s main aim was to prevent any further breach of the reporting ban, the judge accepted the terms of an agreement reached by both sides.

In it the defendants apologised to the court and to Scappaticci, and agreed to pay his legal costs of £30,000 plus £5,250 in tax. They will also made a £10,000 contribution to the Northern Ireland Chest, Heart and Stroke Association after the judge’s suggestion that a donation could go to charity.

And a promise was made to abide in future by the injunction which prevents the publication of any details either of Scappaticci’s whereabouts or of his medical care and treatment.

Independent. ie
By ALAN MURRAY
Sunday April 27 2008

Peter Robinson has said that if there is evidence linking Martin McGuinness to the Enniskillen Remembrance Sunday bombing in 1987 that killed 11 people, it should be placed before the courts.

Responding to questions raised in a BBC documentary about the bombing, which alleged that Mr McGuinness knew about it in advance, the man who will shortly share an office at Stormont with the Derry republican said that the DUP was “well aware of his background”.

Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter, who investigated Enniskillen, says that prior to the bombing there were deliberations at a very senior level within the IRA’s northern command.

The First Minister-designate said that it was pointless to ask if the allegations contained in the programme, made by Peter Taylor, had been known, would it have affected the DUP’s decision to enter into government with Sinn Fein last year.

“Do people think the DUP did not know that Martin McGuinness was in the IRA and served on its northern command? We are well aware of his background”, he said.

In the programme it was alleged that the North’s Deputy First Minister was stopped by gardai three days before the bombing on the Donegal border, with three members of the IRA.

Mr Taylor said: “The subsequent intelligence assessment was that McGuinness was going to be briefed about the Remembrance Sunday attacks.

“In the hours after the bombing, my sources say that McGuinness travelled to Fermanagh to question members of the local IRA unit to find out what had gone wrong.

“McGuinness said that if he did go, it would have been in his Sinn Fein capacity”.

Mr Taylor said that Mr McGuinness had denied that he had been a member of the IRA’s northern command, but said: “British and Irish security sources on both sides of the border have each independently told me that Martin McGuinness, now deputy first minister, was the leading figure on northern command at the time of the attack”.

Taylor also said that the atrocity prompted Gerry Adams and another senior republican to discuss declaring an IRA ceasefire to try to mitigate the political damage, but claimed that “McGuinness was against the idea”.

Peter Robinson said of McGuinness’s alleged role in the atrocity: “If at any stage police can get evidence, they should charge people and bring them before the courts”.

- ALAN MURRAY