SAOIRSE32

Breaking News.ie
25/08/2008

The Government is being urged to press Downing Street for answers following fresh claims of British Army collusion with loyalists during the seventies.

A new book by a former UVF man alleges that a unit of the army - known as the Military Recognisance Force - trained members of the loyalist group.

‘Killing for Britain’ - which is published under the pseudonym ‘John Black’ - claims this unit also planned a series of attacks throughout the decade, including the Miami Showband Massacre in 1975.

By Martina Purdy
BBC
20 August 2008

The old Stormont had control of policing and justice powers - but lost them in 1972, when direct rule was imposed.

The new Stormont is still waiting for these powers to be transferred from Westminster.

Most agree it’s only a matter of time, as the DUP and Sinn Fein both agree it should happen.

The question is when.

Sinn Fein is getting impatient that the DUP is refusing to move on the issue.

The DUP says it’s a matter of public confidence. The DUP is also concerned that the issue could put too much pressure on an assembly which is already deadlocked over key issues such as education reform.

One senior DUP figure has privately complained that the issue could “poison” assembly debates.

This week’s row over Ian Paisley Junior’s remarks about police officers being able to “shoot on sight” dissident republicans illustrates the political gulf that still exists.

His comments outraged both Sinn Fein and the SDLP.

Nevertheless, the DUP and Sinn Fein have moved a step closer. The first and deputy first minister agreed earlier this month that there should be a single justice minister elected by the assembly on a cross-community vote.

Sinn Fein’s Gerry Kelly and the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson won’t be up for the job because their parties have agreed not to nominate any of their own members.

‘Wait and see’

The Assembly Executive Review Committee (AERC), which had already reported on the issue, has been asked by the First and Deputy First Ministers to further consider the issue.

But their joint letter to the committee gave little guidance as to what it expects.

The committee chairman, the DUP’s Jimmy Spratt, said he has forwarded the letter from Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness to each committee member.

“The committee will meet in early September and all the issues will be discussed… My job as chairman is to facilitate discussion. We will have to wait and see.”

So far there is no time frame for the committee to report back.

The committee has already looked at what powers could come to Northern Ireland if powers were transferred.

The police service, for example, would fall under Stormont’s remit. Presently there is a tripartite relationship between the secretary of state, the chief constable and the Policing Board.

The secretary of state appoints the board, and sets the budget; the board has an oversight role in setting objectives for the police and holding the Chief Constable to account; and the chief constable, responsible for day to day operations, must answer to the board.

Under devolution of policing powers, a Stormont minister would be stepping into the shoes of Secretary of State Shaun Woodward, although reserved matters such as national security and MI5 would remain with Westminster.

Sir Desmond Rea, chairman of the Policing Board, said Patten’s tripartite structure should ensure there is no political interference in day-to-day policing by a Stormont justice minister.

And he quoted Chris Patten’s note of caution: “It is, however, vital that the clock is not turned back to the situation before 1969 when the police were seen to be subject to the direction of the minister of home affairs.”

‘It would be a daunting role. It is a massive, massive area that takes years to learn and someone is going to be put into that post overnight.’
Rosemary Craig
Law lecturer

Sir Desmond pointed out that the parties have supported keeping the tripartite arrangements as a safeguard.

He said the transfer of policing and justice powers to Stormont would be a sign of society moving on.

“There will be hiccups, but that’s the challenge,” he told the BBC.

Significantly, the assembly, presumably through a new department of justice, would also take responsibility for agencies such as the Prison Service, Forensic Science, Youth Justice, and compensation.

Other responsibilities would include:

• Court Service

• Public Prosecution Service

• Probation Board

• Office of the Police Ombudsman

• Criminal Justice Inspection

• Law Commission

• Judicial Appointments Commission.

Public confidence

Rosemary Craig, a law lecturer from the University of Ulster, said that in future, Stormont could inject more accountability into the justice system, with the appointment of an attorney general.

There could also be a role for the first and deputy first ministers in appointing the commissioners who appoint judges.

Mrs Craig also said devolving justice should lead to more legislation in the assembly, with the possibility of new laws to toughen sentences for convicted criminals.

But she cautions that the appointment of a devolved justice minister is a sensitive issue and, whoever is appointed faces significant challenges, not least in winning over public confidence, particularly among those who suffered most during the Troubles.

“It would be a daunting role. One would have to understand the machinations of the police, the prison service, the public prosecution service, the courts, tribunals. All that is a massive, massive area that takes years to learn and someone is going to be put into that post overnight.”

But before any appointment, the parties will have to reach agreement.

Negotiations will intensify in the autumn - with the most contentious issue of all perhaps being a date for devolving policing and justice powers.

BBC

Sinn Féin must make it clear it wants to remain in devolved government in Northern Ireland, DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson has said.

He was speaking after Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin warned his party would collapse the assembly if policing and justice were not devolved.

The two parties are involved in ongoing talks over the issue.

Mr Donaldson said: “Do they want to stay in the executive? If they do, let’s meet and address these issues.”

Transferring policing and justice powers from Westminster to Stormont has been one of the most contentious issues since devolution was restored to Northern Ireland.

Earlier this month, it had appeared the two parties were on the brink of resolving their stand-off over the issue when they agreed there should be a single minister who should be elected by a cross-community vote.

Speaking on Sunday at a republican meeting in County Cavan, Mr Ó Caoláin said republicans were growing increasingly concerned at the lack of progress being made.

“There is now widespread and growing concern among republicans at the failure to transfer policing and justice powers from London to Belfast in due time,” he said.

“When Sinn Fein changed our policy on policing in the north, accepting that a new beginning was being made, it was with the prospect that policing and justice powers would be transferred by May of this year.

“It is now the end of August and we do not even have a date for transfer. This is totally unacceptable.”

Mr Donaldson said the DUP needed to know where Sinn Féin stands on his comments.

“Bearing in mind the statement went through their official press office, one is left with the impression it’s a bit of kite-flying by Sinn Féin.

“These comments were not off the cuff or out of the blue.”

Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey said: “I call upon the Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness to say whether or not Mr Ó Caoláin was speaking for Sinn Féin ministers.

“If Martin McGuinness does not distance himself from this statement then a full-blown crisis is facing the executive next month.”

The Northern Ireland Assembly is currently on summer recess and is scheduled to return next month.

By Alan Murray
Sunday Independent
August 24 2008

Dissident republicans are forcing police officers in Northern Ireland to leave their homes at a rate of nearly one every month.

Nearly 14 years after the first IRA ceasefire, the risk to individual officers, particularly recently recruited Catholic officers, remains extremely high and the British army continues to be called out regularly to deal with bombs and other suspected explosive devices abandoned by republican terrorists.

The gravity of the threat from Continuity and Real IRA elements was underlined last weekend when a makeshift grenade recovered in Lisnaskea in Co Fermanagh was found to contain the deadly semtex explosive.

And figures released by the Police Service of Northern Ireland show that, between June last year and June this year, some 16 serving officers were advised to leave their homes because of a direct terrorist threat.

Republicans were responsible for 10 of the threats, one was attributed to loyalist paramilitaries, while five came from “undefined” elements.

One former police officer was also warned that his life was at risk and advised to leave his home.

Other evidence also highlights the increased activity by republicans across Northern Ireland over the last year, with British army bomb-disposal experts being called out nearly 20 times a month to assist the PSNI.

An army spokesman said that from the beginning of July last year to the end of last month, ATO (army technical officers) were called out 234 times by the PSNI to deal with suspect objects or to defuse unexploded bombs and other devices.

“Some of those 234 taskings were to deal with a tin of beans jammed in a spout or concealed in an odd place or a replica weapon sometimes, but other requests were to deal with real devices which hadn’t exploded but which nevertheless were viable and capable of killing and maiming,” one officer said.

Since last October, dissident republicans have attempted to shoot dead PSNI officers, kill officers using an undercar bomb and a landmine and most recently used an improvised grenade containing semtex to mount a potentially morale-sapping attack in Co Fermanagh.

A delegation from the Democratic Unionist Party led by Stormont Minister Arlene Foster will meet the PSNI’s Deputy Chief Constable Paul Leighton and the Assistant Chief Constable responsible for rural regions, Judith Gillespie, this week.

Policing board member and former Police Federation Chairman Jimmy Spratt said last weekend’s attempted rocket attack on officers in Lisnaskea was a further worrying indication of the high-level threat from dissident republican groups.

“The figures for forced departures from homes and the ATO call-outs are not very comforting. We need reassurances from the PSNI senior command that all is being done to track down these elements, seize their weapons and bring them before the courts. The Lisnaskea attack clearly puts into question the policing strategy in that area and the haste to close bases in Co Fermanagh.

“The chief constable should rethink that strategy until he can assure the public in that border area in particular that the threat from dissident republicans has been substantially reversed,” he said.

- Alan Murray

When would-be president Ingrid Betancourt was rescued last month, Colombia’s Marxist guerrillas lost their most treasured hostage. But morale in the jungle was already low, with hunger, executions and forced abortions among Farc’s female troops. Alice O’Keeffe meets the women who have given up the revolution

Alice O’Keeffe
The Observer
Sunday August 24 2008

Rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) parade in the main square of San Vicente del Caguan. (Photograph: Ricardo Mazalan/AP)

Lina grips her face with her hands and lets out a groan of pain. Her uncle is standing over her, his hands forming the shape of a pistol and pointing down at an imaginary body on the floor. ‘They had him on the ground, like this,’ he says. ‘They fired two shots into his head from here.’

‘They humiliated him before killing him?’ wails Lina, tears running down her face. Her body is bent double at the news of her brother’s death. Gunned down aged 27 in her home town of Florencia, southern Colombia, he was murdered, she believes, by her former ‘boss’ - her commandant in the ruthless guerrilla army, Farc.

Lina was a member of Farc - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - for seven years. Last December, exhausted and demoralised, she deserted, handing herself in to the army. Farc does not take such betrayal lightly. A terrible revenge has been exacted upon her family.

(more…)

· Move follows republican man’s successful appeal
· Confessions made under duress, former inmates say

Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent
The Guardian
Monday August 25 2008

Up to 300 IRA members are to attempt to have their convictions overturned and sue the British government for compensation for wrongful imprisonment, the Guardian has learned.

Some former inmates of the Maze and other prisons during the Troubles have consulted lawyers and prisoners’ groups on how to quash convictions, many of which they allege were secured through tampered evidence and confessions extracted under torture and duress.

The move follows the success of Danny Morrison, Sinn Féin’s former publicity director, in overturning his 1991 conviction for the false imprisonment of IRA informer Sandy Lynch a year earlier.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission recommended that his case go back to the court of appeal, which this summer cleared him. Morrison, who coined the phrase “ballot box and Armalite strategy” in the 1980s, is in line for substantial compensation.

The Guardian has been told that at least 300 former prisoners, the overwhelming majority of them held on IRA wings of the H-blocks in the Maze, are planning to use Morrison’s case as a precedent to have their own convictions overturned.

According to sources connected to the truth and reconciliation process in Northern Ireland, the prisoners include a number who signed statements admitting to crimes while allegedly being tortured or threatened in custody, as well as a number convicted on “technicalities”.

An organisation that looks after the rights of about 17,000 republicans who went to jail during the Northern Ireland conflict confirmed that a number were preparing cases to clear their names and claim compensation. Coiste na n-Iarchimi, a republican prisoners’ lobby group, said it was aware that many former inmates wanted to have their records wiped.

Michael Culbert, Coiste’s director, said: “After all, so many of them were in jail for things they actually had nothing to do with. Many were convicted by signing false statements under torture or under the flimsiest of evidence and were locked away for years.”

Culbert said one of the prime motivations was employment.

“Prisoners can’t get jobs because of their convictions, or even insurance or loans. In some cases they can’t get into countries like the US, Canada or Australia. So if they can wipe their record clean by proving that the convictions against them were unjust and flawed, why not?”

He said another reason why republicans were only now trying to challenge their convictions was what they saw as a one-sided approach to exploring the violent past. The state had set up the Historical Enquiries Team within the police service to look at unsolved killings “but no similar mechanism to explore all the wrong-doings that went on in the barracks and police stations”.

Epic, an organisation representing former loyalist prisoners, said it was aware that hundreds of former paramilitary inmates, mostly republican, were seeking to follow Morrison’s example.

Asked why few if any former loyalist prisoners would pursue this course, Tom Roberts of Epic, said: “Most of the loyalist prisoners just think it’s time to get on with their lives now that the conflict is over. Unlike republicans who want to prove a point about the state and its role in the Troubles, the loyalists are just happy to be free and living their lives again.”