SAOIRSE32

Secrecy still surrounds 1990s case that would throw light on how deeply security services had infiltrated the IRA

Owen Bowcott
Guardian
Friday October 24 2008 17.13 BST

The appeal court in Belfast today overturned the conviction of Sinn Fein’s former publicity director, Danny Morrison, for false imprisonment and conspiracy to murder — but withheld its reasons for doing so.

The complex case dating back to the kidnap of a suspected informer in 1990, remains highly sensitive and has raised questions about how far British intelligence penetrated and manipulated the Provisional IRA’s campaign.

Danny Morrison and seven other republicans were arrested after security forces raided a house in west Belfast where Sandy Lynch, accused of being a British informer, was being interrogated by the IRA.

Morrison always maintained he had gone to the house in his role as the head of Sinn Fein’s publicity unit to prepare for a press conference where Lynch would have been presented and would have exposed Special Branch attempts to recruit him.

But Morrison was accused by police of taking part in the false imprisonment of Lynch and conspiring to murder him. It was said he was preparing to sanction the IRA’s “execution-style” killing of Lynch. Morrison was sentenced to eight years in prison and released in 1995.

Since then it has emerged that at least one of the other senior IRA men present was a long-established informer for the security services. Details about who was working for the intelligence services could emerge if a full judgment was published.

The appeal court panel of three judges, led by Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr, read confidential files on the case prepared by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Overturning Morrison’s conviction on the grounds that it was unsafe, Sir Brian said: “There is nothing in the papers which intrinsically militates against the delivery of an open judgment detailing the reasons for our decision.

“We will, however, give the parties the opportunity, if they wish to avail of it, to seek to persuade the court not to deliver what I might describe as an open judgment.”

The prosecution service has signalled it will block disclosure of the files when the case is reconvened.

Morrison claimed the convictions had collapsed because of the role of security force agents in his arrest. He said he had been lured to the house in west Belfast as a set-up to engineer his arrest.

Speaking after the decision, Morrison said disclosure of the full details would link the security forces to the work of the IRA’s so-called “nutting-squad”, which was responsible for killing suspected informers.

“What was refreshing about what the judges have said, and it’s good in this new dispensation we are in, is that they were quite prepared to state the reasons contained in the secret annex for overturning our convictions,” said Morrison. “I think that’s very positive. My previous experience of the judiciary has not been a good one.”

REVIEWED BY PEADAR WHELAN
An Phoblacht
23 Oct 2008

Film Review: Hunger, Director: Steve McQueen, Starring: Michael Fassbender

The award winning film Hunger, about the last weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, had its premiere in Belfast last Thursday, 16 October.
Unsurprisingly the film has become the focus of wide political debate, most particularly in the North where the anti-republican lobby has circled the wagons to defend the establishment discourse as to what the prison struggle and Hunger Strikes were about.

Photo: PREMIERE: Director Steve McQueen, with three former hunger strikers, Laurence McKeown, Raymond McCartney and Pat Sheehan

The British Government, incensed at the film’s portrayal of the situation in the H-Blocks of Long Kesh in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, provoked a storm of protest when it become clear the film was in the running for the prestigious Camera d’Or award at Cannes in May of this year. Hunger went on to win the Camera d’Or in May before scooping the international award at the Sydney Film Festival.
Of course Hunger, as with any film whose subject matter is the conflict in the North, will be refracted through a unionist prism. The intention being to rubbish any aspect of the work that portrays republicans and republicanism in a positive light or indeed doesn’t portray republicans as devils incarnate.
It should also be set down for the record that one of the wagons in the defensive circle has BBC emblazoned on its side. The British government controlled corporation in a number of programmes dealing with Hunger has sought what it calls ‘balance’.
On its Talkback programme on Monday 20 October we had contributions from UUP assembly member David McNarry who admitted he hadn’t seen the film and had, “no wish to see it”.
Edwin Poots of the DUP and former Culture minister in the Executive had seen the film but rubbished it as, “a reprehensible re-writing of history”, over its portrayal of the brutality prison wardens used against the protesting prisoners. Poots maintains the film has little historical merit.
No one from a nationalist or republican perspective was part of the debate.
That evening on Artsextra, Marie Louise Muir broadcasted excerpts from a question and answer session she had with the film’s director Steve McQueen and Michael Fassbender who plays the lead role.
She insisted that to depict the prison staff as violent and the prison regime as one which permitted the systematic torture of prisoners was to present the prisoners favourably vis a vis their jailers and by definition was an example of imbalance within the film.
Incidently, Fassbender ably dismissed Muir’s questioning by pointing out that the most violent scene in the film was that of a prison warden being killed.
The opening scene of the film shows prison warden Ray Lohan, played by Stuart Graham, thoroughly washing his hands before holding them up to the light to inspect them and ensure they were properly cleaned.
Steve McQueen, the film’s director, may not have intended to present Lohan’s washing as a religious act but it is hard to get away from that view.
As someone who was in the H-Blocks during the Blanket and No Wash protest which culminated in the Hunger Strike, the Ray Lohan character epitomised the religio-political nature of the North’s prison service.
The prison service, an arm of the state security apparatus, saw it s conflict with the protesting republican prisoners as a crusade as well as part of their unionist duty to defeat the IRA.
Lohan’s is a character that sees it as his duty to break the Blanketmen. He is driven by a sense of righteousness – that his world view is morally superior to that of the protesting POWs, and it motivates him to exact retribution on them.
Describing the prison protest in those terms doesn’t sit well with a unionist body politic that has set itself up as a morally superior force for good that had/has no responsibility for the past four decades of conflict.
Unionist politicians are a people who see the violence of the state as morally acceptable or indeed an act of righteous cleansing.
The darkness and sense of the foreboding that underpinned the H-Block protest were ably captured in Hunger. The 24-hour lock up, no natural light and no visual contact with anything other than the man a prisoner shared his cell with, ably showed the claustrophobia of that world shared by the prisoners and their guards
As the film moves through its various stages, it explores the experiences of a newcomer to the No Wash protest coming to terms with the reality that for the foreseeable future he will be ‘surviving’ a daily existence living on his own with excrement, urine, and starvation rations and the constant threat of violence.
And in reality that violence was always on the other side of the door whether it was during a wing shift, going an a visit or on the way to or coming from Mass.
Forcibly washing the prisoners – systematically carried out in December 1978 – was a policy decision made at the highest levels of the Prison Service. Prisoners were dragged from their cells, by gangs of screws submerged in baths of water, sometimes boiling, sometimes freezing. All the while the naked men were being assaulted.
As a final act of violence and humiliation their hair was crudely hacked off.
When it comes to the point where the POWs decided to hunger strike, the film sets out the context in a scene that sees Bobby Sands debate the morality of the prisoners’ decision with the priest played by Liam Cunningham.
That scene, the longest single scene – at 22 minutes – in cinematic history, is brilliantly gripping. More so because the dialogue sets up republicans as people who think and understand what they are about, what struggle is about and what sacrifice and commitment are about. Indeed therein lies the dilemma for those in the anti-republican kraal.
They believed they could isolate republicans from their communities; they believed they were on the moral high ground looking down with disdain on inferior beings; they thought the world would buy into their criminalisation policy.
Yet when republican prisoners, embodied in the courage of the Hunger Strikers, took their self-righteous moralism and threw it back in their faces they were frozen to the spot like rabbits caught in the headlights of a car.
That explains why unionists such as David McNarry can go on the BBC and say he had not seen the film and no intention of watching yet be treated as a serious commentator.
If unionism had the courage of its convictions it would look at the past, accept its responsibility in it and for it and work to make the future better for everyone.
From that point of view Hunger is a positive film as it is about people who overcame the worst of conditions and survived.
And the Hunger Strikers’ memories will survive as a testament to human fortitude.

BY MÍCHEÁL Mac DONNCHA
An Phoblacht
23 Oct 2008

BY the end of 1913, the campaign against Home Rule for Ireland organised by the Ulster Unionists and their allies in the Conservative and Unionist Party (the Tories) in Britain had reached a crescendo. The Ulster Volunteers had been established as well as a provisional government which threatened to seize power if Home Rule became law.
The Liberal Party was in government in Britain and had introduced the Home Rule Bill with the support of the Irish nationalist MPs in Westminster. They had abolished the veto of the House of Lords and Home Rule was due to be implemented in 1914. The Tories seized on the issue of Home Rule as the most effective weapon to bring down the Liberals. Leading members of the British landed aristocracy, capitalists and senior military figures jumped on the bandwagon and backed up Unionist leader Edward Carson with threats of civil war if Home Rule was brought in.
Amidst the political frenzy there were very few Protestants in Ulster who were prepared to oppose Carsonism. But there were some and among them was the Reverend J.B. Armour of Ballymoney, County Antrim. A minister of the Presbyterian Church, Armour stood out from most of his co-religionists in advocating self-government for Ireland. In 1893, he opposed a resolution at the Presbyterian General Assembly condemning Gladstone’s second Home Rule Bill. He was also a strong critic of landlordism.
In 1913, he again opposed a resolution against Home Rule at the Presbyterian General Assembly.
Calling for freedom of conscience for Protestants to support or oppose Home Rule, Armour slammed the intolerance of Carsonism when he told the assembly:
“If you deny the right of private judgment and of free speech, how much do you have of Protestantism worth keeping? Nothing at all.”

ROGER CASEMENT

Armour organised a public meeting of Protestants in Ballymoney to support Home Rule and oppose Carsonism. Banners in the hall proclaimed “No provisional or provincial government for us” and “Ulster for Ireland and Ireland for us”.
The resolution stated that the meeting of Protestants of Ballymoney and the protests in The Route (in County Antrim) “against the claim of Sir Edward Carson and the self-constituted Provisional Government of Ulster to represent the Protestant community of north-east Ulster” and “disputes the narrow claim that differences of creed necessarily separate Irishmen and women into hostile camps”.
Among the speakers at the Ballymoney meeting were JB Armour himself, historian Alice Stopford Green, Jack White, son of a British Army general and later a leading figure in the Irish Citizen Army, and Roger Casement, who was executed in 1916. This was Casement’s first appearance on a political platform. With his Antrim family background, Casement regarded the occasion as hugely significant and in his speech he denounced any notion of partitioning Ireland.
The meeting was a once-off and failed to turn the tide of Carsonism but it did show that a significant minority of Protestants in the North-East were still prepared to stand up for Irish unity and self-government.
The meeting of Protestants in Ballymoney in support of Irish self-government was held on 24 October 1913, 95 years ago this week.

BY FRANK FARRELL
An Phoblacht
23 Oct 2008

YOU might expect bilious Sunday Independent hack, Jim Cusack, to pen fairy stories about the IRA investing and losing €200 million in the US banking collapse. But the repetition of this nonsense by the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern during the Dáil budget debate has to be some sort of record when it comes to cheap shots from a senior politician. It also shows how seriously cabinet members were taking criticisms of the budget that the third most senior government minister could indulge in such adolescent jibes.
That Ahern’s remarks were given credibility by publication in The Irish Times Dáil coverage also says much about a newspaper that would claim to be above the sensationalism of the Sunday Independent. When it comes to republicanism, however, the Sunday Independent, Irish Times and Fianna Fáil discover a unity of purpose against the common enemy.
Cusack is one if the most energetic if erratic security correspondents who have waged war against all things republican for many years. Among the most laughable aspects of his story about the IRA’s Wall Street portfolio is his reference to those “republican sources” that had provided him with the story. The notion of any republican engaging in a constructive, amicable or truthful discussion with this man is fantastic.

In recent times, various media, including the Phoenix, Village magazine, Newstalk 106 and even The Irish Times have all deconstructed nonsensical stories from Cusack about republicanism. Three years ago, Cusack wrote that “the IRA is now the largest owner of licensed premises in the Republic and Northern Ireland. It also has a chain of hotels both medium and large” and also owns “some of the top pubs in the country”. Cusack’s investigations led him to conclude that this financial operation was part of a “massive campaign to subvert the sovereign state of the Republic of Ireland, to undermine its political parties and maybe even its political institutions and constitution”. As the Phoenix remarked at the time, it is quite staggering that the Gardaí had never objected to the granting of licenses to such pubs and hotels or any other measures against this vast financial conspiracy.
Cusack’s ‘republican sources’ must have been having fun with him when he wrote in the same period about those IRA men who had robbed the Northern Bank. On the one hand he wrote that an IRA unit from Belfast, made up of “experienced older hands” and led by a vicious, sexual pervert and ex-prisoner had robbed the bank after planning it for over a year. Shortly after, Cusack’s sources led him to believe that the gang was from South Armagh; was made up of recent, young, IRA recruits and was led by a farmer in his fifties who had set up the operation five months earlier.

None of these impossible contradictions stopped Cusack from claiming that the IRA was effectively back at war and that Garda Commissioner Conroy had informed Bertie Ahern of this development, a claim that provoked a quick response from “informed government sources” - they said it was “absolute rubbish” - as reported in Cusack’s old newspaper, The Irish Times.
A year later, Newstalk 106 (actually, Irish Times journalist, Kathy Sheridan, who interviewed Cusack on air), Village magazine and Phoenix destroyed Cusack’s claims that Sinn Féin had organised the Dublin riot in 2006. The Garda press office denied any knowledge of Sinn Féin involvement and after taking a battering on the story in the above three media, the Sunday Indo journalist again revised his investigative conclusions by reporting that well, actually, it was an RSF breakaway group in league with extreme leftists that had organised the riot.
Perhaps it was Young Fine Gael. Whatever, the obsession with republicanism had again drawn Cusack into the Brothers Grimm School of Journalism.

Andersonstown News Monday
Belfast Media
**Via Newshound
by Roisin McManus

The families of those killed in the 1971 Ballymurphy Massacre are expected to meet with the Irish Minister of Justice Dermot Ahern in Belfast next month.

The meeting will be held following a request from West Belfast MP Gerry Adams.

Speaking in advance of the meeting, which is expected to take place on November 17, Alice Harper, daughter of Daniel Teggart, said: “Officially meeting the Irish government is a significant step forward in terms of our overall campaign for truth and justice regarding the murders of our loved ones.

“They were murdered during the Ballymurphy Massacre in August, 1971, when 11 unarmed civilians, including a mother-of-eight and a Catholic priest, were deliberately gunned down by members of the British army’s Parachute Regiment over the course of 60 hours, leaving 52 children without a parent.”

Alice said that the meeting follows on from their successful lobbying of members of the Oireachtas in Dublin in April, which had a significant impact.

“The horrific nature of these murders, and the fact that so little is known about the incident, had an immediate impact during our briefings in Dublin,” said Alice.

“Representatives from every political party at Leinster House, with the exception of the PDs, raised the case and indeed opposition leader Enda Kenny TD tabled a question on the Ballymurphy Massacre as part of Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s first question time.”

Alice said that the meeting with Mr Ahern was being facilitated by West Belfast MP Gerry Adams.

She commended Mr Adams, who she said had been extremely supportive of the families and their campaign.

“The meeting is particularly welcome in that the families will personally apprise the Minister of the events of August 9, 1971 and of central aims of our families’ campaign which seeks truth, justice, and acknowledgment of our individual and collective loss.

“The families will be requesting specific support from the Irish government in terms of assistance to take forward their campaign.

“This will be based on our need for an independent investigation with official acknowledgment of the terrible wrong-doing and subsequent systematic cover-up and impunity,” she added.

Gerry Adams met families from the Ballymurphy Massacre Committee and Relatives for Justice at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, last Monday.

The meeting was to discuss the families’ campaign for justice and its progress to date.

“The families of the 11 people killed by the British army’s Parachute Regiment in the Ballymurphy area in the three days following the introduction of internment in August 1971 deserve an apology from the British government and the truth about the circumstances surrounding the massacre of their loved ones,” said Mr Adams, speaking after Monday’s meeting.

“All of these families deserve the full support and encouragement of the community and of the Irish government in their efforts to secure an independent international investigation into these deaths and to have the British government acknowledge the truth surrounding the shooting dead of their loved ones,” he added.

Irish News
**Via Newshound
23/10/2008

RELATIVES of victims of the 1993 Shankill bombing will today mark the 15th anniversary of the atrocity with a service of prayer and reflection.

Nine Protestants were killed when a bomb exploded in Frizzell’s fish shop on the Shankill Road during a busy Saturday

on the Shankill Road on October 23 1993.

IRA bomber Thomas Begley was also killed when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely.

It was widely believed to have been an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate members of the UFF, including Johnny Adair.

West Kirk Presbyterian Church – which is beside the Shankill Memorial Gardens, will be open from 12 noon to 2pm for prayers and reflection.

John McVicker, a spokesman for the Shankill Community Council, said the church would be open to all between noon and 2pm to take into account the time when the bomb went off at three minutes past one o’clock.

Irish News
**Via News Hound
23/10/2008

JAILED loyalist Mark Haddock is to be brought before a judge next week to decide whether changes to his appearance go far enough to continue with his bid to win a publicity ban.

Haddock, an alleged police informer linked to a series of murders, is attempting to stop the media from disclosing his new identity and whereabouts after he is released from prison.

Amid claims that he is under imminent death threat, he has already won the right to be screened from general public view when he is due to give evidence at a full hearing in the High Court next month.

But his barrister Frank O’Donoghue QC, who warned the case had the potential to turn into a “show trial”, yesterday suggested Mr Justice Donnell Deeny and lawyers should first have the chance to assess what Haddock now looks like.

Mr O’Donoghue said Haddock’s appearance has altered due to injuries sustained during a gun attack and also through attempts to protect himself from any future assassination attempt.

Ordering Haddock to be brought before a private sitting of the court, Mr Justice Deeny said legal representatives on both sides could bring pictures of him taken before he was jailed for attacking a nightclub doorman.

“The court will rule on whether or not there’s a significant enough change to warrant these proceedings or to render effective the remedy which the plaintiff is currently seeking,” he said.

The judge, who accepted the case would be ended if Haddock did not look significantly different, also imposed an interim injunction prohibiting any photographs being taken of Haddock when he attends next week.

Mr Justice Deeny had previously granted Haddock’s application to be screened during the full hearing of his case, although a small number of people who may be called to testify about the loyalist’s alleged crime regime are to be allowed to sit close enough to the witness box to view him.

Haddock, originally from Belfast’s Mount Vernon area, is due to be freed from prison within months after serving a 10-year sentence for attacking Trevor Gowdy outside a social club in Monkstown on the northern outskirts of the city in December 2002.

He was shot up to seven times in Newtownabbey, Co Antrim while out on bail before his conviction in 2006.

In January 2007 Haddock was widely reported to have been a paid Special Branch agent following the publication of a Police Ombudsman report which found that officers colluded with a north Belfast terrorist unit behind more than a dozen murders.

Media organisations are opposing the injunction application by arguing his crime history, activities, whereabouts and appearance are of legitimate public and journalistic interest.

By Cormac O’Keeffe
Irish Examiner
Friday, October 24, 2008

GARDAÍ have gone north of the border and conducted “door-to-door” inquiries as part of the investigation into the savage murder of south Armagh man Paul Quinn in Monaghan last October.

The historical development, part of close cooperation between the Gardaí and the PSNI, is thought to have led to the arrest of a number of significant IRA members in south Armagh.

Almost a year since the murder, Paul Quinn’s parents, Stephen and Breege, brother James and sister Cathy, travelled to Dublin to meet Garda Commissioner Fachtna Murphy and TDs. They were accompanied by the Quinn Support Group and SDLP politicians.

Paul Quinn, 21, from Cullyhanna, south Armagh, was brutally beaten to death by a gang of up to 15 people after he was lured to a remote farm in Co Monaghan on October 20, 2007.

SDLP press officer and friend of the Quinn family, Seamus Murphy, said the presence of uniformed gardaí in south Armagh had greatly benefited the murder investigation.

“We would emphasise the positive effect it can have for the Gardaí and the PSNI, seen visibly, literally walking side by side, knocking on doors on the ground in south Armagh, the first time it ever happened.

“I’m quite certain it led to specific evidence coming forward to the Garda investigation,” said Mr Murphy.

Paul’s father, Stephen, praised the Gardaí but said he did not know if they were any closer to a prosecution, despite the 12 arrests to date, six each in the north and south.

Last July, 12 people were arrested, including a senior IRA figure in south Armagh and a second man considered to be a mid-ranking republican with connections to Sinn Féin and the IRA.

Jim McAllister, Quinn Support Group chair, called on Sinn Féin to retract statements claiming Paul was a criminal and to apologise for the hurt caused.

“The arrests by the PSNI and Gardaí did not lean in that direction whatsoever, they lent towards the people being defended by Sinn Féin TDs,” he said.

MP and SDLP MLA member Alasdair McDonnell praised the cooperation across the border.

“The only people who have to be pilloried are the people who murdered Paul and the people who covered up for them.”

Last April the Independent Monitoring Commission found that the IRA organisation did not kill Paul Quinn, but said “local members or former members” of the republican group were involved in his murder.

Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 24 October 2008

McIlveen case is halted after seven weeks of heart-rending evidence

The family of tragic Michael McIlveen will once more have to endure the anguish of a murder trial after the case against five youths accused of killing the schoolboy was dramatically halted yesterday.

After seven weeks and following the testimony of more than 40 witnesses, the judge told Antrim Crown Court that the trial was being stopped “as a result of certain matters which have arisen”.

The trial had already heard harrowing details of the death of the Catholic schoolboy from Ballymena in May 2006. His family, including his devastated mother Gina, had sat through days of graphic evidence which described how he was chased and attacked in an alleyway.

Now the trial will have to begin again at a later date.

The Antrim Crown Court jury of eight women and four men were yesterday discharged from any further involvement in the high profile trial.

Mr Justice Treacy also thanked the jury, first sworn in on September 8 last year, telling them that given their commitment to the trial since then, he would, if they wished, discharge them for life from any further jury service.

No other details surrounding the legal move were given in court and the case has now been adjourned until November 10 when a new jury will be sworn in.

This is the second dramatic turn of events to overtake the running of the case.

Within days of it first opening, one of the original accused, 20-year-old Mervyn Wilson Moon, from Douglas Terrace, Ballymena, pleaded guilty to his involvement in the murder of the 15-year-old.

The schoolboy died from brain injuries the day after he and friends were allegedly chased and attacked in an alleyway by Moon and others on May 7, 2006.

Moon, who faces life imprisonment, has been remanded back into custody to await sentencing at the end of the retrial of his former co-accused, five of whom deny murdering the Ballymena teenager.

Those still on trial for murder are: a 17-year-old who cannot be named for legal reasons; 19-year-old Jeff Colin Lewis, of Rossdale; Christopher Francis Kerr (22), of Carnduff Drive; Aaron Cavana Wallace (20), of Moat Road, and Christopher Andrew McLeister (18), of Knock Crescent, all Ballymena.

A sixth defendant is 18-year-old Paul Edward David Henson, of Condiere Avenue, Ballymena, who denies charges of affray and criminal damage.

Henson, McLeister, Wallace and the 17-year-old were freed on continuing bail, while Lewis and Kerr were remanded back into custody.

By David Gordon
Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 24 October 2008

Former Stormont Sports Minister Edwin Poots has stressed that he has not given up on the goal of a major new stadium at the former Maze Prison site.

And the Lagan Valley MLA warned that something even more substantial will be demanded for the location, should the stadium project be axed.

The DUP man said he and Lisburn Mayor Ronnie Crawford met First Ministers Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness this week to discuss the Maze site.

“I’m always an optimist,” Mr Poots told the Belfast Telegraph.

“We met the First and Deputy First Minister on Monday and the case was re-stated. There has to be something of reasonable significance there. If they step back from the stadium, we will be seeking something better than that.

“It’s not a case of them walking away from a sports development at the Maze and us saying, oh dear, that’s too bad.

“We will be aggressively fighting for something that is even more significant.”

Referring to the meeting with Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness, Mr Poots said: “They would indicate that the decision has not been made.”

By Noel McAdam
Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 24 October 2008

The head of the Parades Commission today warned splinter republicans over a second protest parade against the Army’s homecoming parade in Belfast next Sunday.

As tensions over the city centre event continued to rise, Commission Chairman Roger Poole said any illegal demonstrations would be dealt with by the PSNI. He was referring to a planned protest by the socialist republican group Eirigi which has called for a demonstration at Divis Tower shortly before the Army parade.

But the commission in turn also came under fire from the DUP after allowing a Sinn Fein protest against the demonstration to go ahead.

North Belfast MLA Nelson McCausland accused it of “pandering to bigotry” and called the decision an insult to those who had served in the Army and their families.

Describing the verdict — which came after DUP leader Peter Robinson and deputy Nigel Dodds met the commission earlier this week — as indefensible, Mr McCausland said: “The Parades Commission has simply caved into the demands of Sinn Fein and their decision is a recipe for disaster.

“Members of the general public, Protestant and Roman Catholic, will be rerouted away from Donegall Place and shunted down side streets to accommodate republican bigotry.”

But Mr Poole said Mr McCausland was “wrong” because the commission had a duty to those who wanted to see the Army parade and also “in a democracy” to those who want to peacefully protest can do so.

In its determination the commission said the Sinn Fein-led protest must not leave Bank Square before 11.30am with the Army parade to start at 11.45am.

“Sinn Fein’s willingness to co-operate and engage with the Commission and the PSNI has been a positive contribution to the planning for the event,” the determination said.

“In the same way the MoD has shown a willingness to plan their event in a sensitive manner.”

Sinn Fein West Belfast MLA Paul Maskey said: “We made the commission aware of the fact that the protest rally will highlight the legacy of the RIR and their predecessors the UDR here in Ireland as well as opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where thousands of civilians have been killed.”

BBC
24 Oct 2008

A former Sinn Féin director of publicity’s conviction in relation to the unlawful imprisonment of an IRA informer has been quashed.

Morrison is an author and former director of publicity for Sinn Féin

Danny Morrison and a number of others were sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in 1991 in relation to the kidnap of Sandy Lynch.

Mr Lynch was taken to a house in west Belfast for interrogation by the IRA.

Mr Morrison and the others claimed they had gone to the house to arrange a Sinn Féin press conference.

They said that Mr Lynch was due to speak at the event.

Their cases were referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Unusually, it gave its reason in a confidential annex, which Mr Morrison and the others were not allowed to see.

He claimed this was because it contained details of IRA double agents who had been in the house and that the arrests had been a set-up.

“What was refreshing about what the judges have said, and it’s good in this new dispensation we are in, is that they were quite prepared to state the reasons contained in the secret annex for overturning our convictions,” said Mr Morrison.

“I think that’s very positive. My previous experience of the judiciary has not been a good one.”

Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr said in court on Friday that, having read the annex, he found the convictions to be unsafe and quashed them.

It is expected there will be more legal argument about whether the Court of Appeal should publish its reasons for reaching its decision.