SAOIRSE32

Suzanne Breen Northern Editor
Sunday Tribune
**Via Newshound
October 26, 2008

The family of a republican prisoner claim he is being held in inhuman conditions in a Lithuanian jail. Relatives of Michael Campbell from Dundalk say they have been unable to see him since he was arrested in Vilnius in January allegedly trying to buy arms and explosives for the Real IRA.

Campbell (35) was arrested as part of a sting understood to involve MI5, the garda and Lithuanian police. Although he has not been charged with any offence, Lithuanian law allows a suspect to be held for 18 months.

In nine months, Campbell has not been allowed visits or telephone calls from his family. His only contact with them has been through letters. Relatives and republican supporters are planning to picket the Lithuanian embassy in Dublin next week. His partner, Fiona Duffy, who was also arrested in Vilnius and was being held in a Lithuanian jail without charge, was released after the intervention of Amnesty International. She is now back in Dundalk.

Marion Price of the Irish Republican Prisoners’ Welfare Association said: “Michael Campbell is locked up nearly all day in a small cell with three Lithuanian prisoners. There is only one toilet between the four men and that is a hole in the ground. The conditions are appalling. Michael’s family have been prevented from visiting him by the prosecution and when a family friend went to Vilnius for one of his court remands, he was removed from the court at the insistence of the prosecution.

“The only people to have seen Michael since his arrest have been his lawyers. This is in total contrast to other prisoners in the jail whose families are allowed to see them. I can’t recall any other foreign jail where such restrictions have been placed on an Irish prisoner. Michael hasn’t been charged and this is effectively internment by remand.”

Campbell’s brother Liam is a senior Real IRA commander who served two sentences in Portlaoise prison. It is understood that Michael Campbell, who had travelled to Vilnius to buy counterfeit cigarettes, was under surveillance as he left Ireland. It was part of a major police sting with an agent posing as a cigarette dealer.

The Sunday Tribune has learned that, when in Lithuania, Campbell was then asked if he was interested in buying weapons. He agreed, was taken to a location where guns and explosives were on display, and was arrested. Duffy was arrested at a hotel.

In 2004, Campbell was arrested for involvement in a cigarette smuggling ring in Holland. The cigarettes, destined for the black market in the Republic and the North, were labelled Super Kings but were imitations. Campbell was found guilty by a Dutch court of defrauding the exchequer of €327,000 in excise duty and was sentenced to four months in prison.

Chilling change to terror strategy

Belfast Telegraph
Monday, 27 October 2008

Dissident republicans have added civilian workers to their death list. Civilian guards and technicians employed by the Policing Board have now been warned that they could be attacked and killed by Real and Continuity IRA elements.

Hundreds of workers who guard PSNI stations across Northern Ireland and technicians who install and maintain vital communications equipment are now at risk of terrorist attack.

Security sources claim the risk from dissident republicans is now “substantial” and say there is growing evidence that the two main dissident elements are networking more effectively to share intelligence information on targets, and to exchange materials and know-how.

“The latest intelligence information shows the two main dissident elements coming together to the extent that in some areas it is difficult to define who is with what group.

“They are liaising more than ever before and it’s suspected that they are exchanging bits and pieces of kit to help each other.”

“The threat from the two elements overall is assessed as substantial and more workers engaged on contracts for the Policing Board are now in the firing line”, one source said.

Dissidents are being blamed for orchestrating violence in Craigavon last week when vehicles were burned and gunfire was reportedly heard during organised rioting following the arrest of two local republicans.

There is now major concern that a planned demonstration organised by Sinn Fein for next Sunday in Belfast to protest against a homecoming parade for the Royal Irish Regiment after its Afghanistan deployment could lead to major violence with dissident elements planning to exploit the situation. And the risk to technicians who maintain vital radio communication equipment is being taken “extremely seriously” by the Policing Board.

Owen Bowcott
Guardian
Monday October 27 2008

Detectives re-examining thousands of deaths and murders in Northern Ireland’s Troubles have uncovered two more cases of killings that have triggered suspicions of collusion between the security forces and paramilitary groups.

The cases, from the early 1970s, are being investigated by dedicated groups of officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s historical enquiries team (HET).

Allegations of collusion, particularly with loyalist paramilitaries, cast a long shadow over the record of the security forces and military intelligence during the Troubles. Among the most prominent controversies were the 1989 murder of the Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane and the killing 10 years later of the Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson.

The HET was created in 2005 by Sir Hugh Orde, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, with the challenging aim of re-examining all 3,268 deaths and murders related to the Troubles between 1969 and 1998.

Its intention is to provide answers, or some form of resolution, for bereaved families. Detectives are now focusing in on key issues and patterns of murder.

Despite the emergence of fresh concerns about the behaviour of the security forces, the team’s deputy director, Phil James, insisted the work was not about “pointing fingers” at the police or army. He declined to reveal specific details about either of the newly uncovered cases or how many murders were involved.

But he told the Guardian that officers were checking old forensic evidence. “If we think there’s a realistic chance of a case,” he said, “if [the material has been] kept in a an appropriate way with the labels signed, even if it’s 40 years old we will try.”

Around 20 groups of cases have become the focus of detailed studies as the HET works its way through its process of cold case reviews.

Among subjects receiving specific attention for which a Senior Investigating Officer has been appointed to coordinate related cases are:

• Murders committed by the Ulster Volunteer Force’s ‘Glenanne gang’ in the mid-1970s. As many as 87 deaths – including bombings in Dublin and Monaghan - have been linked to this paramilitary unit which allegedly included past and serving members of the RUC and Ulster Defence Regiment.

• Scores of self-styled ‘executions’ carried out by the IRA’s internal security and punishment squads. The exposure of one of the so-called ‘Nutting Squad’s’ leaders as the military intelligence agent ‘Stakeknife’ has raised questions about who directed the killings.

• The activities of loyalist paramilitary killers who were also Special Branch informants. This inquiry has been called Operation Stafford and has grown out of the Police Ombudsman’s inquiry last year into the 1997 murder by the Ulster Volunteer Force of Raymond McCord in north Belfast.

As well as examining the state’s alleged role, detectives are focusing on aspects of the IRA’s campaigns:

• The Provisionals’ use of ‘proxy’ or ‘human bombs’ where kidnap victims were forced to drive devices into army checkpoints: five soldiers and a civilian worker were killed at the Coshquin border post in 1990.

• Shootings by the vigilante organisation Direct Action Against Drugs that killed as many as 11 supposed drug dealers during the 1990s. The IRA always denied that DAAD was a cover name for its gunmen.

Several of these groupings are being handled by the HET’s ‘White Team’ which specialises in collusion cases. Its officers, some with experience of war crimes inquiries in Bosnia, are from forces other than the RUC or PSNI. A number of its detectives operate out of a London office and have taken over responsibility for the residue of cases investigated by Lord Stevens in the last of his three enquiries. Lord Stevens retains oversight of his inquiries.

After three years’ work, detectives are now re-opening cases from 1973/4 and are around a third of the way through total fatalities. Phil James admitted that the original schedule of reviewing every Troubles killing by 2011 would not be met. “It will take a few more years than that,” he said, “probably two years”.

The process could be complicated if responsibility for the task is transferred from the PSNI to a new truth and reconciliation-style commission examining the legacy of the past. A report by the former Church of Ireland archbishop, Lord Robin Eames and Denis Bradley, is expected soon.

Phil James is confident the Historical Enquiries Team’s work will continue. “We believe the HET is independent. If [any new commission] delivered confidence around enhanced independence, but we didn’t lose access to the materials we have, I could sit comfortably with that,” he said.

James insists he has been given access to any documents and information he has requested: “We have sought information about agents and informers … If [agents] have been inappropriately used we will investigate. If someone is acting correctly within the law they are entitled [to] protection. But if they were engaged in significant criminality there’s no protection for them.”

HET detectives have interviewed former members of the security forces, witnesses and suspects. They have carried out test-firings on weapons and commissioned forensic tests.

Asked whether they had approached any politicians, James said: “As we go forward there may be cases when we will consider that. We will go where the evidence takes us. If the evidence is there we will do it.”

Republican groups have pressed the HET to search for evidence, in particular, of what they believe was high-level security force collusion in killings associated with the UVF’s Glenanne gang in the mid-1970s. Several RUC officers were subsequently convicted of participation in gun and bomb attacks.

James said: “The first examinations of a number of Glenanne cases are complete and work is now ongoing with a holistic approach, examining allegations of collusion and at what level.”

Much of the HET’s work involves liaising with families of the bereaved. Some welcome the re-opening of cases, others do not want painful memories revived.

“Sometimes families split into factions: some grateful, some resentful [of our findings],” James said. “Some change their minds. Some families want to forget.”

By Cairan McGuigan
Sunday Life
Sunday, 26 October 2008

Hardman Coronation Street star Charlie Lawson has no regrets for backing loyalist paramilitaries when they brought Ulster to a standstill.

The Fermanagh-born actor, who plays Jim McDonald in the hit soap, makes no bones about his fascination with loyalists who staged the Ulster Workers Strike when he was a teenage schoolboy.

Lawson is one of a number of stars who opens up to presenter Eamonn Holmes in a one-off show examining how Ulster’s stars of today remember the Troubles.

In ‘The Troubles I’ve Seen’, screen star Jimmy Nesbitt talks about his time in loyalist flute bands while growing up on the north coast and former World Champion Barry McGuigan tells how he risked his life going onto the lower Shankill to box at the same time as the Shankill Butchers were waging their campaign of cold-blooded sectarian murder on the same streets.

And comedian Patrick Kielty talks poignantly about his dad being gunned down by the UFF 20 years ago.

Says Eamonn: “It was 40 years on from the Troubles and we wanted to commemorate that, but the way TV works these days is you need well-known people talking about things.

“It doesn’t make their stories any better or any worse than anybody else’s, it just makes them their stories.

“Some people have really suffered really quite badly, no more so than Patrick Kielty, who hasn’t talked on film about his father being assassinated before and that’s very poignant.

“You look at somebody like Patrick and he talks about his father, and there’s no amount of words that can console that.

“You can try and analyse how he tells jokes and how he can joke about a situation like this, but Patrick, funny enough, is less optimistic about the peace dividend and what it will bring.

“I don’t think he believes that we’ve all become friends overnight.”

Eamonn added: “Other people talk about their beliefs, which I find very brave because they’re in the public eye.

“For example Charlie Lawson makes no apology about his loyalist leanings and I respect him for that.

“Charlie’s an Enniskillen boy who led a privileged lifestyle and was from a very good family.

“Yet he had this great fascination and attraction with the loyalist paramilitaries, which were just down the road on the Newtownards Road, and he was a great supporter of the Ulster Workers Council strike and all that sort of thing.

“That’s fantastic, I think it’s quite brave because so many people in the public eye want to appear neutral on things.

“And Jimmy Nesbitt talks about his time in flute bands and the Orange bands and things like that and how that to him was his life, and he has no apologies to make about that.”

Boxing legend Barry McGuigan reveals in the film how he diced with death, going into hardline loyalist areas to box.

Said Eamonn: “Barry was fighting behind the lines as it were.

“He would go into the lower Shankill at the time of the Shankill Butcher murders and he would fight there. He would go into the ring without an emblem or anything as an amateur and he was respected as a pugilist.

“It was quite funny and strange to see how that was deemed to be honourable and OK.

“Even though he trained at the Holy Family gym on the New Lodge Road he would do exhibitions in the lower Shankill and, funny enough, even though he lived by his fists he was respected for it and given safe passage through it all.”

News anchor Andrea Catherwood and television presenter Gloria Hunniford also speak about their memories of the Troubles during the hour-long documentary.

‘The Troubles I’ve Seen’, UTV, Tuesday 10.40pm