SAOIRSE32

Belfast Telegraph
Thursday, 27 November 2008

Ihab Shoukri’s death will not make any difference to loyalist paramilitaries. As Brian Rowan reports, they are still run by gangsters unprepared to let go of their guns

There is a spotlight once more on what we call loyalism — and on its different and many leaderships. The sudden death of Ihab Shoukri — once a paramilitary ‘brigadier’ — has made people look again at the UDA, but not just at that organisation.

They will look at the UVF also — and at all of the unfinished business.

At the weekend, First Minister and DUP leader Peter Robinson spoke of private assurances from the republican leadership ‘that the IRA is out of business for good and isn’t going to return’.

A republican speaking to this newspaper put it this way: “The IRA has gone — that’s the short answer to it.”

There is no similar short answer when it comes to the loyalist groups.

You get longer answers and assessments on the pages of the most recent report of the Independent Monitoring Commission.

The ‘split’ in the UDA — that Ihab Shoukri was part of — continues to hamper that organisation and its structure, six ‘brigades’, six different leaders and all with different agendas hamper it also.

In the words of the IMC it “makes it difficult to drive through change”.

“Despite this, most elements of the leadership continued to seek to downsize the organisation, encouraged members to report crime to the police, engaged constructively in interface issues and showed a determination to avoid inter-community conflict,” the Commission wrote.

All of that is positive, but it is only part of the story, only part of the IMC script.

“Some individual members attempted to manufacture a pipe bomb and some — including at a senior level — indicated an interest in acquiring weapons … In some parts of the UDA recruitment continued,” the report read.

Both the UDA and the UVF were still attempting to identify suspected informers ? and paramilitary leadership structures “remain in place”.

It could not be said that the loyalists are ‘out of business for good’.

Ihab Shoukri and his brother Andre were part of a post-ceasefire leadership, along with others including the murdered UDA leader in east Belfast, Jim Gray.

Johnny Adair on his release from jail after the Good Friday Agreement was also part of that paramilitary inner council, with John Gregg (later murdered), Jackie McDonald and Billy McFarland.

McDonald and McFarland are the only survivors in today’s UDA leadership. They are not an Adams and McGuinness equivalent.

Loyalists have found it difficult, if not impossible, to follow a leader.

Look at how the political leadership of Gary McMichael and Davy Adams was dumped and John White given a role — White a convicted killer, an associate of Adair, a drug dealer and Special Branch informer in Belfast.

The more you look at the loyalist organisations the more you come to conclude that they cannot be delivered into the peace process — not all of them and all their parts and people.

A culture of crime grew up under the Shoukris, Adair and Gray on one side and Mark Haddock and others in the UVF part of that loyalist world. And there are too many loyalists who cannot live without a UVF or a UDA.

Those organisations give them their status, their power, their money and their way of living.

The loyalists are not killing Catholics — not now, but there are those who are strangling their own communities and destroying young people and young lives with drugs.

Yes, the UDA inner council and the UVF command staff have delivered significant change, but they cannot deliver everything that is asked for in a peace process.

There are loyalists who will resist decommissioning for their own selfish needs, who cannot live without guns and the money of drugs and crime. They were not part of Ulster’s war, but are the so-called ‘ceasefire soldiers’.

Ihab Shoukri, who is now dead, was part of that picture.

Andersonstown News Thursday
27 Nov 2008
By Joe Diamond

MEMBERS of the Belfast National Graves Association (BNGA) have located and restored the lost grave of a local IRA volunteer which had lain unmarked for almost 90 years.

The organisation, which maintains republican graves and memorials throughout the city, found the grave of Freddie Fox with help from staff at Milltown Cemetery and dedicated a new headstone to the dead volunteer.

Freddie was shot in August 1921 while on an intelligence-gathering operation against the notorious RIC murder gang which went on to murder six members of the McMahon family and their lodger in North Belfast in 1922. He later died in hospital, aged just 19.

Liam Shannon, Chairperson of the BNGA, said although Freddie was born in Lisburn, he eventually moved to Durham Street in the lower Falls area and joined ‘B’ Company, Ist Battalion, IRA.

“On August 6, 1921 Freddie and a comrade, Frank Crummy, were sent out to shadow a police official, who was suspected of being a member of the murder gang which operated during curfew hours,” explained Liam.

“A policeman came across them unexpectedly and Freddie Fox was seriously injured in the course of the shooting.

“The policeman was wounded in the leg, and Frank Crummy managed to escape, but was arrested later. Freddie was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital under a heavy police guard, but died nine days later, on August 15, 1921. He was buried in Milltown, and his grave lay unmarked ever since,” added Liam. “We’re proud to have been involved in marking his resting place.”