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News Letter
22 December 2008

THE funeral has taken place of Danny McIlhone - one of the so-called disppeared whose body was discovered in Co Wicklow.

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Mr McIlhone - who was from west Belfast - was abducted and murdered in 1981. The IRA admitted responsibility for his death in 1999.

The victim’s funeral took place at St Teresa’s Church on the Glen Road and he was laid to rest at Milltown Cemetery.

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Top: The coffin of Danny McIlhome leaves the Glen Road prior to the funeral service. Bottom: Danny McIIhome’s sister Mary (right) helps carry her brother’s coffin

Mr McIlhone’s remains were discovered by a team working on behalf of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains last month.

The identity of the remains were confirmed last week by a Dublin coroner following a four-week investigation.

His family said on Friday they were “eternally grateful” their 27-year search had ended.

In a statement they said: “We as a family are now at peace and now have the opportunity to given our brother Danny a Christian burial and to lay him to rest with our beloved mother and father.”

Former IRA member Bobby Storey was among mourners

The IRA admitted in 1999 that it murdered and buried nine of the so-called Disappeared - Seamus Wright, Kevin McKee, Jean McConville, Columba McVeigh, Brendan Megraw, John McClory, Brian McKinney, Eamon Molloy and Mr McIlhone - in secret locations.

The bodies of five - Eamon Molloy, Brian McKinney, John McClory and Jean McConville and now Danny McIlhone - have been found.

Ulster actor James Nesbitt this month threw his weight behind the campaign for the locations of the others to be revealed.

News Letter
22 December 2008

A POLICE sweep of Newtownbutler continued over the weekend in a bid to locate an explosive device which dissidents claimed on Friday was fired at a police patrol, but failed to hit its target.

Nothing had been found yesterday and the search operation was continuing.

A caller claiming to be from the Real IRA said the device was on waste ground and had been fired some time in the previous 48 hours.

However, PSNI area commander Michael Skuce and unionist politicians hit out over the vague details. They appealed for specific information ahead of the school holiday.

Chief Supt Skuce said those who fired the deadly device in an attempt to murder police had no regard for their own community.

He added: “Calling police two days later and failing to provide any useful details as to the location of the device demonstrates the indifference and disregard these people have for anyone but themselves and their own selfish motives.

“Causing disruption and distress to ordinary decent people at this time of year, when people are preparing and looking forward to Christmas, is despicable.”

The PSNI warned the public to be extremely cautious and to contact police immediately if they notice a suspicious object or activity.

UUP MLA Tom Elliott said the perpetrators were “reckless” and reiterated a call for limited Army personnel to be deployed.

Arlene Foster, DUP MLA, described the act as “despicable”.

“These people have no concerns for children or community; they just want to cause maximum disruption,” she said.

News Letter
22 December 2008

THE PSNI is investigating an alleged incident of glorifying terrorism after the Education Minister praised IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands at a school prize day.

Last week Minister Caitriona Ruane sparked unionist outrage when she lavished praise on Bobby Sands to an audience of schoolchildren at St Colm’s High School in Twinbrook. She told the pupils they should be thankful that the hunger striker paved the way for a better future for them.

The PSNI spokeswoman confirmed they were investigating a complaint about the alleged glorification of terrorism, which had been made on Saturday at Antrim police station, but said they did not comment on named individuals.

“The assessment of the report is at an early stage and it has not been established if any offence has been committed,” she said.

A Sinn Fein spokesman described the complaint as “nonsense”, adding: “There are pensioners being robbed in their homes, kids being stabbed on the streets and people dying on our roads. The PSNI have far more important things to be doing with their time.”

UUP education spokesman Basil McCrea said the minister should have considered the ramifications of her speech beforehand. “The funeral is taking place today (Sunday] of one person who might have taken particular issue with the minister’s comments – one of the IRA’s Disappeared,” he said.

“Ms Ruane is not some random MLA speaking to her own electorate, she is the Minister for Education who professes to be acting in the interests of everyone and at times says she is specifically acting in the interests of children in unionist areas. But it is very hard for us to move on together as a community when Sinn Fein keeps attempting to rewrite history like this.”

Mr McCrea said that if there was no apology from Ms Ruane he was calling for the First and Deputy First Minister to censure her in the new year.

During her school visit, Ms Ruane said she was saddened that a film about the Irish Civil War (The Wind That Shakes The Barley) had been criticised.

Mr McCrea responded that it was “incredibly disturbing” that Ms Ruane “revealed frightening authoritarian tendencies by attacking those who dared to criticise a film that gave a historically inaccurate account of the Civil War”.

The Department of Education said it was not a matter for them to comment on.

Sinn Fein said it would have been “totally inappropriate” for the minister not to refer to Bobby Sands in the school as he had lived in the Twinbrook area.

22 December 2008
News Letter

A GOVERNMENT minister has called on the decommissioning body to “talk to the republican leadership” about yet another cache of alleged Semtex discovered by police.

Gardai found a quantity of explosives – now reported to be Semtex – in a car in Co Meath last week, which last night prompted DUP Junior Minister Jeffrey Donaldson to call for John de Chastelain and the IMC to investigate.

In August Semtex was used in the attempted murder of policemen in Lisnaskea. PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Paul Leighton later said the materials “looked as though they came from old stocks”, which provoked fears across the unionist community about how complete IRA decommissioning had been.

Semtex was imported into Ireland by the IRA in huge quantities in the mid to late 1980s from Libya and was widely believed to have been disposed of when the IRA decommissioned its weaponry in 2005.

“At the time when the IRA decommissioned, the DUP made it clear that there was insufficient transparency in the process and that we remained sceptical,” said Mr Donaldson.

“That is why we required Sinn Fein to sign up to policing and the courts and why we insisted the IRA must dismantle its operational capacity. That continues to be our position.

“If it emerges that some rogue IRA elements held onto weapons then that must be dealt with.”

Mr Donaldson said the situation could undermine confidence in groups linked to policing and justice and that it was important to resolve the matter.

“General de Chastelain and his committee would need to be talking to the republican leadership and the Independent Monitoring Commission should also be looking into this,” he said.

However a Sinn Fein spokesman said the world was “awash” with Semtex and that it was “a leap of faith” to link the matter with his party.

“All Semtex that was under the control of the IRA was decommissioned, as was confirmed by John de Chastelain,” he said.

However, he noted that some senior IRA members left the organisation in 1997 and said the IRA was “not responsible for these people or the weapons under their control”, which he said was a matter for the police.

The Sunday Times yesterday quoted a Garda source as saying that no criminal or dissident republican group had yet been able to source Semtex on the black market. The paper also claimed that the IRA is carrying out its own investigation into the latest find.

A Garda spokesman told the News Letter that a quantity of explosives had been found in a car at 11.30am in Kells on December 18.

Three men were arrested for offences against the state and two men had been charged in court, he added.

The spokesman declined to discuss what type of explosives had been found.

TUV MEP Jim Allister said that if any connections were found to the IRA it would raise “fundamental issues” about the bona fides of Sinn Fein sitting at the heart of government.

Martin Wainwright and Ben Quinn
The Guardian
Monday 22 December 2008

The streets of south London and a famous corner of Berkshire may hold little interest for treasure-hunters of the fedora-wearing, whip-cracking school, but they are starting to attract a new breed of archaeologists who enjoy plunging their trowels into the very recent past.

Homegrown excavators have started to chronicle modern protest structures while they are still warm, from eco-warriors’ treehouses to crisp packets buried at the Greenham Common peace camp.

“The actions and lives of people today are the archaeology of tomorrow,” says Anna Badcock, one of the advocates of the movement known as contemporary archaeology. “Their landscapes and habitations are perhaps no less important than what was there before.”

Trained on projects such as Bristol University’s celebrated excavation of their department’s 15-year-old Transit van - which yielded three lost pencils and confetti from a faculty party - teams are “digging” at former parts of the Maze prison in Northern Ireland and the site of the 1981 Brixton riots. Others have travelled to Malta to record links between Valetta’s former red light district and British servicemen, while the 1984-5 miners’ strike is being checked out by “battlefield archaeologists”.

According to John Schofield, an English Heritage archaeologist who “rediscovered” Emerald Camp at Greenham Common, the movement draws its inspiration from work done on military sites such as first world war trenches. “They laid the trail for what has emerged in the last 10 years,” he said. “Throughout the 20th century we … seem to have been catching up on ourselves. The end of the cold war and the closure of coalmines under the Thatcher government forced our hand a bit.”

Badcock’s main project is a survey of treehouses and aerial walkways built by protesters in a successful struggle to protect the Nine Ladies Bronze Age stone circle from quarrying. Similar work may be started shortly at Thornborough Henges in North Yorkshire, where protests are still under way against gravel extraction.

At the Maze, Laura McAtackney of Oxford University found tiny ‘comms’, or paper messages, at former inmates’ homes. But some of the H-blocks’ most famous relics have remained off limits. Escape tunnels dug by Republican prisoners have been concreted over. But Government archaeologists are thought to have explored them; so their work could in time be the subject of a dig.

GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
Irish Times
22 Dec 2008

A COMPLAINT HAS been made to the PSNI after the Minister for Education in the North praised IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands during a meeting with Belfast schoolchildren.

Sinn Féin’s Catríona Ruane spoke approvingly last week of Bobby Sands at a prize-giving ceremony at St Colm’s High School in Twinbrook, on the outskirts of west Belfast.

A complaint, made to the PSNI on Saturday, alleged the Minister was in breach of a law on glorifying terrorism.

A police spokesman said he could not comment on individual cases but confirmed that such a complaint had been received at Antrim police station.

“The assessment of the report is at an early stage and it has not been established if any offence has been committed,” the spokesman added.

Ms Ruane told the children they should be thankful that Sands, who died on hunger strike in 1981, created the conditions so that they could have a better future.

She also spoke about how she was saddened that the film The Wind That Shakes the Barley, about the War of Independence and the Civil War, had generated criticism.

Ulster Unionist Assembly member Basil McCrea said First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness should reprimand Ms Ruane.

“It is a matter of profound shame that an Education Minister of the Northern Ireland Executive stood in front of schoolchildren and lauded a terrorist hunger striker. It is also incredibly disturbing that the Education Minister revealed frightening authoritarian tendencies by attacking those who dared to criticise a film that gave a historically inaccurate account of the Civil War,” said Mr McCrea.

“This demonstrates precisely why education policy is in a complete shambles,” he added.

The North’s Department of Education would not comment on the matter and directed questions to Sinn Féin.

A Sinn Féin spokesman said it would have been totally inappropriate were Ms Ruane not to talk about Bobby Sands considering that he used to live in Twinbrook.

Referring to the complaint to the PSNI the spokesman said: “This is total nonsense. Bobby Sands is an iconic figure who is respected around the world.

” I am sure the police have more important things to consider when people are being robbed, when children are being stabbed on the streets, and people are being attacked in their homes,” the Sinn Féin spokesman said.