SAOIRSE32

Irish Times
29 Jan 09

The British government has warned loyalist paramilitaries that an extended decommissioning amnesty will be cut short if they fail to co-operate.

Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward has issued a warning to loyalists over weapons. (Photograph: Julien Behal/PA Wire)

Northern Ireland Secretary of State Shaun Woodward said if armed loyalist groups show no willingness to decommission their arsenal in the coming months then legislation that offers them effective immunity from prosecution for giving up their guns will end.

Mr Woodward had originally announced a 12-month extension to the current Decommissioning Order, which will come into effect next month. However, he has now pledged to annul that law after six months if loyalists fail to engage sufficiently with the International Independent Commission for Decommissioning (IICD).

The move follows pressure from the Northern Ireland Police Federation, which represents serving and retired officers in the region. It was unhappy with the decision to extend an amnesty that was first introduced in 1997.

While the IRA has put its arsenal out of use, groups such as the UDA and UVF remain armed despite being on ceasefire. Th Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) has expressed concerns that some loyalists are now attempting to obtain more guns.

The renewed effort to persuade loyalists to disarm comes against the backdrop of an upsurge in violent activity by dissident republicans.

Police Federation chair Terry Spence said the governments had pandered to loyalists for long enough. “Both the Irish and British governments have, at various times over the past decade, been bluffed into renewing the legislation without seeing any reward for their patience,” he said.

Mr Spence said there was no appetite in the North for another extension to the amnesty. “Instead, the political and community consensus is that the so-called loyalist paramilitaries have had eleven years in which to complete, nevermind begin, decommissioning of weapons and munitions and that their stance is one of criminal defiance,” he said.

Belfast Telegraph
Friday, 30 January 2009

A witness to the murder of Robert Hamill told policemen who were visiting his father’s home that he “put the boot in” the night the 25-year-old was killed, the Hamill inquiry heard yesterday.

The inquiry was told that teenager Timothy Jameson had previously denied seeing the assault in Portadown |centre in the early hours of April 27, 1997.

The attack, during a confrontation between Protestant and Catholic gangs, was |carried out in view of a Land Rover in which four RUC |officers were sitting.

Retired RUC detective Edward Honeyford said he was ordered to interview teenager Timothy Jameson as a matter of urgency for the second time on May 9, 1997.

He had already carried out a short interview two days after the attack — but Mr Honeyford said he was not told the exact reasons why the interview was to be carried out so urgently.

The inquiry was shown an extract from a statement by Witness G — an officer whose anonymity is being protected — who described being at the house of Mr Jameson’s father Bobby, who did contract work for police, on May 9.

Witness G’s draft statement said that Mr Jameson told them he knew more than he had said in his first statement and that he had “put the boot in”.

“Timothy Jameson was quite calm and matter of fact when he told us about that,” Witness G’s statement read.

“He didn’t appear to be frivolous or bragging — he seemed to be serious.

“He was fully aware we were police officers and probably knew that we would report it.

“I am certain that Timothy Jameson did state that he had “put the boot in” to to us.”

Mr Honeyford, who left the police in 2002, said he had not been aware at the time of the nature of the information which had reached the officers. Had he known that there was a chance Mr Jameson was involved, he would have carried out the interview with him as a suspect and under caution.

But Mr Jameson eventually withdrew his statement and said the detective had “put words in his mouth”, which Mr Honeyford denied.

Jonathan Wright claimed in a statement, which was shown to the inquiry, that Mr Honeyford threatened him in an interview, telling him he would not be able go on holiday with his girlfriend and that his father, a clergyman, would be humiliated by his son’s name being linked to the case.

These allegations were “totally wrong,” Mr Honeyford said.

“I couldn’t tell that to a |witness. There would be |absolutely no point. If his father worked for the Church of Ireland, that’s the first I heard of it.”

Mr Honeyford is to resume evidence today.

At hearing.

Opposition to compensating families of the dead is at odds with the majority pragmatic enough to know peace needs compromise

By Mairtin O’Muilleoir on Northern Irish politics
Guardian
29 January 2009

Like fanatical but dazed Japanese infantrymen, emerging from the steaming jungles of the Philippines long after the war was over to find a world at peace, the diehards of the unionist hard right staggered into the function room of the Europa hotel in Belfast yesterday as people sat quietly and prepared to discuss the landmark report into dealing with the legacy of the Troubles.

Catcalling and jeering, the loyalist zealots poured scorn on Lord Eames and Denis Bradley for daring to suggest that wounds can be healed and axes buried. The chief “crime” of the duo who headed the Consultative Group on the Past was that they refused to divide those bereaved in our 30-year dirty war into good victims (pro-British) and bad victims (pro-Irish).

And while the protesters represented no more than the recalcitrant rump of beleaguered unionism, their antics prompted the nervous nellies of the DUP into rejecting the 190-page report before most of them had got past the introduction.

And that’s a pity because privately the DUP, happily married in government to Sinn Féin, accepts not only that the war is over but that neither the unionists nor their British masters emerged as victors. And when you’ve no clear winner in the unhappy business of war, making peace requires compromise – and a thick skin. That’s why the families of the 11 nationalists mown down by marauding British soldiers in the Ballymurphy massacre of August 1971 – among them mothers, children and clergy – agreed to swallow hard today and accept that the perpetrators of that slaughter, if subsequently killed in action, are to be treated as equal in death to their loved ones.

And the good news is that, even though their voices weren’t heard above the lunchtime Sturm und Drang at the Europa, there are thousands of ordinary unionists grieving for their loved ones lost who also want desperately to make peace and move on. To use an Obama-ism, nationalists and unionists who suffered terribly in the years of warfare are extending the hand of friendship to each other even if the serial protesters continue to raise the clenched fist of the past.

Eventually even the most empire-fixated Japanese soldier emerged from his redoubt and went home. On today’s evidence, some our own fanatics are still in that jungle, still digging foxholes.

Irish News
29 Jan 09

WORDS: Michelle Williamson, whose parents George and Gillian were killed in the 1993 Shankill Road bombing in Belfast, and Families Acting for Innocent Relatives group leader William Frazer exchange words with Danny Bradley, right, whose two brothers were killed by the British army in Co Derry. Mr Bradley’s brother Robbie died in January 1972 when an army vehicle knocked him down in Greysteel. Seamus Bradley was fatally wounded on July 31 1972 in the Creggan area of Derry city. (PICTURE: Hugh Russell)

PAYMENTS of €15,000 (£13,900) have already been made to the families of paramilitaries killed in the Republic during the Troubles, it emerged last night.

The Irish government has admitted that a scheme that offered “acknowledgment payments” to victims of the Troubles in the south in 2003 included some of the families of 27 paramilitaries.

The revelation came as victims confronted each other yesterday in a Belfast hotel when the Consultative Group on the Past launched its report, including the proposal that the families of all victims, including paramilitaries, be given a £12,000 payment funded by the taxpayer.

In June 2003 a £2 million Remembrance Fund was set up by then taoiseach Bertie Ahern to provide financial support to the families of 85 people in the Republic who had been killed or injured during the Troubles.

It has now emerged for the first time that the scheme’s criteria did not exclude the families of paramilitaries.

Ten IRA men, nine INLA members, three members of the republican splinter group Saor Eire and one member of the Real IRA were killed in the south.

On the loyalist side, one UVF man and a UDA member were killed trying to plant bombs in Co Donegal.

Al Jazeera
30 Jan 09

A leaked report on Jewish settlements in the West Bank shows that the Israeli government was complicit in illegal construction on land owned by Palestinians, an Israeli human rights group says.

Yesh Din said on Friday that the classsified information, compiled by the Israeli defence ministry, would allow it to help Palestinians sue the Israeli government for damages.

Michael Sfard, Yesh Din’s legal counsel, said the information was a “severe indictment” of Israel’s military and government.

Israeli authorities are “systematically violating international law and the property rights of Palestinian residents,” he said in a statement.

The information leaked to the group shows that in three out of every four settlements in the West Bank at least some of the construction was completed without proper permits, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported.

The daily said the database showed that, in more than 30 settlements, extensive construction of buildings and infrastructure like roads, schools, synagogues, and even police stations was carried out on private lands belonging to Palestinians.

In one settlement, Elon Moreh, 18 houses were built on private land, the reports says. In another, Efrat, a park and a synagogue were built on privateland, and in a third, Ariel, a college was built without legal approval.

Yesh Din said it would begin running advertisments in Palestinian newspapers to encourage people to take legal action, and will also offer legal counsel, the statement from the group said.

The database focuses on the 120 West bank settlements that have been authorised by the Israeli government since it occupied the territory in 1967. About 100 other unauthorised outposts have also been established by settlers.

The settlements are illegal under international law and the so-called “road map” setting the course for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations calls for a halt to their expansion.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli government on the conclusions of the report.

I used the site search for SAOIRSE32 for this page containing many articles on Bloody Sunday.

Bloody Sunday

You may also use the archive feature from Lj to go to any of the postings for January 30 of any year I have posted. That link is here:

Archive

You may also use the links to the older archives listed on the right to search for more articles.

You may want to start here:

Remembering Bloody Sunday - Larkspirit

Bloody Sunday Trust

Derry Journal
30 January 2009

The image of a distraught priest waving a white hankie as a young boy was carried away from the gun-fire has undoubtedly become one of the most enduring symbols of Bloody Sunday.

Thirty-seven years ago today, Jackie Duddy became the first fatality of Bloody Sunday when he was shot from behind as he fled advancing paratroopers.

As tragedy unfolded in Derry’s Bogside, a young Fr Edward Daly (now Bishop Daly) led a frantic group of men who tried desperately to carry the 17-year-old to safety. Today, thanks to photographs and television, millions of people all over the world recognise this harrowing scene. Now the bloodstained hankie Fr Daly waved so earnestly in truce has been donated to the archives of the Museum of Free Derry by the Duddy family.

Bishop Daly, who is now retired, remembers the day only too well: “Charlie Glen, Willie Barber and Liam Bradley, were carrying young Jackie up Harvey Street away from the Rossville Flats and when we got to Waterloo Street we laid him down on the pavement to wait for an ambulance. When the ambulance came, I pushed the hankie in under Jackie’s shirt to where he was bleeding, although I think he may have already died by then.”

The handkerchief later wound up in the hands of Jackie’s father, Willie Duddy, when it was returned from the hospital among his sons belongings. The delicate fabric still bears its tiny, neat label saying ‘Fr. Daly’, and its original owner recalled: “It was my mother who actually stitched my name onto the hankie because we had a shared laundry in the Cathedral. I think I was told the Duddy family still had the handkerchief at the anniversary Mass a year later, but I never actually saw it again until decades later, when Kay (Duddy) brought it to the Guildhall after I had given evidence to the Saville Inquiry. But I was so emotionally distressed that day I remember little about it.”

‘Comfort blanket’

Bishop Daly still feels very strongly about this poignant item: “It’s an emotional subject for me, but I am glad it’s here. It tells an important part of the story here at the museum alongside so many other important reminders of that day,” he added.

Kay Duddy, Jackie’s sister, and custodian of the hankie for many years, feels equally as emotional about its tragic provenance. “My daddy kept the hankie all those years until his death in 1985 and since then I carry it with me all the time – it’s like a comfort blanket to me,” she revealed.

Kay had planned to give the handkerchief to the Museum of Free Derry for safekeeping this autumn, after families have received the final report into Bloody Sunday.

However, those plans were hastened when she almost lost the hankie to a would-be mugger in Galliagh.

“I was on my way to chapel recently and outside Moss Park a young thug tried to grab my handbag and my initial thought was: ‘Oh my God, Jackie’s hankie’s in that bag.’ I had planned to give it to the museum eventually, but that frightened me and so I decided it was best to hand it over now to keep it safe,” Kay added.

Sheer luck saved this artefact from being lost forever.

Derry Journal
30 January 2009

The political wings of the Real IRA and INLA have denied making the death threats which a group has made to six young people in Creggan over the past fortnight.

The 32 County Sovereignty Movement (32CSM) and Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) have also challenged the group behind the threats, Community Action Against Drugs (CAAD), to explain their actions.
The parents of two of the young people who received death threats recently have called for the threats to be lifted and for CAAD to explain the allegation they area making.
A spokesperson for the 32CSM - the political wing of the Real IRA - described the threats as “counter productive” and said they have “serious doubts” about the authenticity of group behind them.
“We have made strenuous efforts to make contact with this group about a number of concerns but on each occasion have drawn a blank. This leads us to have serious doubts about the authenticity and the motivation of this group,” the spokesperson said.
The 32CSM also urged for CAAD to get in touch with other republicans, “We appeal to this group to approach the republican movement in order to clear up this confusion.”
The IRSP also denied making the threats and said they are working with the families of those affected. “We are not aware who this group is and we would question their motives. They should make themselves known to other republicans and to the community they area claiming to protect.
“Young people who find themselves caught up in should be given the opportunity to come forward instead of facing threats like this. If any young people come forward to us they will be treated sensitively and confidentially,” a spokesperson said.

Irish News
28/01/2009

The trial has begun of a Dundalk man on charges relating to dissident republican activity dating back almost five years, following a legal challenge that ended up in the Republic’s highest court.

Barry O’Brien (35) has pleaded not guilty to membership of an unlawful organisation styling itself the Irish Republican Army on April 6 2004.

Gerard Clarke, prosecuting, yesterday told Dublin’s Special Criminal Court the case had first come before it in December 2004 but the defence had applied to the High Court for a judicial review challenging the jurisdiction of the court.

This was unsuccessful but on appeal the Supreme Court held that the Special Criminal Court did not have jurisdiction to proceed with the trial.

Mr Clarke said Mr O’Brien had been arrested on Holy Thursday and held for 15 hours before being charged.

The Supreme Court agreed that he had not been brought before the court “forthwith” as specified in legislation.

However, Mr Clarke said this word had been amended in the Criminal Justice Act of 2006 to “as soon as practicable”.

Mr Clarke said the court would hear the opinion evidence of a chief superintendent that Mr O’Brien was a member of an unlawful organisation and this would be corroborated by his failure to answer material questions during eight interviews after his arrest.

Ivana Bacik, representing Mr O’Brien, indicated that the defence would be challenging the jurisdiction of the court, Mr O’Brien’s arrest, a search warrant and the belief evidence of the chief superintendent.

The trial continues.

Irish News
28/01/2009

A MAN who named a co-accused as having kicked Ballymena schoolboy Michael McIlveen during the fatal attack which ultimately claimed his life, yesterday accepted he may have been mistaken.

Christopher Francis Kerr (22), of Carnduff Drive in Ballymena, also told Antrim Crown Court that another accused had denied he had even struck the 15-year-old who died in hospital from head injuries on May 8 2006, the day after the attack.

Mr Kerr, who supplied the baseball bat used to bludgeon Michael was giving evidence for a second day on his behalf.

Later when asked by the prosecution which parts of his evidence about the attack the jury should accept, Mr Kerr replied: “Them all”.

Initially Mr Kerr was cross-examined by defence QC Richard Weir for Jeff Lewis (19), from Rossdale in the town.

Mr Kerr agreed that unlike other incidents involving Catholic and Protestant youths, this had not been pre-planned, pre-arranged by goading, by either side and that it was something which happened out of the blue.

Mr Weir said it was “a terrible coincidence of events that led to the appalling death of Michael McIlveen”.

Mr Kerr admitted that he had been drunk that night and that his memory of events was

unclear but that he now regretted having broke off chasing Michael and a friend to “tragically get this baseball bat”.

He further accepted that, “Jeff Lewis could not have known that you brought the bat into the equation”, nor could he have know what another accused, 20-year-old Meryvn Wilson Moon, from Douglas Terrace, who has already pleaded guilty, would taken the bat and use it.

Mr Weir then put it to Kerr: “Can I suggest that you did not see Jeff Lewis connect, kick him in the face as you say?”

“It could be yes,” replied Mr Kerr, who also agreed later that because of the drink, the darkness, the confusion and the speed with which things happened, “it was hard to put together what did happen”.

“That’s true,” he added.

Later when questioned by Brian McCartney QC for Aaron Cavana Wallace (20), from Moat Road, Mr Kerr’s “biggest mate”, he agreed that he had asked him if he had “touched anybody in the fight and he said no”.

“That’s right, yeah,” Mr Kerr said. Mr Kerr further agreed that after the tragic consequences for Michael became clear, both he and Wallace decided that the best course of action for them was to give themselves up to the police.

“During that discussion he

reminded you he didn’t hit Michael McIlveen,” Mr McCartney said.

“Yeah,” Mr Kerr said. He also accepted that their decision to give themselves up to police, “wasn’t a question of him (Wallace) entering into a conspiracy with you”.

However, cross-examined by John Orr QC, prosecuting, about what he had told police, his own lawyer, and then defence lawyers about the attack, and which the jury should accept, Mr Kerr said: “Them all”.

Mr Kerr claimed that he because of the drink he “can remember some things and others I can’t”.

He also claimed that he must have made “a mistake” when he said he could remember everything, despite being drunk.

However, when Mr Orr put it to Mr Kerr: “You can’t have it both ways”, he replied: “I was drunk yes, but I could only remember some stuff, not everything”. The trial continues.

By Liz Trainor
Irish News
28/01/2009

THE widow of former IRA man Eamon Collins has said she is no closer to finding out who was responsible for his murder 10 years ago.

Mother-of-four Bernie Collins said she is saddened that the “psychopaths” who killed her husband are still walking the streets a decade on and warned they could kill again.

She also hit out at police investigators who, at an inquest in 2007, promised to review the murder but 15 months on still have not contacted her.

Mr Collins (44) was stabbed to death near his home on the republican Barcroft estate in Newry on January 27 1999 in one of the most savage attacks of the Troubles.

Once a member of the IRA, he had become one of the organisation’s most prominent critics.

In 1985, while facing five murder charges, he agreed during police questioning to give evidence against alleged associates in court.

More than 40 suspects were arrested but most were released after Collins had a change of heart.

He was charged with 50 paramilitary offences but walked free from court after a judge dismissed his alleged confessions.

He left his home town of Newry but returned during an IRA amnesty.

However, he rose to further prominence when he detailed his past in a book Killing Rage.

After months of constant intimidation he finally met a violent death.

The 44-year-old was stabbed repeatedly in the face, head and back, the blade of the knife piercing one of his eyes.

When police found Mr Collins’s body they initially thought he had been hit by a car.

At his inquest the coroner said the slaying was “one of the most ghastly, brutal murders” he had ever experienced. No-one has ever been convicted of his killing.

Speaking on the tenth anniversary of the murder, Mrs Collins said she still lived in hope that his killers would be brought to justice but held out no hope that those responsible had any shred of remorse.

She was also critical of the police inquiry and promises by the Retrospective Murder Review Unit (RMSU) which has not contacted her, despite pledging to re-open the case 15 months ago.

“The inquest itself was a long time coming,” she said.

“It took eight years for that to happen and in the court that day somebody made an approach to me from the unit and said they would investigate the murder. But I am no further on as to what they are doing.

“It is disappointing that they have not made any effort to contact me to say where they are with the case.

“I thought the inquest would bring some closure but I have been left with more questions unanswered.

“I would just like to know the sequence of it all, to give me some closure.”

The couple had run the gauntlet of a campaign of intimidation in Newry which Mrs Collins said she tried to shield her young family from.

Their home was torched before the murder and sinister graffiti began to appear around the estate with increasing frequency, branding him a ‘tout’.

“The night before he was killed I was out with the paintbrush cleaning up some graffiti that had appeared because I didn’t want the kids to see it on their way to school the following morning,” she said.

Recalling the morning of the killing, Mrs Collins said: “I had got up to get the children to school and came into the kitchen and found the back door open and the two dogs on their leashes.

“I thought that bit was odd and thought maybe Eamon had gone to visit his mother.

“But in the whole mix of getting the kids out I didn’t dwell on it too much. It was just as we were leaving the house and I saw a road block up the street that I got a sinking feeling in my stomach.”

Mrs Collins said she knew a trial would not bring her husband back, nor would a conviction change anything, except in terms of justice.

“But it would give me some closure if I know what happened him that day and how it took place,’’ she said.

“Had they come to the back door? Did he go away with them? Was there more than one? Did he get a telephone call? I would just like to know how it happened.

“It is sad to think that someone who could do this is out there living in the community.

“What they did was psychopathic, even sociopathic. It was exceptionally vicious. The fear is that they would have the propensity to do something like that again.”

Mrs Collins said that despite the horror of losing her husband in such a brutal manner she had learned to let go and move on although she thinks about him every day.

“Last week would have been our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary,” she said.

The murder meant she was forced to raise her four children alone without their father but she says she is extremely proud of her family.

Tiarnach (25) is a student in Essex, Lorcan (24) is a joiner living at home, while daughters Sorcha (21) and

19-year-old Aoife are both students in Edinburgh.

“They have been remarkably shielded from what happened and have never really asked about the detail, thank God,” Mrs Collins said.

“If you continue to live in the past it’s like living in a cocoon or limbo. Life is too short. You have to move on.”

A spokesman for the RMSU last night said: “The group was set up by the PSNI to review unsolved murders between 1998 and 2004 and includes Mr Collins’ investigation. Specially trained family liaison officers aim to keep the families of victims up to date with developments.

“The police service does not underestimate the responsibility we have to the families of victims.

“These liaison officers provide the link between them and the police investigation. These officers are always available for families to raise any issues or concerns they have.”

Irish News
28/01/2009

A call for an end to public inquiries is also expected to prove contentious.

The report is expected to recommend the establishment of a review and investigation unit and a thematic examination unit to replace the Historical Enquiries Team and Police Ombudsman’s Troubles-related investigations.

The system, which would be led by a panel of three and last for five years, would include reconciliation, justice and information recovery rather than public probes.

It is expected to state that since future prosecutions are unlikely it is time to open “new avenues” for information recovery to resolve “unanswered questions” for victims’ families.

The report is expected to argue that the new system would allow more “open and frank” disclosure and avoid the publicity of present inquiry proceedings.

However, it is expected to say that it will be up to the British government to decide whether there should now be a public inquiry into the 1989 murder of solicitor Pat Finucane.

His family have campaigned for the last 20 years for such an inquiry into evidence of security-force collusion in the killing.

In 2004 retired Canadian judge Peter Cory recommended a public inquiry into the killing but the Brit-ish government immediately introduced laws to allow it to withhold evidence from any new probe.

By Barry McCaffrey
Irish News
28/01/2009

THE Eames/Bradley report will today recommend that 4,500 people exiled by paramilitaries during the Troubles should be allow-ed to return to Northern Ireland.

The proposal – which would mean the return of figures such as Johnny Adair, IRA informer Martin McGartland and Special Branch agent Ken Barrett – is expected to be among 30 recommendations contained in the Eames/Bradley

report into how Northern Ireland should deal with the legacy of the Troubles.

The report is expected to recommend the establishment of a special ‘repatriation programme’ to allow those exiled by paramilitaries to come home.

The report’s authors Lord Eames and Denis Bradley last night responded to criticism over their proposal that paramilitaries would be included in a £12,000 payment to victims killed during the Troubles.

However the report is expected to be further criticised when other controversial recommendations are revealed this morning.

Nationalist victims’ groups are expected to oppose a key aspect of the report which recommends an end to all public inquiries.

The report is expected say that it will be up to the British government as to whether or not it will allow a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane.

Other recommendations are believed to include a call for new legislation to ensure that employers can not discriminate against former paramilitary prisoners.

However it is understood that the Eames/Bradley recommendations will stop short of calling for an amnesty for 200 ‘on the runs’ but will instead recommend that their cases should be reviewed in five years.

The report is also expected to recommend that June 21 should be officially named as a ‘Day of Reflection’ for Northern Ireland, with First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness being asked to make a joint address on the day to promote reconciliation.

However, in an apparent sign of continuing divisions, the Eames/Bradley report is expected to admit that it was unable to agree on proposals for a joint memorial for victims of the Troubles.

The report is expected to admit that the issue of a memorial remains “extremely controversial’’ for many victims’ families and posed many challenging issues which the Eames/Bradley team were unable to agree on.

It is understood that it will recommend that any new Troubles memorial should not include the names of the dead or descriptions of how they were killed, as it would be likely to cause offence to opposing groups.

It is likely to recommend that the issue of a Troubles memorial should be put off until 2014.

Lord Eames, last night appealed for people to read the report in its entirety before judging it.

“It is a challenging and complex report,” he said.

“This is too important an issue for instant responses.”

Irish News
28 Jan 09

ARMS: A forensic officer examines the scene on the Crumlin Road last night after guns and ammuntion were found in a black taxi PICTURE: Ann McManus

POLICE were last night investigating a possible Continuity IRA link after weapons and ammunition were recovered by police in a black taxi in north Belfast.

A specialist police unit arrested two men and recovered two handguns, a shotgun and ammunition after the taxi was stopped on Belfast’s Crumlin Road shortly after 5pm yesterday evening.

The arrests came after dissident republicans were blamed for a series of bomb alerts across the north.

Yesterday morning police raided a number of houses in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast but it is understood last night’s weapons’ find was not connected.

In Co Down police mounted a major security alert after a telephone warning that a bomb had been left in a Volkswagen in the Burrenreagh Road area of Castlewellan yesterday evening.

The operation was still ongoing last night.

Earlier in the day police had mounted a major security operation after a dissident warning that they had abandoned a rocket launcher close to Newtownbutler in Co Fermanagh.

The alert later proved to be a hoax.

Condemning those behind the alert, Chief Superintendent Michael Skuce said: “Those who operate under various flags of convenience are simply terrorists and criminals.”

“It is unfortunate that the lives of local people were inconvenienced while the searches were going on but the blame for that lies squarely with those who claimed to have carried out the attack in the first place.”

By John F. Burns
International Herald Tribune
January 29, 2009

LONDON: A long-awaited reconciliation plan for Northern Ireland provoked a wave of anger across the province - and in the House of Commons in London - with a provision for payments of about $16,800 to families of all of the 3,700 people killed during 30 years of sectarian violence, including paramilitaries killed by their own bombs.

A news conference accompanying the release of the plan in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital, became the stage for an eruption of the anger and grief still burning among those who lost relatives in the sectarian violence. The struggle cast Protestant paramilitaries loyal to Britain against armed groups with roots in the Roman Catholic minority, including the Irish Republican Army, that campaigned for a united Ireland.

As the authors of the plan prepared to speak at a crowded Belfast hotel on Wednesday, Protestant hard-liners jumped up to shout insults and trade recriminations with others in the audience with links to the IRA. Those involved in the protests included men and women who lost relatives in the violence, or were wounded in the IRA attacks that accounted for more than 60 percent of the deaths in the strife.

“My brother was an innocent man defending this whole community,” said Hazlett Lynch, whose brother, a police officer, was killed in a 1977 IRA ambush, according to a report by Britain’s Press Association. “When IRA men died while launching cowardly attacks on this community, they actually received justice. The families of those murderers should not be consoled with a single penny today.”

At one point, the gathering threatened to descend into violence amid the welter of jabbing fingers and virulent insults. One of those singled out in the tirades was Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA. One protester shouted, “This is the man who was in charge of the IRA on Bloody Friday,” the name given to a series of IRA bombings on July 21, 1972, that killed nine people, including two British soldiers, and wounded 130 civilians.

Others defended Adams, who was a central figure in the negotiations that brought most of the violence to an end with a power-sharing agreement that emerged from the 1998 Good Friday agreement. “You should be arrested,” one of Adams’s supporters shouted back amid the din. “Leave him alone. Why don’t you get out?”

The outbursts appeared to shock the two authors of the reconciliation plan, the former Anglican archbishop of Northern Ireland, Robin Eames, and Denis Bradley, a former Catholic priest and journalist who is vice chairman of Northern Ireland’s police board. At one point, Eames appeared to offer a qualified apology. “Maybe this gesture, for those outside our group, is too sudden,” he said.

Appointed by the British government to head a panel called the Consultative Group on the Past, the two men spent 18 months preparing their 190-page report on steps to help Northern Ireland move toward a lasting peace. The report contained more than 30 proposals, including the establishment of a body to be known as the Legacy Commission, similar in some ways to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation panel after the collapse of apartheid, which would seek to bind the wounds of the past by investigating unresolved killings.

The new commission would take over existing efforts to investigate the hundreds of ambushes, assassinations and bombings whose perpetrators were never caught, encouraging IRA militants and Protestant paramilitaries to come clean about their pasts. It would also look into some of the killings by the British Army and the province’s Protestant-dominated police force, and encourage meetings behind closed doors at which perpetrators and victims could seek reconciliation.

By far the most controversial of their proposals was the recommendation for what they called “recognition payments” to the families of all of those killed in the years of violence, even perpetrators of the violence.

Even before the report’s release, the proposal was bitterly denounced by spokesmen for the main Protestant groups, including Peter Robinson, who serves as Northern Ireland’s first minister under the power-sharing arrangement. Robinson said the Democratic Unionist Party he leads has “consistently opposed any equation between the perpetrator of the crimes during the Troubles and the innocent victim.”

“Terrorists died carrying out their evil and wicked deeds while innocent men, women and children were wiped out by merciless gangsters,” he said, but suggested that the recommendations needed further study.

Martin McGuinness, a former IRA paramilitary leader who serves as deputy first minister in the Belfast government, called for careful reflection by all those involved. “I think that obviously dealing with the past is something which is of tremendous importance and significance for all,” he said, “but I think that once the report is published for all to see, it should be studied and I think we can make more definitive comments after that.”

The idea of payments to the families of those who died while carrying out attacks led to bitter outbursts in the British House of Commons during the prime minister’s weekly question time. Nigel Dodds, who represents the party led by Robinson, asked Prime Minister Gordon Brown to “acknowledge the deep hurt and offense that has been caused by the obnoxious proposal,” which he said “effectively does away with the distinction between murderers and those who they went out to murder and kill.”

Brown hinted that the government might not endorse the plan, at least as far as perpetrators of violence are concerned. “I know that you speak for the whole community in Northern Ireland when you say we must respect the fact that innocent people lost their lives and that should be something that is never forgotten,” he said.

BBC
29 Jan 09

Two men have been arrested by gardai in Dublin investigating dissident republican activity.

The men were arrested in the Newport Street area of the city at about 1330 GMT on Thursday.

A gun was also recovered during the operation.

The two men, one of whom is aged in his 30s, the other in his 50s, are being held under Section 30 of the Republic’s Offences against the State Act.