10.1.04
Republican Bulletin Board -> Daniel McColgan
**This post over at the RBB was made to mark the anniversary of the murder of Daniel McColgan:
Please spare a thought for Daniel and his family
Our wait for justice goes on says family
This Monday sees the second anniversary of the UDA murder of Daniel McColgan as his family still wait for justice for their son.
No one has ever been charged with the 20-year-old postman’s murder on a cold January morning in 2001.
He was shot dead by the South East Antrim Brigade of the UDA on the orders of its then leader John “Grugg” Gregg. The loyalist boss was later gunned down by Johnny Adair’s C Company at the height of last year’s loyalist feud.
Daniel McColgan was shot dead as he arrived for work at the Rathcoole postal sorting office around 5am on January 12 2001.
After his murder, the UDA, using its cover name the Red Hand Defenders, said it considered all Catholic postal workers "legitimate targets".
It followed a similar threat made to teachers and Catholic workers at Catholic schools in North Belfast.
Then in a bizarre stunt the UDA told the media that the Red Hand Defenders had been ordered to disband.
Marie McColgan said not a day passed without the pain of losing her son.
“Every day I look at my granddaughter Bethany who grows up without her daddy and at my family who have been heartbroken by the loss of Daniel.”
The grieving mother said she would continue to wait for justice for her son and retained the hope of someday seeing her sons killers convicted of his murder.
“Daniel’s headstone was vandalised again this year, but these people can’t do him any more harm now, so I don’t know what the point of it all is. We go into the second anniversary and there are still no developments. There is nothing to do but wait for justice for Daniel.”
**This post over at the RBB was made to mark the anniversary of the murder of Daniel McColgan:
Please spare a thought for Daniel and his family
Our wait for justice goes on says family
This Monday sees the second anniversary of the UDA murder of Daniel McColgan as his family still wait for justice for their son.
No one has ever been charged with the 20-year-old postman’s murder on a cold January morning in 2001.
He was shot dead by the South East Antrim Brigade of the UDA on the orders of its then leader John “Grugg” Gregg. The loyalist boss was later gunned down by Johnny Adair’s C Company at the height of last year’s loyalist feud.
Daniel McColgan was shot dead as he arrived for work at the Rathcoole postal sorting office around 5am on January 12 2001.
After his murder, the UDA, using its cover name the Red Hand Defenders, said it considered all Catholic postal workers "legitimate targets".
It followed a similar threat made to teachers and Catholic workers at Catholic schools in North Belfast.
Then in a bizarre stunt the UDA told the media that the Red Hand Defenders had been ordered to disband.
Marie McColgan said not a day passed without the pain of losing her son.
“Every day I look at my granddaughter Bethany who grows up without her daddy and at my family who have been heartbroken by the loss of Daniel.”
The grieving mother said she would continue to wait for justice for her son and retained the hope of someday seeing her sons killers convicted of his murder.
“Daniel’s headstone was vandalised again this year, but these people can’t do him any more harm now, so I don’t know what the point of it all is. We go into the second anniversary and there are still no developments. There is nothing to do but wait for justice for Daniel.”
9.1.04
Reuters
IRA weapons to build U.S. "peace fountain"
Fri 9 January, 2004 17:46
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Weapons confiscated from the IRA in recent decades and destroyed by Irish police are to be melted down and shipped to the United States to help build a "peace fountain".
The firearms, which included heavy sub-machine guns, Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers, were seized during investigations into paramilitary and criminal activities mostly between the 1980s and mid-1990s, police said.
"The bulk of the weapons -- 95 percent -- were seized from paramilitaries and by far the great majority of them from the Provisional IRA," police spokesman Brendan McArdle told Reuters.
Around 800 firearms were destroyed at a secret location in Dublin on Friday -- the last of thousands of confiscated weapons dismantled by police in recent years.
The fragments will be melted down and sent to Ohio to help make a peace fountain there that will be dedicated to the reduction of global violence. It is due to be finished on the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.
The project will also gather metal fragments from illegal weapons seized in other countries, including Britain.
"It's a truly international effort," said the fountain's American designer Michael Whitely, accompanying a group of Ohio police officers to Dublin to oversee the destruction of the weapons.
The IRA has scrapped at least three batches of its illegal arsenal since October 2001 but retains a substantial stockpile hidden in secret arms dumps mainly in the Irish Republic.
Most of the weapons destroyed on Friday would have been among shipments smuggled from Libya in the 1980s, McArdle said.
IRA weapons to build U.S. "peace fountain"
Fri 9 January, 2004 17:46
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Weapons confiscated from the IRA in recent decades and destroyed by Irish police are to be melted down and shipped to the United States to help build a "peace fountain".
The firearms, which included heavy sub-machine guns, Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles and rocket launchers, were seized during investigations into paramilitary and criminal activities mostly between the 1980s and mid-1990s, police said.
"The bulk of the weapons -- 95 percent -- were seized from paramilitaries and by far the great majority of them from the Provisional IRA," police spokesman Brendan McArdle told Reuters.
Around 800 firearms were destroyed at a secret location in Dublin on Friday -- the last of thousands of confiscated weapons dismantled by police in recent years.
The fragments will be melted down and sent to Ohio to help make a peace fountain there that will be dedicated to the reduction of global violence. It is due to be finished on the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities.
The project will also gather metal fragments from illegal weapons seized in other countries, including Britain.
"It's a truly international effort," said the fountain's American designer Michael Whitely, accompanying a group of Ohio police officers to Dublin to oversee the destruction of the weapons.
The IRA has scrapped at least three batches of its illegal arsenal since October 2001 but retains a substantial stockpile hidden in secret arms dumps mainly in the Irish Republic.
Most of the weapons destroyed on Friday would have been among shipments smuggled from Libya in the 1980s, McArdle said.
::: u.tv :::
FRIDAY 09/01/2004 16:31:05
Historical figures top in political poll
Modern-day Irish politicians have been trounced by their historical counterparts in a new online poll.
By: Press Association
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern failed to even make the top 50 in the major Internet poll, which is currently topped by Ireland`s first woman minister Constance Markievicz.
Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen, tipped by many as Mr Ahern`s eventual successor, is the first current cabinet minister to feature, ranking fourteenth.
In second place is Sean Lemass, a founder member of Fianna Fail, elected Taoiseach in 1959, while hot on his heels is revolutionary leader General Michael Collins.
Visitors to the site can vote on which politicians are ``hot`` and which ones deserve their P45s.
After several thousand votes, Constance Markievicz, is just on top. The 1916 Easter Rising leader was the first woman elected to the House of Commons and was Minister of Labour in the first Dail.
But the contest for the top three places is close and can change several times a day.
Mr Ahern, who has slid to 59th place, lags behind some of his parliamentary rivals.
Enda Kenny, the leader of the main opposition party, Fine Gael, is at 28th and Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte is 39th.
Languishing at the foot of the table in 186th place is Dublin North TD G V Wright, who was caught drink-driving last year and recently admitted receiving a £10,000 payment from a property developer.
Irish entertainment site P45.net has been running the poll for the past month. It describes the vote as ``Ireland`s first international, online, ongoing and totally riggable general election``.
For rating purposes, the poll includes all current members of the Dail, all former presidents and Taoisigh, and other historical figures.
The poll works in ``real time``, meaning that some politicians can jump places in a matter of minutes.
As its organisers point out, unlike the Government`s new electronic voting system it doesn`t cost taxpayers £23million (33m euro).
Managing director Paul Clerkin insists that although it may appear to be just another superficial poll, he wants readers to rate the politicians on their ability ``not their charm or good looks.``
He said he wouldn`t be surprised if there were a few secret campaigns to push various politicians up the table in coming weeks.
``But in the in the long term it`ll probably be a case of swings and roundabouts,`` he added.
``We`ll be encouraging our users to vote early and vote often.``
The current top 10:
1 Constance Markievicz 2 Sean Lemass 3 Michael Collins 4 Douglas Hyde 5 Cearbhall Ë Dalaigh 6 Mary Robinson 7 RuairÝ Quinn 8 Garret FitzGerald 9 WT Cosgrave 10 John A Costello.
FRIDAY 09/01/2004 16:31:05
Historical figures top in political poll
Modern-day Irish politicians have been trounced by their historical counterparts in a new online poll.
By: Press Association
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern failed to even make the top 50 in the major Internet poll, which is currently topped by Ireland`s first woman minister Constance Markievicz.
Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen, tipped by many as Mr Ahern`s eventual successor, is the first current cabinet minister to feature, ranking fourteenth.
In second place is Sean Lemass, a founder member of Fianna Fail, elected Taoiseach in 1959, while hot on his heels is revolutionary leader General Michael Collins.
Visitors to the site can vote on which politicians are ``hot`` and which ones deserve their P45s.
After several thousand votes, Constance Markievicz, is just on top. The 1916 Easter Rising leader was the first woman elected to the House of Commons and was Minister of Labour in the first Dail.
But the contest for the top three places is close and can change several times a day.
Mr Ahern, who has slid to 59th place, lags behind some of his parliamentary rivals.
Enda Kenny, the leader of the main opposition party, Fine Gael, is at 28th and Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte is 39th.
Languishing at the foot of the table in 186th place is Dublin North TD G V Wright, who was caught drink-driving last year and recently admitted receiving a £10,000 payment from a property developer.
Irish entertainment site P45.net has been running the poll for the past month. It describes the vote as ``Ireland`s first international, online, ongoing and totally riggable general election``.
For rating purposes, the poll includes all current members of the Dail, all former presidents and Taoisigh, and other historical figures.
The poll works in ``real time``, meaning that some politicians can jump places in a matter of minutes.
As its organisers point out, unlike the Government`s new electronic voting system it doesn`t cost taxpayers £23million (33m euro).
Managing director Paul Clerkin insists that although it may appear to be just another superficial poll, he wants readers to rate the politicians on their ability ``not their charm or good looks.``
He said he wouldn`t be surprised if there were a few secret campaigns to push various politicians up the table in coming weeks.
``But in the in the long term it`ll probably be a case of swings and roundabouts,`` he added.
``We`ll be encouraging our users to vote early and vote often.``
The current top 10:
1 Constance Markievicz 2 Sean Lemass 3 Michael Collins 4 Douglas Hyde 5 Cearbhall Ë Dalaigh 6 Mary Robinson 7 RuairÝ Quinn 8 Garret FitzGerald 9 WT Cosgrave 10 John A Costello.
8.1.04
BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | Good Friday review 'this month'
Good Friday review 'this month'
The review of the Good Friday Agreement could begin on 29 January.
The target date emerged during talks in Dublin on Thursday between Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Alliance leader David Ford, the BBC has learnt.
The review could run until at least Easter but is likely to be interrupted by campaigning for the European elections in June.
NI Secretary Paul Murphy and Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen are set to meet this month to finalise the plans.
The devolved administration at Stormont was suspended in October 2002 amid allegations of IRA intelligence-gathering in the Stormont government.
The review would involve all the Northern Ireland Assembly parties.
Alliance leader David Ford said after his meeting with Mr Ahern that the UK and Irish Governments appeared to be looking at a review which could last several months.
They [the UK and Irish Governments] are adamant that the review will not be long and open-ended
Alliance leader David Ford
"The target appears to be two or three months," Mr Ford said.
"However there is a recognition that given the amount of work which will have to be done it could take longer."
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams had called for a "short, sharp, focused" process lasting one month.
The SDLP had also pressed for a limited, short review, but the DUP, now the largest party in the province, wants radical changes to the Agreement.
The Ulster Unionists wants a brief review focusing solely on the problem of paramilitaries.
The cross-community Alliance Party published its proposals for the review of the Good Friday Agreement on Wednesday.
'No radical changes'
It called for a change to the way devolved governments are established in Northern Ireland.
It wants a voluntary coalition similar to the ones operating in Scotland and Wales.
This would be accountable to the Assembly, instead of the inclusive power-sharing executive involving unionist and nationalist parties.
Mr Ahern told the BBC last week both the British and Irish Governments had made it clear the Agreement could be reviewed, but they were not prepared to make fundamental changes to it.
Good Friday review 'this month'
The review of the Good Friday Agreement could begin on 29 January.
The target date emerged during talks in Dublin on Thursday between Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Alliance leader David Ford, the BBC has learnt.
The review could run until at least Easter but is likely to be interrupted by campaigning for the European elections in June.
NI Secretary Paul Murphy and Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen are set to meet this month to finalise the plans.
The devolved administration at Stormont was suspended in October 2002 amid allegations of IRA intelligence-gathering in the Stormont government.
The review would involve all the Northern Ireland Assembly parties.
Alliance leader David Ford said after his meeting with Mr Ahern that the UK and Irish Governments appeared to be looking at a review which could last several months.
They [the UK and Irish Governments] are adamant that the review will not be long and open-ended
Alliance leader David Ford
"The target appears to be two or three months," Mr Ford said.
"However there is a recognition that given the amount of work which will have to be done it could take longer."
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams had called for a "short, sharp, focused" process lasting one month.
The SDLP had also pressed for a limited, short review, but the DUP, now the largest party in the province, wants radical changes to the Agreement.
The Ulster Unionists wants a brief review focusing solely on the problem of paramilitaries.
The cross-community Alliance Party published its proposals for the review of the Good Friday Agreement on Wednesday.
'No radical changes'
It called for a change to the way devolved governments are established in Northern Ireland.
It wants a voluntary coalition similar to the ones operating in Scotland and Wales.
This would be accountable to the Assembly, instead of the inclusive power-sharing executive involving unionist and nationalist parties.
Mr Ahern told the BBC last week both the British and Irish Governments had made it clear the Agreement could be reviewed, but they were not prepared to make fundamental changes to it.
7.1.04
POWs: Irish Political Prisoners
This link will take you to the updated POW list on the Irish Freedom Committee web site.
This link will take you to the updated POW list on the Irish Freedom Committee web site.
::: u.tv :::
TUESDAY 06/01/2004 16:24:29 UTV
SF MLA slams monitoring body
A commission to monitor paramilitary activity and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement will be used to validate British government moves to subvert democracy, it was claimed today.
By: Press Association
As the British and Irish governments prepared to formally give effect tomorrow to the four-member Independent Monitoring Commission, Sinn Fein Assembly Group leader Conor Murphy denounced the body, claiming its powers ``contradict democratic norms``.
The Newry and Armagh MLA also criticised London and Dublin for bringing the commission into being and holding back on other pledges in their joint declaration of last year, including the scaling down of the British Army presence in Northern Ireland.
He argued: ``The International Monitoring Commission (IMC) is outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
``It is ironic that the only aspect of the joint declaration which the two governments have advanced upon is the IMC.
``They have repeatedly failed to implement their commitments on policing, demilitarisation, human rights and equality, all of which are within the terms of the Agreement.
The four-member commission will report on the IRA and loyalist ceasefires every six months and scrutinise the government`s programme of demilitarisation.
It will also probe complaints about political tactics which undermine the stability of the political institutions during devolution.
Former Northern Ireland Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice and John Grieve, a former head of the Metropolitan Police`s anti-terrorist squad were appointed by the British government to serve on the body.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States and retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan will also take part.
Following unionist concerns, it was decided that only the British government`s nominees will examine how devolved ministers and Northern Ireland parties are honouring their commitments under the Good Friday Agreement.
Republicans have been fiercely critical of the body since it was proposed last May.
Mr Murphy said today: ``The legislation gives the power of exclusion to the British Secretary of State.
``Such powers contradict the democratic norms and the rights of the electorate. Indeed the British Secretary of State who has been given these powers is himself in breach of the Agreement by virtue of his refusal to lift the suspension of the political institutions.
``Successive British Secretaries of State have suspended the Assembly on four occasions, at the behest of unionism. Nobody should be in any doubt that the additional powers given to the British Secretary of State will be used similarly.
``The IMC reports will be based upon information supplied by securocrats. The IMC will be no more than a smokescreen to validate arbitrary acts of exclusion by the British Secretary of State.``
TUESDAY 06/01/2004 16:24:29 UTV
SF MLA slams monitoring body
A commission to monitor paramilitary activity and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement will be used to validate British government moves to subvert democracy, it was claimed today.
By: Press Association
As the British and Irish governments prepared to formally give effect tomorrow to the four-member Independent Monitoring Commission, Sinn Fein Assembly Group leader Conor Murphy denounced the body, claiming its powers ``contradict democratic norms``.
The Newry and Armagh MLA also criticised London and Dublin for bringing the commission into being and holding back on other pledges in their joint declaration of last year, including the scaling down of the British Army presence in Northern Ireland.
He argued: ``The International Monitoring Commission (IMC) is outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
``It is ironic that the only aspect of the joint declaration which the two governments have advanced upon is the IMC.
``They have repeatedly failed to implement their commitments on policing, demilitarisation, human rights and equality, all of which are within the terms of the Agreement.
The four-member commission will report on the IRA and loyalist ceasefires every six months and scrutinise the government`s programme of demilitarisation.
It will also probe complaints about political tactics which undermine the stability of the political institutions during devolution.
Former Northern Ireland Assembly Speaker Lord Alderdice and John Grieve, a former head of the Metropolitan Police`s anti-terrorist squad were appointed by the British government to serve on the body.
Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the United States and retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan will also take part.
Following unionist concerns, it was decided that only the British government`s nominees will examine how devolved ministers and Northern Ireland parties are honouring their commitments under the Good Friday Agreement.
Republicans have been fiercely critical of the body since it was proposed last May.
Mr Murphy said today: ``The legislation gives the power of exclusion to the British Secretary of State.
``Such powers contradict the democratic norms and the rights of the electorate. Indeed the British Secretary of State who has been given these powers is himself in breach of the Agreement by virtue of his refusal to lift the suspension of the political institutions.
``Successive British Secretaries of State have suspended the Assembly on four occasions, at the behest of unionism. Nobody should be in any doubt that the additional powers given to the British Secretary of State will be used similarly.
``The IMC reports will be based upon information supplied by securocrats. The IMC will be no more than a smokescreen to validate arbitrary acts of exclusion by the British Secretary of State.``
IOL: SDLP slams discrimination against Irish citizens
SDLP slams discrimination against Irish citizens
07/01/2004 - 10:32:40
The SDLP has accused the British government of discriminating against Irish citizens by barring them from civil service jobs in the North.
Irish-born applicants for senior jobs in three civil service departments were recently barred from the positions due to their nationality.
The British government said the applicants were ineligible under a British law that bars foreign nationals from one-quarter of all civil service jobs, but SDLP spokesman Sean Farren said he believed the restriction was illegal under EU law.
SDLP slams discrimination against Irish citizens
07/01/2004 - 10:32:40
The SDLP has accused the British government of discriminating against Irish citizens by barring them from civil service jobs in the North.
Irish-born applicants for senior jobs in three civil service departments were recently barred from the positions due to their nationality.
The British government said the applicants were ineligible under a British law that bars foreign nationals from one-quarter of all civil service jobs, but SDLP spokesman Sean Farren said he believed the restriction was illegal under EU law.
BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | Monitoring body to start work
Monitoring body to start work
The commission arose out of discussions on the joint declaration
A four-man body to monitor paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland is expected to become fully operational on Wednesday.
It is understood the Independent Monitoring Commission, which was set up in shadow form last year, will formally exist after an exchange of letters between the British and Irish Governments.
The commission is a crucial element in the two governments' plans for restoring devolution which was suspended in October 2002 amid allegations of IRA intelligence gathering at Stormont.
Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy is expected to make a written statement about the new body, which is aimed at bolstering public confidence in the ceasefires.
A draft international agreement was signed between the British and Irish Governments last September confirming the new commission.
However, it has taken some months to pass legislation in London and Dublin.
The commission is comprised of Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Commander John Grieve, former head of the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist squad; Lord Alderdice, the presiding officer of the assembly and retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan.
The commission will report on the IRA and loyalist ceasefires every six months.
The body will report back on the state of the ceasefires
It will also scrutinise the government's programme of demilitarisation and complaints about political tactics which threaten the stability of the devolved institutions.
However, only the British Government's nominees - Lord Alderdice and John Grieve - will examine how devolved ministers and Northern Ireland parties are honouring their commitments under the Good Friday Agreement.
The commission arose out of discussions on the joint declaration earlier this year involving London and Dublin and the political parties.
However, the body is already proving controversial.
While the Ulster Unionists and Alliance lobbied for the body, Sinn Fein has insisted it is outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The SDLP believes the body could be useful, but has concerns about its remit and the DUP has shown no enthusiasm for the new commission.
Meanwhile, the Alliance Party is set to reveal its proposals for the forthcoming review of the Good Friday Agreement on Wednesday.
Party leader David Ford said it was a chance to make sure the Agreement worked despite the current difficulties facing the political process.
Monitoring body to start work
The commission arose out of discussions on the joint declaration
A four-man body to monitor paramilitary activity in Northern Ireland is expected to become fully operational on Wednesday.
It is understood the Independent Monitoring Commission, which was set up in shadow form last year, will formally exist after an exchange of letters between the British and Irish Governments.
The commission is a crucial element in the two governments' plans for restoring devolution which was suspended in October 2002 amid allegations of IRA intelligence gathering at Stormont.
Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy is expected to make a written statement about the new body, which is aimed at bolstering public confidence in the ceasefires.
A draft international agreement was signed between the British and Irish Governments last September confirming the new commission.
However, it has taken some months to pass legislation in London and Dublin.
The commission is comprised of Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency; Commander John Grieve, former head of the Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorist squad; Lord Alderdice, the presiding officer of the assembly and retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan.
The commission will report on the IRA and loyalist ceasefires every six months.
The body will report back on the state of the ceasefires
It will also scrutinise the government's programme of demilitarisation and complaints about political tactics which threaten the stability of the devolved institutions.
However, only the British Government's nominees - Lord Alderdice and John Grieve - will examine how devolved ministers and Northern Ireland parties are honouring their commitments under the Good Friday Agreement.
The commission arose out of discussions on the joint declaration earlier this year involving London and Dublin and the political parties.
However, the body is already proving controversial.
While the Ulster Unionists and Alliance lobbied for the body, Sinn Fein has insisted it is outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The SDLP believes the body could be useful, but has concerns about its remit and the DUP has shown no enthusiasm for the new commission.
Meanwhile, the Alliance Party is set to reveal its proposals for the forthcoming review of the Good Friday Agreement on Wednesday.
Party leader David Ford said it was a chance to make sure the Agreement worked despite the current difficulties facing the political process.
6.1.04
::: u.tv :::
TUESDAY 06/01/2004 14:09:50 UTV
Coroner to see files on IRA killings
The Ministry of Defence has finally agreed to provide a Northern Ireland coroner investigating 10 contentious killings, including those of seven IRA men, full access to documents and video footage relating to the cases, it was announced today.
By:Press Association
A recent High Court case in Belfast on an unrelated but similar case ordered police to hand over unedited documents relating to the deaths of two IRA men.
East Tyrone coroner Roger McLernon told a preliminary inquest into the 10 killings that following the High Court ruling it had been agreed the Ministry of Defence would provide him with access to unedited documents and video footage which related to some of the killings.
Attempts to hold the inquests into the deaths in the early 1990s had been dogged by legal argument over security force disclosure of documents and the case has been adjourned on more than a dozen occasions.
The cases under consideration are the Loyalist murder of Catholic pensioner Roseanne Mallon, 76, 10 years ago and uncle and nephew Jack and Kevin McKearney in 1992.
Mrs Mallon was killed by the UVF at her sister-in-law`s home in Dungannon. A legal battle over evidence began after it emerged the house had been under surveillance by under-cover soldiers at the time of the killing. Arguments centred on access to soldiers` logs books and video footage.
The McKearney`s were killed by loyalist gunmen as they worked in the family butcher`s shop at Moy, County Tyrone.
The IRA men died at the hands of the SAS in two separate incidents and it is believed that at least one of them was video taped.
Four terrorists, Kevin Barry O`Donnell, Patrick Vincent, Sean O`Farrell and Peter Clancy were shot dead by the SAS at Clonoe, County Tyrone in 1992.
Three more Peter Ryan, Tony Doras and Lawrence McNally were killed at Coagh, County Tyrone in 1991 when SAS soldiers fired up to 200 shots at a stolen car they were travelling in.
Both incidents have been plagued by allegations of a ``shoot-to -kill policy`` operated by the security forces.
The coroner told today`s hearing in Dungannon that it would take him up to two months to study the thousands of pages of unedited documents and he adjourned the case until March 16.
He said he would decide what material was relevant to the cases and should be made public to the families and their legal representatives.
But he said: ``Any decision I take could be open to challenge.``
Mr McLernon said it would be open to the Police Service of Northern Ireland or the Ministry of Defence to challenge his decisions on the grounds of public interest immunity.
``If they decide (that) security grounds override public interest issues.``
He said there was a balancing exercise to be undertaken but it would be him and not the High Court that would decide initially on the relevance of information.
Speaking after the case the Sinn Fein MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew, said today`s announcement amounted to ``limited progress``.
But she said: ``My concern is that the British have been involved in a culture of concealment and the Ministry of Defence can still argue for public immunity, that the families will still not be getting the full details about the deaths of their loved ones.``
She said there had been cases where families had never got the full truth because of public immunity.
``The families are going to have to struggle and fight for every bit of disclosure they get.``
Christie Mallon, nephew of Mrs Mallon said he still doubted whether they would still get to the truth.
``I believe our legal team should be there with the coroner to see the documents - how can he decide on his own what is relevant.``
Roisin Ui Mhuiri, sister of IRA man Kevin Barry O`Donnell,said that in theory today`s announcement was good news but she too expressed concerns about the coroner deciding what was relevant or not.
``We might still need a public inquiry to get to the truth,`` she said.
TUESDAY 06/01/2004 14:09:50 UTV
Coroner to see files on IRA killings
The Ministry of Defence has finally agreed to provide a Northern Ireland coroner investigating 10 contentious killings, including those of seven IRA men, full access to documents and video footage relating to the cases, it was announced today.
By:Press Association
A recent High Court case in Belfast on an unrelated but similar case ordered police to hand over unedited documents relating to the deaths of two IRA men.
East Tyrone coroner Roger McLernon told a preliminary inquest into the 10 killings that following the High Court ruling it had been agreed the Ministry of Defence would provide him with access to unedited documents and video footage which related to some of the killings.
Attempts to hold the inquests into the deaths in the early 1990s had been dogged by legal argument over security force disclosure of documents and the case has been adjourned on more than a dozen occasions.
The cases under consideration are the Loyalist murder of Catholic pensioner Roseanne Mallon, 76, 10 years ago and uncle and nephew Jack and Kevin McKearney in 1992.
Mrs Mallon was killed by the UVF at her sister-in-law`s home in Dungannon. A legal battle over evidence began after it emerged the house had been under surveillance by under-cover soldiers at the time of the killing. Arguments centred on access to soldiers` logs books and video footage.
The McKearney`s were killed by loyalist gunmen as they worked in the family butcher`s shop at Moy, County Tyrone.
The IRA men died at the hands of the SAS in two separate incidents and it is believed that at least one of them was video taped.
Four terrorists, Kevin Barry O`Donnell, Patrick Vincent, Sean O`Farrell and Peter Clancy were shot dead by the SAS at Clonoe, County Tyrone in 1992.
Three more Peter Ryan, Tony Doras and Lawrence McNally were killed at Coagh, County Tyrone in 1991 when SAS soldiers fired up to 200 shots at a stolen car they were travelling in.
Both incidents have been plagued by allegations of a ``shoot-to -kill policy`` operated by the security forces.
The coroner told today`s hearing in Dungannon that it would take him up to two months to study the thousands of pages of unedited documents and he adjourned the case until March 16.
He said he would decide what material was relevant to the cases and should be made public to the families and their legal representatives.
But he said: ``Any decision I take could be open to challenge.``
Mr McLernon said it would be open to the Police Service of Northern Ireland or the Ministry of Defence to challenge his decisions on the grounds of public interest immunity.
``If they decide (that) security grounds override public interest issues.``
He said there was a balancing exercise to be undertaken but it would be him and not the High Court that would decide initially on the relevance of information.
Speaking after the case the Sinn Fein MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew, said today`s announcement amounted to ``limited progress``.
But she said: ``My concern is that the British have been involved in a culture of concealment and the Ministry of Defence can still argue for public immunity, that the families will still not be getting the full details about the deaths of their loved ones.``
She said there had been cases where families had never got the full truth because of public immunity.
``The families are going to have to struggle and fight for every bit of disclosure they get.``
Christie Mallon, nephew of Mrs Mallon said he still doubted whether they would still get to the truth.
``I believe our legal team should be there with the coroner to see the documents - how can he decide on his own what is relevant.``
Roisin Ui Mhuiri, sister of IRA man Kevin Barry O`Donnell,said that in theory today`s announcement was good news but she too expressed concerns about the coroner deciding what was relevant or not.
``We might still need a public inquiry to get to the truth,`` she said.
Saoirse Online Newsroom
Seán South Commemoration: RIRA should disband
Limerick Republican Sinn Féin
January 4, 2004
A leading member of Republican Sinn Féin has said that the Real IRA should consider disbanding, and dumping arms because they have no credibility and are not the true inheritors of the 1916 Proclamation.
Emmet Walsh from Tullamore, County Offaly was speaking at the annual Seán South commemoration in Limerick when he said that the Real IRA had stayed with the sell-out Provos for eleven years and as a result were compromised and lacked political judgement and credibility.
"The RIRA has no role to play at present - they should dis-band and call off their campaign because they are not the true inheritors of 1916," he told the commemoration in Mount St. Lawrence cemetery in Limerick on Sunday 4th January.
The leaders of the RIRA sided with the Provos in their surrender. "The Provos and their smug self-satisfied leaders have dis- honoured Irish Republicanism. It is time they abandoned the noble name of Sinn Féin and left it to true Republicans like so many other organisations have done, from Fianna Fáil in the Thirties down to the Workers Party in more recent times.
"It was wrong of the Provos to send out volunteers to face death or long terms in prison knowing that they were going to call off the military campaign against the British presence in Ireland. While the Provos were planning surrender they were sending volunteers to their deaths. That is immoral and the fact is they settled for less than what was on offer at Sunningdale. They decommissioned arms obtained for the freedom of Ireland - did they have approval for these acts of treachery? What would Seán South think of the acts of surrender and treachery by the Provos?
"Seán South did not go out and risk death and imprisonment for what the Provos claim they have achieved - he was forced to take up resistance to the injustice of partition -he had come to the conclusion that the political and military establishment of the 26 Counties could not win the freedom of Ireland - he answered the call of Mother Ireland for the freedom of her four green fields."
President of Republican Sinn Féin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and the locally based vice-president Des Long attended the commemoration after a march led by a colour party and a lone piper from Bedford Row.
Seán South Commemoration: RIRA should disband
Limerick Republican Sinn Féin
January 4, 2004
A leading member of Republican Sinn Féin has said that the Real IRA should consider disbanding, and dumping arms because they have no credibility and are not the true inheritors of the 1916 Proclamation.
Emmet Walsh from Tullamore, County Offaly was speaking at the annual Seán South commemoration in Limerick when he said that the Real IRA had stayed with the sell-out Provos for eleven years and as a result were compromised and lacked political judgement and credibility.
"The RIRA has no role to play at present - they should dis-band and call off their campaign because they are not the true inheritors of 1916," he told the commemoration in Mount St. Lawrence cemetery in Limerick on Sunday 4th January.
The leaders of the RIRA sided with the Provos in their surrender. "The Provos and their smug self-satisfied leaders have dis- honoured Irish Republicanism. It is time they abandoned the noble name of Sinn Féin and left it to true Republicans like so many other organisations have done, from Fianna Fáil in the Thirties down to the Workers Party in more recent times.
"It was wrong of the Provos to send out volunteers to face death or long terms in prison knowing that they were going to call off the military campaign against the British presence in Ireland. While the Provos were planning surrender they were sending volunteers to their deaths. That is immoral and the fact is they settled for less than what was on offer at Sunningdale. They decommissioned arms obtained for the freedom of Ireland - did they have approval for these acts of treachery? What would Seán South think of the acts of surrender and treachery by the Provos?
"Seán South did not go out and risk death and imprisonment for what the Provos claim they have achieved - he was forced to take up resistance to the injustice of partition -he had come to the conclusion that the political and military establishment of the 26 Counties could not win the freedom of Ireland - he answered the call of Mother Ireland for the freedom of her four green fields."
President of Republican Sinn Féin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and the locally based vice-president Des Long attended the commemoration after a march led by a colour party and a lone piper from Bedford Row.
The Pat Finucane Centre
From the Pat Finucane Center
Mc Bride family express “sadness but no surprise” at Iraq murder
January 6 2004
Jean Mc Bride, whose 18-year-old son Peter was murdered by two British soldiers in 1992, has expressed “sadness but no surprise” at weekend reports that British soldiers in Iraq had tied up and hooded a young man, and then beaten him to death. Writing in the Independent on Sunday Robert Fisk first revealed details of the incident which occurred in Basra in September. (see two articles below) The two Guardsmen convicted of the murder of Peter Mc Bride served in Basra despite ongoing legal moves to have the men, James Fisher and Mark Wright, dismissed from the British Army. Speaking today Jean Mc Bride said,
“From the very beginning we made clear that the retention of two murderers in the British Army sent out the deadly message that Tony Blair tolerates the murder of those who are not British citizens. Whether young men are murdered in Belfast or in Basra the response is the same. Wright and Fisher were sent to Basra by the same people who are now covering up the murder of Baha Mousa, the young man who was beaten to death.
Should we be surprised that British soldiers in Basra believe that they can literally get away with murder when they are serving alongside two convicted murderers? In court after court our legal team has argued that the retention of Wright and Fisher encourages other soldiers to believe that the British Army turns a blind eye to murder. My heart goes out to the family of this young man who, just like Peter, has left two young children behind. I am going to write to Daoud Mousa, the father of this young man, to let him know what he is facing and to offer any support our campaign can offer.”
Note to editors; A third judicial review of the decision to retain Wright and Fisher will take place at Belfast High Court on January 23. The two guardsmen are no longer based in Basra. (see www.serve.com/pfc for full details of the Mc Bride case)
Brigadier William Moore, commander of British forces in Basra, is reported below as having stated that the case will be dealt with under British law. If this the case then the British Army is already in violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The refusal of the military to allow the family lawyer access may be a violation. The internal investigation being carried out by the Royal Military Police is certainly a clear Article 2 violation.
The practice of first hooding and then torturing prisoners was perfected in Palace Barracks, Holywood outside Belfast in 1971. At the time General Mike Jackson, the current Commander in Chief Land Forces, was a senior officer in the Parachute Regiment based at Palace Barracks.
January 4, 2004, Independent on Sunday
BRITISH SOLDIERS KICKED IRAQI PRISONER TO DEATH';
ROBERT FISK IN BASRA
Eight young Iraqis arrested in Basra were kicked and assaulted by British soldiers, one of them so badly that he died in British custody, according to military and medical records seen by The Independent on Sunday.
Amnesty International has urged its members to protest directly to Tony Blair about the death of Baha Mousa, the son of an Iraqi police colonel, and to demand an impartial and independent investigation into the apparent torture of the Basra prisoners. A major at 33 Field Hospital outside the
southern Iraqi city said that one of the survivors suffered "acute renal failure" after "he was assaulted ... and sustained severe bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of chest, left forearms and left upper inner thigh".
British military authorities have offered Mr Mousa's relatives $ 8,000 (pounds 4,500) in compensation, providing they are not held responsible for his death, but the young hotel receptionist's family plans to take the Ministry of Defence to court. His body was returned to them, covered in
bruises and with his nose broken, after he and seven colleagues were arrested by British forces in Basra last September and held in military custody for three days.
One of the other workers has given a frightening account of their ordeal. Baha Mousa, he says, was tied and hooded and then repeatedly kicked and assaulted by British troops, begging all the while to have the hood removed because he could no longer breathe.
A death certificate provided by the British Army states that Baha Mousa had died of "asphyxia". A restricted medical document from a British hospital says a surviving prisoner, Kifah Taha, suffered his injuries "due to a severe beating". The IoS has copies of both documents.
After Mr Mousa's death, the Army's Special Investigation Branch opened an investigation. The Ministry of Defence told the IoS yesterday that there was "nothing in the records to suggest an inquiry was not still ongoing". But two soldiers who were arrested have since been released, and no charges
have been made.
Mr Mousa's violent death left two children orphaned: his 22-year-old wife died of cancer shortly before his detention by British troops.
Copyright 2004 Newspaper Publishing PLC
Independent on Sunday (London)
January 4, 2004, Independent on Sunday
THE BRITISH SAID MY SON WOULD BE FREE SOON. THREE DAYS LATER I HAD HIS BODY'; ROBERT FISK REPORTS FROM BASRA
The last time Lieutenant Colonel Daoud Mousa of the Iraqi police saw his son Baha alive was on 14 September, as British soldiers raided the Basra hotel where the young man worked as a receptionist.
"He was lying with the other seven staff on the marble floor with his hands over his head," Col Mousa says today. "I said to him: Don't worry, I've spoken to the British officer and he says you'll be freed in a couple of hours.'" The officer, a second lieutenant, even gave the Iraqi policeman a piece of paper and wrote "2Lt. Mike" on it, alongside an indecipherable
signature and a Basra telephone number. There was no surname.
"Three days later, I was looking at my son's body," the colonel says, sitting on the concrete floor of his slum house in Basra. "The British came to say he had died in custody'. His nose was broken, there was blood above his mouth and I could see the bruising of his ribs and thighs. The skin was
ripped off his wrists where the handcuffs had been."
Baha Mousa left two small boys, five-year-old Hassan and three-year-old Hussein. Both are orphans, because Baha's 22-year-old wife died of cancer just six months before his own death.
No one hides the fact that most if not all the eight men picked up at the Haitham hotel - where British troops had earlier found four weapons in a safe - were brutally treated while in the custody of the Royal Military Police. One of Baha's colleagues, Kifah Taha, suffered acute renal failure
after being kicked in the kidneys; a "wound assessment" by Frimley Park Hospital in Britain states bluntly that he suffered "generalised bruising following repeated incidents of assault".
When Col Mousa and another of his sons, Alaa, visited Kifah Taha in a Basra hospital immediately after his release to seek news of Baha, they found the wounded man - in Alaa's words - "only half a human, with terrible bruises from kicking on his ribs and abdomen. He could hardly speak."
But another of Baha's colleagues - who pleaded with The Independent on Sunday not to reveal his name lest he be rearrested by British forces in Basra - gave a chilling account of the treatment the eight men received once
they arrived at a British interrogation centre in Basra. By a terrible coincidence, the building had formerly been the secret service headquarters of Ali Majid, Saddam's brutal cousin, known as "Chemical Ali" for his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja and later military governor of the Basra
region.
"We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags over our heads. But I could see through some holes in my hood. Soldiers would come in - ordinary soldiers, not officers, mostly with their heads shaved but in
uniform - and they would kick us, picking on one after the other. They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming.
"They set on Baha especially, and he kept crying that he couldn't breathe in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said that he was suffocating. But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: Stop screaming and you'll be able to breathe more easily.' Baha was so scared. Then they increased the kicking on him and he collapsed on the
floor. None of us could stand or sit because it was too painful."
But not one of the prisoners says he was questioned about the discovery of the weapons in the hotel. Indeed, the man who hid the two rifles and two pistols in the hotel safe - one of the partners in the hotel, Haitham Vaha - fled the building after the British arrived and is still on the run. His
father and another business partner, Ahmed Taha Mousa - no relation to either Kifah Taha or Baha Mousa - are still in British custody in southern Iraq. At least one of the men beaten by the British says that he would happily hand Haitham to the British forces if he found him.
Amnesty International has demanded an impartial and independent inquiry into Baha's death and the mistreatment of the other Iraqi prisoners, but the Ministry of Defence is attempting to keep its investigation within the Army.
Two soldiers originally arrested in connection with Baha's death have since been released - and Baha Mousa's family is outraged. "We are going to sue the British Army in London," his brother Alaa says. "They gave us $ 3,000 in
compensation, then said we could have another $ 5,000 - but they wouldn't accept responsibility for his murder.
"We reject this money. We want justice. We want the soldiers involved to be punished. How much would a British family receive if their innocent son was arrested by your soldiers and beaten to death?"
The Mousa family were given an international death certificate by the British Army at the Shaibah military medical centre outside Basra. It was dated 21 September, but again carried an indecipherable signature. It stated
that Baha 's death had been caused by "cardiorespiratory arrest: asphyxia".
But the anonymous British officer who signed the document failed to fill in the column marked "due to/as a consequence of". He also failed to fill in the column marked "approximate interval between onset (of asphyxia) and death". More seriously still, the British Army failed to complete the form's request for "Regt. Corps/RAF Command" and "Ship/Unit/RAF Station".
An inquiry was opened into Baha Mousa's death on 18 September by 61 Section of the 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch. Captain G Nugent, the officer commanding 61 Section, named a Staff Sergeant Jay as chief investigating officer of case number 64695/03. >From
the start, the SIB were faced with overwhelming evidence that British soldiers had kicked and beaten the prisoners in their custody.
Major James Ralph, the anaesthesia and intensive care consultant at the British Military Hospital's 33 Field Hospital at Shaibah, stated in a letter - a copy of which is in the IoS's possession - that Kifah Taha "was admitted
to our facility at 22.40 hours on 16th September. It appears he was assaulted approximately 72 hours ago and sustained severe bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of chest, left forearms and left upper inner thigh." He described Kifah Taha as suffering from "acute renal failure".
Col Daoud Mousa says that his son was deliberately kicked to death by the soldiers because they discovered that his father had persuaded the British officer - "Second Lieutenant Mike" - to arrest several British soldiers who were stealing money from the hotel during the raid. "I saw two of the soldiers at the back of a safe, wrenching it open and stuffing money
into their shirts and pockets - Iraqi dinars and foreign money. The officer made one of the men open his shirt and he found the money and the soldier was disarmed. But the military inquiry didn't want to hear about this - they
weren't interested in the theft or why the soldiers who were stealing the money would want to mistreat my son as a result of what I did."
Alaa says that it was three days before they learned the truth about what had happened to Baha. "I was at home and I went outside to find the street filled with British soldiers. They didn't have Baha's name right, but they said they were looking for the family of the man whose wife died of
cancer'. I said it must be Baha and one of the officers said: Can you come with us?'
"A sergeant came into our home, his name was Jay, and he sat on our sofa and said: I have come to tell you about the death of your brother Baha.' It was like a revolution in our house - there was screaming and shouting and crying. The British said they wanted my father, Daoud, and one of us to come
to identify the body. He said a doctor from Britain was coming to examine the body." Alaa described how he later met a "Professor Hill", a pathologist who, he says, later acknowledged that there were "very clear signs of
beating on the body" and that two of Baha's ribs had been broken.
Robert Harkins, the British political officer in the city, arranged for the Mousa family to meet Brigadier William Moore, commander of British forces in Basra. The family say that Brig Moore, though he expressed his condolences to Daoud Mousa, refused to allow an Iraqi lawyer to participate
in the British inquiry. "He told us that since this had happened inside the British Army, the British Army would conduct the investigation," Alaa says.
The brigadier issued a statement on 3 October, expressing his "regrets" that their son "died while under British jurisdiction" and promising that if the military police concluded that a crime had been committed, "those
suspected will be tried ... under the laws of the United Kingdom." The family initially accepted $ 3,000 of compensation for Baha's death - they say they thought that by offering this, the British were accepting responsibility - but they refused to sign a letter they received last month
from a British claims officer called Perkins which offered a further $ 5,000 as a "final settlement" of the "incident " which would be made "without admission of liability on behalf of the British Contingent of the Coalition Forces in Iraq".
An MoD spokeswoman said yesterday that "as far as I'm aware, as of the beginning of December, the investigation was ongoing - nothing in our records suggests it is not still ongoing". But no charges appear to have been made, no soldiers are currently under arrest and Alaa Mousa and his
father Daoud remain infuriated by their treatment.
"Are the soldiers responsible for killing Baha to go unpunished?" Alaa asks. "Why can't we be involved in this? If these men have no punishment, they will do this again.
"We are not saying the British are occupiers'. We think you came here to Basra to save us from Saddam. But you should not treat my family like this, just paying us money when you kill Baha and ... then stopping us being involved in finding out what really happened. If you go on like this, your big welcome' in Basra will be over."
From the Pat Finucane Center
Mc Bride family express “sadness but no surprise” at Iraq murder
January 6 2004
Jean Mc Bride, whose 18-year-old son Peter was murdered by two British soldiers in 1992, has expressed “sadness but no surprise” at weekend reports that British soldiers in Iraq had tied up and hooded a young man, and then beaten him to death. Writing in the Independent on Sunday Robert Fisk first revealed details of the incident which occurred in Basra in September. (see two articles below) The two Guardsmen convicted of the murder of Peter Mc Bride served in Basra despite ongoing legal moves to have the men, James Fisher and Mark Wright, dismissed from the British Army. Speaking today Jean Mc Bride said,
“From the very beginning we made clear that the retention of two murderers in the British Army sent out the deadly message that Tony Blair tolerates the murder of those who are not British citizens. Whether young men are murdered in Belfast or in Basra the response is the same. Wright and Fisher were sent to Basra by the same people who are now covering up the murder of Baha Mousa, the young man who was beaten to death.
Should we be surprised that British soldiers in Basra believe that they can literally get away with murder when they are serving alongside two convicted murderers? In court after court our legal team has argued that the retention of Wright and Fisher encourages other soldiers to believe that the British Army turns a blind eye to murder. My heart goes out to the family of this young man who, just like Peter, has left two young children behind. I am going to write to Daoud Mousa, the father of this young man, to let him know what he is facing and to offer any support our campaign can offer.”
Note to editors; A third judicial review of the decision to retain Wright and Fisher will take place at Belfast High Court on January 23. The two guardsmen are no longer based in Basra. (see www.serve.com/pfc for full details of the Mc Bride case)
Brigadier William Moore, commander of British forces in Basra, is reported below as having stated that the case will be dealt with under British law. If this the case then the British Army is already in violation of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The refusal of the military to allow the family lawyer access may be a violation. The internal investigation being carried out by the Royal Military Police is certainly a clear Article 2 violation.
The practice of first hooding and then torturing prisoners was perfected in Palace Barracks, Holywood outside Belfast in 1971. At the time General Mike Jackson, the current Commander in Chief Land Forces, was a senior officer in the Parachute Regiment based at Palace Barracks.
January 4, 2004, Independent on Sunday
BRITISH SOLDIERS KICKED IRAQI PRISONER TO DEATH';
ROBERT FISK IN BASRA
Eight young Iraqis arrested in Basra were kicked and assaulted by British soldiers, one of them so badly that he died in British custody, according to military and medical records seen by The Independent on Sunday.
Amnesty International has urged its members to protest directly to Tony Blair about the death of Baha Mousa, the son of an Iraqi police colonel, and to demand an impartial and independent investigation into the apparent torture of the Basra prisoners. A major at 33 Field Hospital outside the
southern Iraqi city said that one of the survivors suffered "acute renal failure" after "he was assaulted ... and sustained severe bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of chest, left forearms and left upper inner thigh".
British military authorities have offered Mr Mousa's relatives $ 8,000 (pounds 4,500) in compensation, providing they are not held responsible for his death, but the young hotel receptionist's family plans to take the Ministry of Defence to court. His body was returned to them, covered in
bruises and with his nose broken, after he and seven colleagues were arrested by British forces in Basra last September and held in military custody for three days.
One of the other workers has given a frightening account of their ordeal. Baha Mousa, he says, was tied and hooded and then repeatedly kicked and assaulted by British troops, begging all the while to have the hood removed because he could no longer breathe.
A death certificate provided by the British Army states that Baha Mousa had died of "asphyxia". A restricted medical document from a British hospital says a surviving prisoner, Kifah Taha, suffered his injuries "due to a severe beating". The IoS has copies of both documents.
After Mr Mousa's death, the Army's Special Investigation Branch opened an investigation. The Ministry of Defence told the IoS yesterday that there was "nothing in the records to suggest an inquiry was not still ongoing". But two soldiers who were arrested have since been released, and no charges
have been made.
Mr Mousa's violent death left two children orphaned: his 22-year-old wife died of cancer shortly before his detention by British troops.
Copyright 2004 Newspaper Publishing PLC
Independent on Sunday (London)
January 4, 2004, Independent on Sunday
THE BRITISH SAID MY SON WOULD BE FREE SOON. THREE DAYS LATER I HAD HIS BODY'; ROBERT FISK REPORTS FROM BASRA
The last time Lieutenant Colonel Daoud Mousa of the Iraqi police saw his son Baha alive was on 14 September, as British soldiers raided the Basra hotel where the young man worked as a receptionist.
"He was lying with the other seven staff on the marble floor with his hands over his head," Col Mousa says today. "I said to him: Don't worry, I've spoken to the British officer and he says you'll be freed in a couple of hours.'" The officer, a second lieutenant, even gave the Iraqi policeman a piece of paper and wrote "2Lt. Mike" on it, alongside an indecipherable
signature and a Basra telephone number. There was no surname.
"Three days later, I was looking at my son's body," the colonel says, sitting on the concrete floor of his slum house in Basra. "The British came to say he had died in custody'. His nose was broken, there was blood above his mouth and I could see the bruising of his ribs and thighs. The skin was
ripped off his wrists where the handcuffs had been."
Baha Mousa left two small boys, five-year-old Hassan and three-year-old Hussein. Both are orphans, because Baha's 22-year-old wife died of cancer just six months before his own death.
No one hides the fact that most if not all the eight men picked up at the Haitham hotel - where British troops had earlier found four weapons in a safe - were brutally treated while in the custody of the Royal Military Police. One of Baha's colleagues, Kifah Taha, suffered acute renal failure
after being kicked in the kidneys; a "wound assessment" by Frimley Park Hospital in Britain states bluntly that he suffered "generalised bruising following repeated incidents of assault".
When Col Mousa and another of his sons, Alaa, visited Kifah Taha in a Basra hospital immediately after his release to seek news of Baha, they found the wounded man - in Alaa's words - "only half a human, with terrible bruises from kicking on his ribs and abdomen. He could hardly speak."
But another of Baha's colleagues - who pleaded with The Independent on Sunday not to reveal his name lest he be rearrested by British forces in Basra - gave a chilling account of the treatment the eight men received once
they arrived at a British interrogation centre in Basra. By a terrible coincidence, the building had formerly been the secret service headquarters of Ali Majid, Saddam's brutal cousin, known as "Chemical Ali" for his gassing of the Kurds of Halabja and later military governor of the Basra
region.
"We were put in a big room with our hands tied and with bags over our heads. But I could see through some holes in my hood. Soldiers would come in - ordinary soldiers, not officers, mostly with their heads shaved but in
uniform - and they would kick us, picking on one after the other. They were kick-boxing us in the chest and between the legs and in the back. We were crying and screaming.
"They set on Baha especially, and he kept crying that he couldn't breathe in the hood. He kept asking them to take the bag off and said that he was suffocating. But they laughed at him and kicked him more. One of them said: Stop screaming and you'll be able to breathe more easily.' Baha was so scared. Then they increased the kicking on him and he collapsed on the
floor. None of us could stand or sit because it was too painful."
But not one of the prisoners says he was questioned about the discovery of the weapons in the hotel. Indeed, the man who hid the two rifles and two pistols in the hotel safe - one of the partners in the hotel, Haitham Vaha - fled the building after the British arrived and is still on the run. His
father and another business partner, Ahmed Taha Mousa - no relation to either Kifah Taha or Baha Mousa - are still in British custody in southern Iraq. At least one of the men beaten by the British says that he would happily hand Haitham to the British forces if he found him.
Amnesty International has demanded an impartial and independent inquiry into Baha's death and the mistreatment of the other Iraqi prisoners, but the Ministry of Defence is attempting to keep its investigation within the Army.
Two soldiers originally arrested in connection with Baha's death have since been released - and Baha Mousa's family is outraged. "We are going to sue the British Army in London," his brother Alaa says. "They gave us $ 3,000 in
compensation, then said we could have another $ 5,000 - but they wouldn't accept responsibility for his murder.
"We reject this money. We want justice. We want the soldiers involved to be punished. How much would a British family receive if their innocent son was arrested by your soldiers and beaten to death?"
The Mousa family were given an international death certificate by the British Army at the Shaibah military medical centre outside Basra. It was dated 21 September, but again carried an indecipherable signature. It stated
that Baha 's death had been caused by "cardiorespiratory arrest: asphyxia".
But the anonymous British officer who signed the document failed to fill in the column marked "due to/as a consequence of". He also failed to fill in the column marked "approximate interval between onset (of asphyxia) and death". More seriously still, the British Army failed to complete the form's request for "Regt. Corps/RAF Command" and "Ship/Unit/RAF Station".
An inquiry was opened into Baha Mousa's death on 18 September by 61 Section of the 3rd Regiment, Royal Military Police's Special Investigation Branch. Captain G Nugent, the officer commanding 61 Section, named a Staff Sergeant Jay as chief investigating officer of case number 64695/03. >From
the start, the SIB were faced with overwhelming evidence that British soldiers had kicked and beaten the prisoners in their custody.
Major James Ralph, the anaesthesia and intensive care consultant at the British Military Hospital's 33 Field Hospital at Shaibah, stated in a letter - a copy of which is in the IoS's possession - that Kifah Taha "was admitted
to our facility at 22.40 hours on 16th September. It appears he was assaulted approximately 72 hours ago and sustained severe bruising to his upper abdomen, right side of chest, left forearms and left upper inner thigh." He described Kifah Taha as suffering from "acute renal failure".
Col Daoud Mousa says that his son was deliberately kicked to death by the soldiers because they discovered that his father had persuaded the British officer - "Second Lieutenant Mike" - to arrest several British soldiers who were stealing money from the hotel during the raid. "I saw two of the soldiers at the back of a safe, wrenching it open and stuffing money
into their shirts and pockets - Iraqi dinars and foreign money. The officer made one of the men open his shirt and he found the money and the soldier was disarmed. But the military inquiry didn't want to hear about this - they
weren't interested in the theft or why the soldiers who were stealing the money would want to mistreat my son as a result of what I did."
Alaa says that it was three days before they learned the truth about what had happened to Baha. "I was at home and I went outside to find the street filled with British soldiers. They didn't have Baha's name right, but they said they were looking for the family of the man whose wife died of
cancer'. I said it must be Baha and one of the officers said: Can you come with us?'
"A sergeant came into our home, his name was Jay, and he sat on our sofa and said: I have come to tell you about the death of your brother Baha.' It was like a revolution in our house - there was screaming and shouting and crying. The British said they wanted my father, Daoud, and one of us to come
to identify the body. He said a doctor from Britain was coming to examine the body." Alaa described how he later met a "Professor Hill", a pathologist who, he says, later acknowledged that there were "very clear signs of
beating on the body" and that two of Baha's ribs had been broken.
Robert Harkins, the British political officer in the city, arranged for the Mousa family to meet Brigadier William Moore, commander of British forces in Basra. The family say that Brig Moore, though he expressed his condolences to Daoud Mousa, refused to allow an Iraqi lawyer to participate
in the British inquiry. "He told us that since this had happened inside the British Army, the British Army would conduct the investigation," Alaa says.
The brigadier issued a statement on 3 October, expressing his "regrets" that their son "died while under British jurisdiction" and promising that if the military police concluded that a crime had been committed, "those
suspected will be tried ... under the laws of the United Kingdom." The family initially accepted $ 3,000 of compensation for Baha's death - they say they thought that by offering this, the British were accepting responsibility - but they refused to sign a letter they received last month
from a British claims officer called Perkins which offered a further $ 5,000 as a "final settlement" of the "incident " which would be made "without admission of liability on behalf of the British Contingent of the Coalition Forces in Iraq".
An MoD spokeswoman said yesterday that "as far as I'm aware, as of the beginning of December, the investigation was ongoing - nothing in our records suggests it is not still ongoing". But no charges appear to have been made, no soldiers are currently under arrest and Alaa Mousa and his
father Daoud remain infuriated by their treatment.
"Are the soldiers responsible for killing Baha to go unpunished?" Alaa asks. "Why can't we be involved in this? If these men have no punishment, they will do this again.
"We are not saying the British are occupiers'. We think you came here to Basra to save us from Saddam. But you should not treat my family like this, just paying us money when you kill Baha and ... then stopping us being involved in finding out what really happened. If you go on like this, your big welcome' in Basra will be over."
5.1.04
The Scotsman - UK - Anger over Sinn Fein wages
Anger over Sinn Fein wages
Alison Hardie
Political Correspondent
A POLITICAL row erupted last night over the price of peace in Northern Ireland after it emerged Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have personally been paid more than £1 million of taxpayers’ cash.
The Sinn Fein chiefs’ huge salaries as politicians have been paid continuously for more than four years, despite neither men taking their place in the Commons and the continued mothballing of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Leading Ulster unionists said it was unacceptable that men linked to the highest command of the IRA should have received such large sums of taxpayers’ money.
Mr McGuinness has been paid about £410,000 as education minister in the assembly in addition to claiming the full £221,000 office cost allowance he is entitled to as a Sinn Fein MP.
Mr Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, was paid in excess of £500,000 after claiming his full salary as a member of the assembly plus his full office costs from both Stormont and Westminster. The power-sharing executive at Stormont has now spent more time in suspension than it has working, leading to a growing demand that all its members should be denied their salaries.
Jeffrey Donaldson MP, who quit the Ulster Unionist Party in December in protest at its policy of working with Sinn Fein, said: "It is clear the British taxpayer has been funding the electoral progress of Sinn Fein-IRA.
"It is disgraceful these huge sums of taxpayers’ money are being poured into their coffers."
Anger over Sinn Fein wages
Alison Hardie
Political Correspondent
A POLITICAL row erupted last night over the price of peace in Northern Ireland after it emerged Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have personally been paid more than £1 million of taxpayers’ cash.
The Sinn Fein chiefs’ huge salaries as politicians have been paid continuously for more than four years, despite neither men taking their place in the Commons and the continued mothballing of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Leading Ulster unionists said it was unacceptable that men linked to the highest command of the IRA should have received such large sums of taxpayers’ money.
Mr McGuinness has been paid about £410,000 as education minister in the assembly in addition to claiming the full £221,000 office cost allowance he is entitled to as a Sinn Fein MP.
Mr Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, was paid in excess of £500,000 after claiming his full salary as a member of the assembly plus his full office costs from both Stormont and Westminster. The power-sharing executive at Stormont has now spent more time in suspension than it has working, leading to a growing demand that all its members should be denied their salaries.
Jeffrey Donaldson MP, who quit the Ulster Unionist Party in December in protest at its policy of working with Sinn Fein, said: "It is clear the British taxpayer has been funding the electoral progress of Sinn Fein-IRA.
"It is disgraceful these huge sums of taxpayers’ money are being poured into their coffers."
THE BLANKET * Index: Current Articles
BAM
--Anthony McIntyre
Excellent article on the Iranian earthquake.
BAM
--Anthony McIntyre
Excellent article on the Iranian earthquake.
Sunday Life
Fur play for Rebel at last?
Animal charity considers posthumous award for Ulster canine of courage
By Stephen Breen
04 January 2004
A LEADING UK animal charity may posthumously honour an Ulster canine of courage - for saving his owner's dad from an IRA assassin's bullet.
Sunday Life can reveal that the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) is considering offering a bravery award to David Hamilton's old Alsatian, Rebel.
A letter has also been written to the charity bosses, by Mr Hamilton's local MP, Jeffrey Donaldson, who is also supporting the campaign.
A decision on the medal will be made later this year, when Mr Hamilton's campaign is put before the charity's committee.
David, 49, hopes the Alsatian will be honoured for its courage and selflessness, when IRA gunmen almost killed his father, Johnston, in November 1979.
Rebel lost an eye, and was shot in the stomach, when it pounced on one of the gunmen, after they forced their way into Mr Hamilton's Finaghy home.
Mr Hamilton, who died in 2000, was blasted in the arm and side, before the dog sunk its teeth into one of the masked gunmen.
The terror gang - who had targeted the lorry driver in a case of mistaken identity - panicked, and shot the dog, before fleeing.
Rebel never fully recovered from his injuries, and died in 1981.
Although the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA) initially said it supported plans to honour Rebel, the dog has never received any recognition for its bravery.
The PDSA provides bravery awards to pets which are still alive, but it has previously honoured pets after they had died.
The UK-based charity offers a gold medal and the Dickin Medal, to animals which have been "instrumental" in saving human life.
Medals have also been given to animals who work for the police and armed forces.
Mr Hamilton, from Dromore, Co Down, told Sunday Life he was "delighted" that Rebel's case was being considered.
He said: "I'm so pleased the animal charity in England will consider to offer an award to Rebel, because he deserves it.
"I held a meeting with Jeffrey Donaldson this week, and the letter has already been sent to the charity, and I'm feeling very positive about their response.
"Rebel saved my father's life, and later died because he never fully recovered from the injuries he received from the gunman's bullets."
A PDSA spokeswoman said: "Each story is looked at on individual merit, and Rebel's case will go before the board.
"Posthumous medals have been awarded in the past, and the charity will be happy to listen to Mr Hamilton."
sbreen@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Fur play for Rebel at last?
Animal charity considers posthumous award for Ulster canine of courage
By Stephen Breen
04 January 2004
A LEADING UK animal charity may posthumously honour an Ulster canine of courage - for saving his owner's dad from an IRA assassin's bullet.
Sunday Life can reveal that the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) is considering offering a bravery award to David Hamilton's old Alsatian, Rebel.
A letter has also been written to the charity bosses, by Mr Hamilton's local MP, Jeffrey Donaldson, who is also supporting the campaign.
A decision on the medal will be made later this year, when Mr Hamilton's campaign is put before the charity's committee.
David, 49, hopes the Alsatian will be honoured for its courage and selflessness, when IRA gunmen almost killed his father, Johnston, in November 1979.
Rebel lost an eye, and was shot in the stomach, when it pounced on one of the gunmen, after they forced their way into Mr Hamilton's Finaghy home.
Mr Hamilton, who died in 2000, was blasted in the arm and side, before the dog sunk its teeth into one of the masked gunmen.
The terror gang - who had targeted the lorry driver in a case of mistaken identity - panicked, and shot the dog, before fleeing.
Rebel never fully recovered from his injuries, and died in 1981.
Although the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA) initially said it supported plans to honour Rebel, the dog has never received any recognition for its bravery.
The PDSA provides bravery awards to pets which are still alive, but it has previously honoured pets after they had died.
The UK-based charity offers a gold medal and the Dickin Medal, to animals which have been "instrumental" in saving human life.
Medals have also been given to animals who work for the police and armed forces.
Mr Hamilton, from Dromore, Co Down, told Sunday Life he was "delighted" that Rebel's case was being considered.
He said: "I'm so pleased the animal charity in England will consider to offer an award to Rebel, because he deserves it.
"I held a meeting with Jeffrey Donaldson this week, and the letter has already been sent to the charity, and I'm feeling very positive about their response.
"Rebel saved my father's life, and later died because he never fully recovered from the injuries he received from the gunman's bullets."
A PDSA spokeswoman said: "Each story is looked at on individual merit, and Rebel's case will go before the board.
"Posthumous medals have been awarded in the past, and the charity will be happy to listen to Mr Hamilton."
sbreen@belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Sunday Life
Gaddafi deal reveals IRA arms shipments
04 January 2004
COLONEL Gaddafi's new-found peace policies mean that the Government now has better information on IRA heavy weaponry, than the Provos' own Army Council.
Part of the recent secret deal, negotiated by MI6 with Gaddafi, resulting in the decision to abandon his Weapons of Mass Destruction programme, included "full and final disclosure" on exactly what arms Libya supplied to the IRA.
Senior IRA sources now accept that Gaddafi's intelligence service has provided British Intelligence with a complete schedule of weapons, shipped by the regime to Ireland over 15 years, when Libya was the Provos' main supplier.
With this detailed information, the security services are now able to calculate precisely how much IRA heavy weaponry and explosives remain to be decomissioned.
And their information about IRA weapons is better than that of the Provos themselves.
As decommissioning boss, General John de Chastelain, said last October, the IRA itself may no longer have a full inventory of its weapons. Formal records were difficult to keep, and many IRA quartermasters are no longer alive or active, in the terror group.
Gaddafi's cooperation is a major boost for British and Irish government attempts to encourage further IRA decommissioning.
Last October, the IRA Army Council halted decommissioning, pending further post-Assembly election talks.
These are now believed to be scheduled for early spring.
Although the IRA imported quantities of weapons from the United States and elsewhere, Libya was the main source of heavy machineguns and commercial explosives.
Gaddafi's supply links with the IRA were first revealed in 1973, when the MV Claudia, heavily laden with Libyan arms, was detained by the Irish navy, off the Waterford coast.
Irish army intelligence suspected that two substantial shipments had gone through previously.
But the major supplies from Gaddafi to the IRA were made between 1985 and 1987, in three huge cargos.
One ship alone is thought to have delivered 90 tons of weapons and explosives to the Provos, before the interception of the Eksund in the Bay of Biscay, in 1987.
Gaddafi deal reveals IRA arms shipments
04 January 2004
COLONEL Gaddafi's new-found peace policies mean that the Government now has better information on IRA heavy weaponry, than the Provos' own Army Council.
Part of the recent secret deal, negotiated by MI6 with Gaddafi, resulting in the decision to abandon his Weapons of Mass Destruction programme, included "full and final disclosure" on exactly what arms Libya supplied to the IRA.
Senior IRA sources now accept that Gaddafi's intelligence service has provided British Intelligence with a complete schedule of weapons, shipped by the regime to Ireland over 15 years, when Libya was the Provos' main supplier.
With this detailed information, the security services are now able to calculate precisely how much IRA heavy weaponry and explosives remain to be decomissioned.
And their information about IRA weapons is better than that of the Provos themselves.
As decommissioning boss, General John de Chastelain, said last October, the IRA itself may no longer have a full inventory of its weapons. Formal records were difficult to keep, and many IRA quartermasters are no longer alive or active, in the terror group.
Gaddafi's cooperation is a major boost for British and Irish government attempts to encourage further IRA decommissioning.
Last October, the IRA Army Council halted decommissioning, pending further post-Assembly election talks.
These are now believed to be scheduled for early spring.
Although the IRA imported quantities of weapons from the United States and elsewhere, Libya was the main source of heavy machineguns and commercial explosives.
Gaddafi's supply links with the IRA were first revealed in 1973, when the MV Claudia, heavily laden with Libyan arms, was detained by the Irish navy, off the Waterford coast.
Irish army intelligence suspected that two substantial shipments had gone through previously.
But the major supplies from Gaddafi to the IRA were made between 1985 and 1987, in three huge cargos.
One ship alone is thought to have delivered 90 tons of weapons and explosives to the Provos, before the interception of the Eksund in the Bay of Biscay, in 1987.
4.1.04
Sunday Business Post
LIBYA TAKES ITS PLACE IN THE SUN
By Tom McGurk
Sunday, December 28, 2003
There have been some extraordinary historical moments in Colonel Mu'ammer Gaddafi's famous tent in the desert, which apparently is always on the move given the aerial attack skills of his many enemies.
Two weeks ago, the phone rang and it was Tony Blair on the line.
With the help of a translator - although Gaddafi has reasonable English - the pair talked for half an hour. In the 34 years of his quixotic rule, Gaddafi has time after time managed to baffle both his enemies and his friends. I suspect that phone call has left many people baffled worldwide.
The phone call was the follow-up to the announcement that came utterly out of the blue in Tripoli and London earlier in the day. Libya had invited in the international arms inspectors after it decided to abandon its WMD programme. Once again the Libyan leader had astonished his critics and the international intelligence community.
However, it seems that only part of that community was shocked as it appears that, hardly had the dead from the World Trade Center been buried,when Lib yan intelligence officials opened up a remarkable dia logue in both London and Washington.
Apparently as Gaddafi, presumably watching in his tent, viewed the extraordinary pictures from New York, he saw a unique opportunity to help Libya and solve his own mounting problems with international isolation. He then thought of an astounding scheme that would both help Libya to escape from under the regime of UN sanctions and, at the same time, come in from the international cold war.
That 34-year war has made Libya an international pariah and has kept it in purdah ever since Gaddafi first threw out the oil companies, nationalised the country and declared his anti-imperial revolution across the globe. It was time, it seems, to leave the rogue state status behind.
Gaddafi's secret weapon in his new plan was his Al Mathaba organisation - the infamous secret Libyan intelligence agency that for three decades has guided and organised his anti-imperialist struggle across Africa and parts of Europe.
It seems Gaddafi was prepared to launch his secret intelligence agency in a new war that stood on its head everything that the organisation had so covertly worked for down the years.
The Observer in London reported recently that only weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Musa Kousa - regarded as the single most dangerous Libyan in the world and head of Al Mathaba - arrived into London for secret talks with British intelligence.
Kousa has been the linchpin in all of Gaddafi's wars, as well as the IRA and PLO linkage, the killing in London of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 and the Lockerbie bombing three years later.
The offer that Kousa brought to the secret meeting last October was as astonishing as it was unexpected. Gaddafi was offering that Al Mathaba would put its unique international expertise within the Arab world to the service of the war on terrorism. Kousa even had a pile of documents at the meeting, detailing the names of Islamist terrorists in Africa, Europe and the Middle East and details of the cells into which they were organising.
It was a tantalising offer for both Washington and London. However much they knew about this extraordinary volte face on the part of Gaddafi, they certainly knew that Al Mathaba was an Arab intelligence agency that got to places few others did, particularly across North Africa.
We can see the dimensions of the deal that both sides clearly worked out then. Libya had to deliver on the Lockerbie bomber and pay massive compensation to the relatives, end its WMD programme and abandon the sponsorship of international terrorism. The British and the US had to abandon sanctions and welcome Libya back into the international fold.
So why has the infamous Gaddafi suddenly joined the "good guys" led by George W Bush? For decades, such has been the division of opinion about the Libyan revolution that the experts are still divided. There's little doubt that Libya's WMD programme was of little significance and not on the scale that was suspected in Iraq.
Apparently the carrots dangled in front of Gaddafi by Blair included economic incentives, the chance to obtain conventional weaponry and the possibility of welcoming Libyan youth to study in western universities.
But the truth may in fact be much more mundane. Beyond all the international opprobrium and geopolitical posturing, Gaddafi's social revolution on the ground in Libya has created something of a miracle. He has spent the oil money on education, health services, water irrigation and developing, potentially, a huge tourist infrastructure, if only he had any tourists.
He has also uniquely encouraged equality in education and work for women and over the decades produced a newly-educated Libyan elite.The west was never prepared to see this type of social revolution in Libya and instead concerned itself with Gaddafi's maverick attempts at international revolution.
The reality facing him in the 34th year of his reign is that all he has achieved in Libya cannot continue forever in the diplomatic cul-de-sac that he finds himself and his country in. As the old Soviet empire in eastern Europe found out a decade ago, the international isolation created by the revolution in turn creates an insatiable desire - particularly among the younger generations - to be able to join the rest of the world. Succeeding generations will do things their way.
There is also the question of the dictator's own succession. His son, Saif, has been at the centre of the Tripoli/London negotiations and it may well be that Gaddafi is already preparing not only for a succession but also for a new era in Libyan affairs.
Either way, once again he has not failed to astonish his critics. Nor, as the more caustic commentators have pointed out, does his new realpolitik interfere with Libyans' grander ambitions to be a considerable power and influence in the emerging Middle East.
Not even Washington's neo-conservatives could have dreamed up this one.
comment@sbpost.ie
LIBYA TAKES ITS PLACE IN THE SUN
By Tom McGurk
Sunday, December 28, 2003
There have been some extraordinary historical moments in Colonel Mu'ammer Gaddafi's famous tent in the desert, which apparently is always on the move given the aerial attack skills of his many enemies.Two weeks ago, the phone rang and it was Tony Blair on the line.
With the help of a translator - although Gaddafi has reasonable English - the pair talked for half an hour. In the 34 years of his quixotic rule, Gaddafi has time after time managed to baffle both his enemies and his friends. I suspect that phone call has left many people baffled worldwide.
The phone call was the follow-up to the announcement that came utterly out of the blue in Tripoli and London earlier in the day. Libya had invited in the international arms inspectors after it decided to abandon its WMD programme. Once again the Libyan leader had astonished his critics and the international intelligence community.
However, it seems that only part of that community was shocked as it appears that, hardly had the dead from the World Trade Center been buried,when Lib yan intelligence officials opened up a remarkable dia logue in both London and Washington.
Apparently as Gaddafi, presumably watching in his tent, viewed the extraordinary pictures from New York, he saw a unique opportunity to help Libya and solve his own mounting problems with international isolation. He then thought of an astounding scheme that would both help Libya to escape from under the regime of UN sanctions and, at the same time, come in from the international cold war.
That 34-year war has made Libya an international pariah and has kept it in purdah ever since Gaddafi first threw out the oil companies, nationalised the country and declared his anti-imperial revolution across the globe. It was time, it seems, to leave the rogue state status behind.
Gaddafi's secret weapon in his new plan was his Al Mathaba organisation - the infamous secret Libyan intelligence agency that for three decades has guided and organised his anti-imperialist struggle across Africa and parts of Europe.
It seems Gaddafi was prepared to launch his secret intelligence agency in a new war that stood on its head everything that the organisation had so covertly worked for down the years.
The Observer in London reported recently that only weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Musa Kousa - regarded as the single most dangerous Libyan in the world and head of Al Mathaba - arrived into London for secret talks with British intelligence.
Kousa has been the linchpin in all of Gaddafi's wars, as well as the IRA and PLO linkage, the killing in London of WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 and the Lockerbie bombing three years later.
The offer that Kousa brought to the secret meeting last October was as astonishing as it was unexpected. Gaddafi was offering that Al Mathaba would put its unique international expertise within the Arab world to the service of the war on terrorism. Kousa even had a pile of documents at the meeting, detailing the names of Islamist terrorists in Africa, Europe and the Middle East and details of the cells into which they were organising.
It was a tantalising offer for both Washington and London. However much they knew about this extraordinary volte face on the part of Gaddafi, they certainly knew that Al Mathaba was an Arab intelligence agency that got to places few others did, particularly across North Africa.
We can see the dimensions of the deal that both sides clearly worked out then. Libya had to deliver on the Lockerbie bomber and pay massive compensation to the relatives, end its WMD programme and abandon the sponsorship of international terrorism. The British and the US had to abandon sanctions and welcome Libya back into the international fold.
So why has the infamous Gaddafi suddenly joined the "good guys" led by George W Bush? For decades, such has been the division of opinion about the Libyan revolution that the experts are still divided. There's little doubt that Libya's WMD programme was of little significance and not on the scale that was suspected in Iraq.
Apparently the carrots dangled in front of Gaddafi by Blair included economic incentives, the chance to obtain conventional weaponry and the possibility of welcoming Libyan youth to study in western universities.
But the truth may in fact be much more mundane. Beyond all the international opprobrium and geopolitical posturing, Gaddafi's social revolution on the ground in Libya has created something of a miracle. He has spent the oil money on education, health services, water irrigation and developing, potentially, a huge tourist infrastructure, if only he had any tourists.
He has also uniquely encouraged equality in education and work for women and over the decades produced a newly-educated Libyan elite.The west was never prepared to see this type of social revolution in Libya and instead concerned itself with Gaddafi's maverick attempts at international revolution.
The reality facing him in the 34th year of his reign is that all he has achieved in Libya cannot continue forever in the diplomatic cul-de-sac that he finds himself and his country in. As the old Soviet empire in eastern Europe found out a decade ago, the international isolation created by the revolution in turn creates an insatiable desire - particularly among the younger generations - to be able to join the rest of the world. Succeeding generations will do things their way.
There is also the question of the dictator's own succession. His son, Saif, has been at the centre of the Tripoli/London negotiations and it may well be that Gaddafi is already preparing not only for a succession but also for a new era in Libyan affairs.
Either way, once again he has not failed to astonish his critics. Nor, as the more caustic commentators have pointed out, does his new realpolitik interfere with Libyans' grander ambitions to be a considerable power and influence in the emerging Middle East.
Not even Washington's neo-conservatives could have dreamed up this one.
comment@sbpost.ie
Sunday Business Post
1973 State papers: British contacts with IRA revealed
04/01/04 00:00
Gerry Adams was willing to become involved in politics as early as April 1973, according to the minutes of a meeting between a British official and two priests, Fr Denis Faul and Fr Patrick Conning.
The priests said Adams could readily be persuaded to "move to politics" if the British produced some formula or arrangement that he could offer "his men". Faul and Conning were b oth i mpress ed by Adams, whom they described as being "much more intelligent and idealistic than his companions".
Adams wanted a British statement of intent about disengagement, though the priests believed that the only essential condition for a ceasefire was an undertaking that volunteers would not subsequently be arrested. Nothing came of such contacts.
A British Army situation report filed in July announced that "Jerry Adams" [sic], described as the commanding officer of the Belfast Provo brigade staff, had been arrested on the Falls Road. In the same swoop, the Provisionals' operations officer and finance officer in Belfast were arrested. Their names have been blanked out in the document.
One of the more intriguing documents to emerge in last week's release of 1973 government papers is a list compiled by the British of alleged active IRA members. The document - entitled "Prominent members of Provisional IRA Active Service Units operating in a cross-border role" - gives the names, addresses, dates of birth and legal status of 28 men. According to the document, the importance of crossborder operations had increased following the British Army crackdown on the IRA in "no-go" urban centres during Operation Motorman in July,1972.
Among those listed is Francis Hughes, who was to become the second IRA man to die in the 1981 hunger strike, and Daithi O Conaill, a prominent member of the Army Council. The list also includes two alleged IRA men from Dundalk, one from Carrickmacross and one from Courtbane in Monaghan, one from Navan, a Sligoman, a Corkman and five from Donegal, one of whom was also a member of the Irish Army.
According to the document, there were five active service units [ASUs] on the border: the "Monaghan salient", the Carrickmacross-Inishkeen ASU, Bundoran ASU, Lifford- Clady-Cloghfin ASU and one entitled "The Enclave", based in Buncrana.
Martin McGuinness, who was arrested in the Republic in December, 1972, was described as the Commanding Officer of the Derry unit of the IRA, based in Buncrana, a group that lived in caravans and holiday cottages. Other British reports noted how McGuinness had already become a "hero-type figure" for 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds in the Creggan in Derry.
The ASUs were reckoned to be responsible for at least 841 border incidents between January, 1972, and March, 1973. These resulted, according to the document, in the deaths of 21 British soldiers and injury to 70, while 21 civilians were killed and 34 injured.
The routes and bases used by the Monaghan ASU were noted with precise grid-references linked to a map. The report is also explicit about the location of training camps and it charts the movements of caravans suspected to house Provisionals. According to the document, only one renegade Official IRA unit based in Warrenpoint/Rostrevor was still in operation.
Overall, it was a year of retrenchment for the IRA. The Offences against the State Act, passed in December 1972, allowed an IRA suspect to be convicted on the word of aGarda Chief Superintendent. Inability to account for movements could also be used to convict a suspect. Martin McGuinness and Ruairi O Bradaigh, among others, were imprisoned in the Republic under this legislation.
The Provisionals were apparently eager to negotiate. At a meeting with Vivian Simpson MP, acting on his own behalf, they outlined their conditions for a truce. They wanted an unpublicised written agreement preceded by "effective liaison". To secure a ceasefire, the British would publicly have to agree to Irish self-determination, set a date for the withdrawal of British troops and give a general amnesty to republican and loyalist prisoners.
Simpson reported to Northern Secretary Willie Whitelaw that the Provisionals, especially Seamus Twomey, were taking a harder line. Earlier in the year, Faul and Conning had said that Twomey was the most intransigent of the leading Provisionals, but he would be unlikely to reject a unanimous decision by the rest of the leadership.
Dublin andLondonbelieved that there were considerable tensions within the Provisional movement. There were said to be differences on strategy between figures based in the Republic - such as O Bradaigh and Daithi O Conaill, who tended towards a political analysis of the situation - and younger Northerners, who were much more committed to militant action.
Prison activity, including hunger strikes, had made little impact on the Dublin government. Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence in the state papers of any direct communication between either administration and the IRA. The British were willing to meet third parties who had met the Provisionals, but refused to negotiate with them, and stressed they could not give undertakings, send messages or even "accept overtures".
On the British side, Sir John Hackett, a retired general and principal of King's College London, was in frequent telephone contact with O Conaill throughout 1972 and arranged to meet him in Donegal in September. Hackett had written to Whitelaw that he was sure O Conaill had not approved the IRA bombs in London in March and Solihull in August.
According to the general, O Conaill showed "small enthusiasm" for operations in England and agreed that a bombing campaign might be counterproductive. Hackett argued that the bombing campaign associated the IRA with company "scarcely respectable for Provisionals", such as the International Marxist Group.
But following Home Office war nings, Hackett - who owned a house on Loughros Point in Co Donegal - did not meet O Conaill. According to the Special Branch, Hackett's life was under threat from militant Provisionals, or even Officials,who resented O Conaill's "channel of communication to the UK".
Later, O Conaill described himself to Hackett as "the last of the old gang" and said that "his removal [through arrest] would open opportunities for less responsible elements".
Earlier that year, an anonymous informant had told the British government - through an official in the North called FF Steele - that O Bradaigh had been willing to call a ceasefire before publication of the White Paper on Northern Ireland, as long as the proposed policies would "give Catholics a square deal".
According to the source, O Bradaigh was angry that he had been arrested in January just when "his political faction had been winning over the militant factions in the Provisionals".
According to the contact, Belfast hardliners had no time for ceasefires because they anticipated that, once fighting units had been stood down, it would be impossible to get them into action again.
In return for his report, the informant pressed Steele for information about the forthcoming White Paper in the hope of being able to secure an IRA ceasefire, but he was given no preview of the document.
1973 State papers: British contacts with IRA revealed
04/01/04 00:00
Gerry Adams was willing to become involved in politics as early as April 1973, according to the minutes of a meeting between a British official and two priests, Fr Denis Faul and Fr Patrick Conning.
The priests said Adams could readily be persuaded to "move to politics" if the British produced some formula or arrangement that he could offer "his men". Faul and Conning were b oth i mpress ed by Adams, whom they described as being "much more intelligent and idealistic than his companions".
Adams wanted a British statement of intent about disengagement, though the priests believed that the only essential condition for a ceasefire was an undertaking that volunteers would not subsequently be arrested. Nothing came of such contacts.
A British Army situation report filed in July announced that "Jerry Adams" [sic], described as the commanding officer of the Belfast Provo brigade staff, had been arrested on the Falls Road. In the same swoop, the Provisionals' operations officer and finance officer in Belfast were arrested. Their names have been blanked out in the document.
One of the more intriguing documents to emerge in last week's release of 1973 government papers is a list compiled by the British of alleged active IRA members. The document - entitled "Prominent members of Provisional IRA Active Service Units operating in a cross-border role" - gives the names, addresses, dates of birth and legal status of 28 men. According to the document, the importance of crossborder operations had increased following the British Army crackdown on the IRA in "no-go" urban centres during Operation Motorman in July,1972.
Among those listed is Francis Hughes, who was to become the second IRA man to die in the 1981 hunger strike, and Daithi O Conaill, a prominent member of the Army Council. The list also includes two alleged IRA men from Dundalk, one from Carrickmacross and one from Courtbane in Monaghan, one from Navan, a Sligoman, a Corkman and five from Donegal, one of whom was also a member of the Irish Army.
According to the document, there were five active service units [ASUs] on the border: the "Monaghan salient", the Carrickmacross-Inishkeen ASU, Bundoran ASU, Lifford- Clady-Cloghfin ASU and one entitled "The Enclave", based in Buncrana.
Martin McGuinness, who was arrested in the Republic in December, 1972, was described as the Commanding Officer of the Derry unit of the IRA, based in Buncrana, a group that lived in caravans and holiday cottages. Other British reports noted how McGuinness had already become a "hero-type figure" for 14-year-olds and 15-year-olds in the Creggan in Derry.
The ASUs were reckoned to be responsible for at least 841 border incidents between January, 1972, and March, 1973. These resulted, according to the document, in the deaths of 21 British soldiers and injury to 70, while 21 civilians were killed and 34 injured.
The routes and bases used by the Monaghan ASU were noted with precise grid-references linked to a map. The report is also explicit about the location of training camps and it charts the movements of caravans suspected to house Provisionals. According to the document, only one renegade Official IRA unit based in Warrenpoint/Rostrevor was still in operation.
Overall, it was a year of retrenchment for the IRA. The Offences against the State Act, passed in December 1972, allowed an IRA suspect to be convicted on the word of aGarda Chief Superintendent. Inability to account for movements could also be used to convict a suspect. Martin McGuinness and Ruairi O Bradaigh, among others, were imprisoned in the Republic under this legislation.
The Provisionals were apparently eager to negotiate. At a meeting with Vivian Simpson MP, acting on his own behalf, they outlined their conditions for a truce. They wanted an unpublicised written agreement preceded by "effective liaison". To secure a ceasefire, the British would publicly have to agree to Irish self-determination, set a date for the withdrawal of British troops and give a general amnesty to republican and loyalist prisoners.
Simpson reported to Northern Secretary Willie Whitelaw that the Provisionals, especially Seamus Twomey, were taking a harder line. Earlier in the year, Faul and Conning had said that Twomey was the most intransigent of the leading Provisionals, but he would be unlikely to reject a unanimous decision by the rest of the leadership.
Dublin andLondonbelieved that there were considerable tensions within the Provisional movement. There were said to be differences on strategy between figures based in the Republic - such as O Bradaigh and Daithi O Conaill, who tended towards a political analysis of the situation - and younger Northerners, who were much more committed to militant action.
Prison activity, including hunger strikes, had made little impact on the Dublin government. Unsurprisingly, there is no evidence in the state papers of any direct communication between either administration and the IRA. The British were willing to meet third parties who had met the Provisionals, but refused to negotiate with them, and stressed they could not give undertakings, send messages or even "accept overtures".
On the British side, Sir John Hackett, a retired general and principal of King's College London, was in frequent telephone contact with O Conaill throughout 1972 and arranged to meet him in Donegal in September. Hackett had written to Whitelaw that he was sure O Conaill had not approved the IRA bombs in London in March and Solihull in August.
According to the general, O Conaill showed "small enthusiasm" for operations in England and agreed that a bombing campaign might be counterproductive. Hackett argued that the bombing campaign associated the IRA with company "scarcely respectable for Provisionals", such as the International Marxist Group.
But following Home Office war nings, Hackett - who owned a house on Loughros Point in Co Donegal - did not meet O Conaill. According to the Special Branch, Hackett's life was under threat from militant Provisionals, or even Officials,who resented O Conaill's "channel of communication to the UK".
Later, O Conaill described himself to Hackett as "the last of the old gang" and said that "his removal [through arrest] would open opportunities for less responsible elements".
Earlier that year, an anonymous informant had told the British government - through an official in the North called FF Steele - that O Bradaigh had been willing to call a ceasefire before publication of the White Paper on Northern Ireland, as long as the proposed policies would "give Catholics a square deal".
According to the source, O Bradaigh was angry that he had been arrested in January just when "his political faction had been winning over the militant factions in the Provisionals".
According to the contact, Belfast hardliners had no time for ceasefires because they anticipated that, once fighting units had been stood down, it would be impossible to get them into action again.
In return for his report, the informant pressed Steele for information about the forthcoming White Paper in the hope of being able to secure an IRA ceasefire, but he was given no preview of the document.
Public Record Office | New Year Releases 2004 | Public Records of 1973
New Year Releases 2004
Public Records of 1973
---------------------------------------------
Northern Ireland
New Year Releases 2004
Public Records of 1973
---------------------------------------------
Northern Ireland
Another thanks to Seán at ira2
British army penetration of IRA shown in file passed to Cosgrave
(by Richard Bourke, Irish Times)
The quality of the intelligence assembled by the British on the
Provisional IRA by November 1972 can now be assessed from the
evidence of a secret dossier conveyed to the Irish authorities in
April 1973.
The dossier was passed on to the Taoiseach of the day, Mr Liam
Cosgrave, in person, in an effort to encourage the Republic to co-
operate with British security demands.
What the sheer volume of information makes clear is the extent to
which the Provisionals had been either penetrated by their enemies or
betrayed by multiple informers within their ranks.
The dossier provides an elaborate account of IRA units stationed
along the Border, North and South. Some of the members named
currently hold positions in Sinn Féin.
After Operation Motorman, the IRA had been virtually routed in its
urban strongholds, according to the British, and forced to withdraw
to the Border to launch attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland.
This dossier, compiled by British army headquarters at Lisburn in
conjunction with the RUC, provides a list of major IRA personalities
involved in Border operations (including their addresses, occupations
and dates of birth).
It also provides statistics giving figures for all incidents
attributable to Provisional active service units. Finally, it
supplies a map setting out each unit's sphere of operation, and a
list of bases used by IRA personnel operating out of Monaghan.
In listing major IRA personalities, the dossier also provides an
assessment of key figures in the movement. The former vice-president
of Sinn Féin, Dáithí Ó Conaill [he was referred to as David O'Connell
in the dossier] is one example: "Holds a senior position on the
Provisional Army Council. . . considered to be one of the leading
political 'brains' of the Provisional IRA."
A separate file detailing unauthorised contacts between Ó Conaill and
a retired British army general, Sir John Hackett, corroborates the
British appreciation of Ó Conaill as a dove inside the movement.
But whatever Ó Conaill's predilections, he was in a position, during
a previous conversation with Hackett, to ask the general for an
assessment of the likely strategic impact on the British government
of a bomb attack on Whitehall.
That conversation took place on March 7th. The next day, the
Provisional IRA detonated car bombs at the Old Bailey and the
Ministry of Agriculture building in London. When news of Hackett's
dealings with Ó Conaill reached the Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, William Whitelaw, the British minister was dismayed by the
likely public reaction to this freelance interaction with the IRA.
According to Whitelaw, Hackett would be seen as "helping the Queen's
enemies. Not a good position for a general". In any case, such
contact was a waste of time in Whitelaw's judgement: "O'Connell will
probably let him down as he did me."
The wavering dovishness of Ó Conaill is contrasted with the
assessment of the former IRA chief of staff, Seán Mac Stiofáin, given
in a number of files available under the current release.
A telegram sent in May from the British ambassador in Dublin to the
Foreign Office in London reports a conversation with the secretary of
the Irish Labour party, Mr Brendan Halligan, betraying uncertainty
inside the Irish government about how to handle MacStiofáin on his
release from custody in the South, due the following week.
Mr Des O'Malley, minister for justice under Taoiseach Jack Lynch, is
presented as having originally planned to deport MacStiofáin to the
UK upon his release. But now that the time for a decision had
arrived, the Cosgrave government was torn between re-arresting
MacStiofáin under the Offences Against the State Act and allowing him
to walk free. Some ministers were pushing for the latter option "in
the hope. . . that this would bring about major splits. . . in the
Provisional leadership".
On no account, however, was Ó Conaill to be arrested "on any charge",
minister for justice, Mr Patrick Cooney is alleged to have decreed,
since he represented the best chance for moderation prevailing among
the Provisionals. "Irish ministers are well aware of the deep rift
which exists between MacStiofáin on the one hand. . . and O'Connell
on the other."
The presentation of Mac Stiofáin as incorrigibly militant (in speech
if not in deed) is echoed throughout the British army dossier on the
Provisional IRA. It is claimed that the activity of IRA Border units
increased noticeably after visits from MacStiofáin. He is alleged to
have been "particularly pleased" by the actions of the Donegal IRA
active service unit based at Lifford in burning Strabane Town Hall.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator and Northern Ireland MLA, Mr Martin
McGuinness, also appears in the dossier. He is identified as the
officer commanding on the Derry command staff, based at Buncrana, Co
Donegal, since the Provisionals were ousted from the cities by the
British army.
The Buncrana unit is identified as "a centre for the supply of
explosives". Domiciled in caravans and holiday cottages near the
Donegal border, the Derry IRA is alleged to have launched explosive
attacks on its home town with members transporting ready-made bombs
into the city centre from their Southern Irish exile. Recent attacks
by the Buncrana unit were alleged to have included a car bomb at a
Derry bakery on October 12th, 1972, and two bombs at a Border Customs
post on October 2nd and 10th 1972.
Much of the information contained in the dossier was collected during
the interrogation of IRA suspects. Confirmation of the organisation
of a key Dundalk unit of the IRA, for instance, "was provided by the
recent conviction and imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court in
Dublin" of Patrick Hamill, Hugh Mullen, Brendan Murray and Martin
McElligott. Other alleged members of the Provisional IRA with a
starring role in the British dossier include one supposed to have
been operating out of Dundalk; another from Cork, "an ingenious and
ruthless bomb-maker"; the director of operations for the Armagh
Brigade; a member "known to have been involved in recent. . .
explosions" and the alleged quartermaster of the Bundoran unit.
January 3, 2004
British army penetration of IRA shown in file passed to Cosgrave
(by Richard Bourke, Irish Times)
The quality of the intelligence assembled by the British on the
Provisional IRA by November 1972 can now be assessed from the
evidence of a secret dossier conveyed to the Irish authorities in
April 1973.
The dossier was passed on to the Taoiseach of the day, Mr Liam
Cosgrave, in person, in an effort to encourage the Republic to co-
operate with British security demands.
What the sheer volume of information makes clear is the extent to
which the Provisionals had been either penetrated by their enemies or
betrayed by multiple informers within their ranks.
The dossier provides an elaborate account of IRA units stationed
along the Border, North and South. Some of the members named
currently hold positions in Sinn Féin.
After Operation Motorman, the IRA had been virtually routed in its
urban strongholds, according to the British, and forced to withdraw
to the Border to launch attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland.
This dossier, compiled by British army headquarters at Lisburn in
conjunction with the RUC, provides a list of major IRA personalities
involved in Border operations (including their addresses, occupations
and dates of birth).
It also provides statistics giving figures for all incidents
attributable to Provisional active service units. Finally, it
supplies a map setting out each unit's sphere of operation, and a
list of bases used by IRA personnel operating out of Monaghan.
In listing major IRA personalities, the dossier also provides an
assessment of key figures in the movement. The former vice-president
of Sinn Féin, Dáithí Ó Conaill [he was referred to as David O'Connell
in the dossier] is one example: "Holds a senior position on the
Provisional Army Council. . . considered to be one of the leading
political 'brains' of the Provisional IRA."
A separate file detailing unauthorised contacts between Ó Conaill and
a retired British army general, Sir John Hackett, corroborates the
British appreciation of Ó Conaill as a dove inside the movement.
But whatever Ó Conaill's predilections, he was in a position, during
a previous conversation with Hackett, to ask the general for an
assessment of the likely strategic impact on the British government
of a bomb attack on Whitehall.
That conversation took place on March 7th. The next day, the
Provisional IRA detonated car bombs at the Old Bailey and the
Ministry of Agriculture building in London. When news of Hackett's
dealings with Ó Conaill reached the Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, William Whitelaw, the British minister was dismayed by the
likely public reaction to this freelance interaction with the IRA.
According to Whitelaw, Hackett would be seen as "helping the Queen's
enemies. Not a good position for a general". In any case, such
contact was a waste of time in Whitelaw's judgement: "O'Connell will
probably let him down as he did me."
The wavering dovishness of Ó Conaill is contrasted with the
assessment of the former IRA chief of staff, Seán Mac Stiofáin, given
in a number of files available under the current release.
A telegram sent in May from the British ambassador in Dublin to the
Foreign Office in London reports a conversation with the secretary of
the Irish Labour party, Mr Brendan Halligan, betraying uncertainty
inside the Irish government about how to handle MacStiofáin on his
release from custody in the South, due the following week.
Mr Des O'Malley, minister for justice under Taoiseach Jack Lynch, is
presented as having originally planned to deport MacStiofáin to the
UK upon his release. But now that the time for a decision had
arrived, the Cosgrave government was torn between re-arresting
MacStiofáin under the Offences Against the State Act and allowing him
to walk free. Some ministers were pushing for the latter option "in
the hope. . . that this would bring about major splits. . . in the
Provisional leadership".
On no account, however, was Ó Conaill to be arrested "on any charge",
minister for justice, Mr Patrick Cooney is alleged to have decreed,
since he represented the best chance for moderation prevailing among
the Provisionals. "Irish ministers are well aware of the deep rift
which exists between MacStiofáin on the one hand. . . and O'Connell
on the other."
The presentation of Mac Stiofáin as incorrigibly militant (in speech
if not in deed) is echoed throughout the British army dossier on the
Provisional IRA. It is claimed that the activity of IRA Border units
increased noticeably after visits from MacStiofáin. He is alleged to
have been "particularly pleased" by the actions of the Donegal IRA
active service unit based at Lifford in burning Strabane Town Hall.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator and Northern Ireland MLA, Mr Martin
McGuinness, also appears in the dossier. He is identified as the
officer commanding on the Derry command staff, based at Buncrana, Co
Donegal, since the Provisionals were ousted from the cities by the
British army.
The Buncrana unit is identified as "a centre for the supply of
explosives". Domiciled in caravans and holiday cottages near the
Donegal border, the Derry IRA is alleged to have launched explosive
attacks on its home town with members transporting ready-made bombs
into the city centre from their Southern Irish exile. Recent attacks
by the Buncrana unit were alleged to have included a car bomb at a
Derry bakery on October 12th, 1972, and two bombs at a Border Customs
post on October 2nd and 10th 1972.
Much of the information contained in the dossier was collected during
the interrogation of IRA suspects. Confirmation of the organisation
of a key Dundalk unit of the IRA, for instance, "was provided by the
recent conviction and imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court in
Dublin" of Patrick Hamill, Hugh Mullen, Brendan Murray and Martin
McElligott. Other alleged members of the Provisional IRA with a
starring role in the British dossier include one supposed to have
been operating out of Dundalk; another from Cork, "an ingenious and
ruthless bomb-maker"; the director of operations for the Armagh
Brigade; a member "known to have been involved in recent. . .
explosions" and the alleged quartermaster of the Bundoran unit.
January 3, 2004
ira2
British army penetration of IRA shown in file passed to Cosgrave
by Richard Bourke, Irish Times
The quality of the intelligence assembled by the British on the
Provisional IRA by November 1972 can now be assessed from the
evidence of a secret dossier conveyed to the Irish authorities in
April 1973.
The dossier was passed on to the Taoiseach of the day, Mr Liam
Cosgrave, in person, in an effort to encourage the Republic to co-
operate with British security demands.
What the sheer volume of information makes clear is the extent to
which the Provisionals had been either penetrated by their enemies or
betrayed by multiple informers within their ranks.
The dossier provides an elaborate account of IRA units stationed
along the Border, North and South. Some of the members named
currently hold positions in Sinn Féin.
After Operation Motorman, the IRA had been virtually routed in its
urban strongholds, according to the British, and forced to withdraw
to the Border to launch attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland.
This dossier, compiled by British army headquarters at Lisburn in
conjunction with the RUC, provides a list of major IRA personalities
involved in Border operations (including their addresses, occupations
and dates of birth).
It also provides statistics giving figures for all incidents
attributable to Provisional active service units. Finally, it
supplies a map setting out each unit's sphere of operation, and a
list of bases used by IRA personnel operating out of Monaghan.
In listing major IRA personalities, the dossier also provides an
assessment of key figures in the movement. The former vice-president
of Sinn Féin, Dáithí Ó Conaill [he was referred to as David O'Connell
in the dossier] is one example: "Holds a senior position on the
Provisional Army Council. . . considered to be one of the leading
political 'brains' of the Provisional IRA."
A separate file detailing unauthorised contacts between Ó Conaill and
a retired British army general, Sir John Hackett, corroborates the
British appreciation of Ó Conaill as a dove inside the movement.
But whatever Ó Conaill's predilections, he was in a position, during
a previous conversation with Hackett, to ask the general for an
assessment of the likely strategic impact on the British government
of a bomb attack on Whitehall.
That conversation took place on March 7th. The next day, the
Provisional IRA detonated car bombs at the Old Bailey and the
Ministry of Agriculture building in London. When news of Hackett's
dealings with Ó Conaill reached the Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, William Whitelaw, the British minister was dismayed by the
likely public reaction to this freelance interaction with the IRA.
According to Whitelaw, Hackett would be seen as "helping the Queen's
enemies. Not a good position for a general". In any case, such
contact was a waste of time in Whitelaw's judgement: "O'Connell will
probably let him down as he did me."
The wavering dovishness of Ó Conaill is contrasted with the
assessment of the former IRA chief of staff, Seán Mac Stiofáin, given
in a number of files available under the current release.
A telegram sent in May from the British ambassador in Dublin to the
Foreign Office in London reports a conversation with the secretary of
the Irish Labour party, Mr Brendan Halligan, betraying uncertainty
inside the Irish government about how to handle MacStiofáin on his
release from custody in the South, due the following week.
Mr Des O'Malley, minister for justice under Taoiseach Jack Lynch, is
presented as having originally planned to deport MacStiofáin to the
UK upon his release. But now that the time for a decision had
arrived, the Cosgrave government was torn between re-arresting
MacStiofáin under the Offences Against the State Act and allowing him
to walk free. Some ministers were pushing for the latter option "in
the hope. . . that this would bring about major splits. . . in the
Provisional leadership".
On no account, however, was Ó Conaill to be arrested "on any charge",
minister for justice, Mr Patrick Cooney is alleged to have decreed,
since he represented the best chance for moderation prevailing among
the Provisionals. "Irish ministers are well aware of the deep rift
which exists between MacStiofáin on the one hand. . . and O'Connell
on the other."
The presentation of Mac Stiofáin as incorrigibly militant (in speech
if not in deed) is echoed throughout the British army dossier on the
Provisional IRA. It is claimed that the activity of IRA Border units
increased noticeably after visits from MacStiofáin. He is alleged to
have been "particularly pleased" by the actions of the Donegal IRA
active service unit based at Lifford in burning Strabane Town Hall.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator and Northern Ireland MLA, Mr Martin
McGuinness, also appears in the dossier. He is identified as the
officer commanding on the Derry command staff, based at Buncrana, Co
Donegal, since the Provisionals were ousted from the cities by the
British army.
The Buncrana unit is identified as "a centre for the supply of
explosives". Domiciled in caravans and holiday cottages near the
Donegal border, the Derry IRA is alleged to have launched explosive
attacks on its home town with members transporting ready-made bombs
into the city centre from their Southern Irish exile. Recent attacks
by the Buncrana unit were alleged to have included a car bomb at a
Derry bakery on October 12th, 1972, and two bombs at a Border Customs
post on October 2nd and 10th 1972.
Much of the information contained in the dossier was collected during
the interrogation of IRA suspects. Confirmation of the organisation
of a key Dundalk unit of the IRA, for instance, "was provided by the
recent conviction and imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court in
Dublin" of Patrick Hamill, Hugh Mullen, Brendan Murray and Martin
McElligott. Other alleged members of the Provisional IRA with a
starring role in the British dossier include one supposed to have
been operating out of Dundalk; another from Cork, "an ingenious and
ruthless bomb-maker"; the director of operations for the Armagh
Brigade; a member "known to have been involved in recent. . .
explosions" and the alleged quartermaster of the Bundoran unit.
January 3, 2004
British army penetration of IRA shown in file passed to Cosgrave
by Richard Bourke, Irish Times
The quality of the intelligence assembled by the British on the
Provisional IRA by November 1972 can now be assessed from the
evidence of a secret dossier conveyed to the Irish authorities in
April 1973.
The dossier was passed on to the Taoiseach of the day, Mr Liam
Cosgrave, in person, in an effort to encourage the Republic to co-
operate with British security demands.
What the sheer volume of information makes clear is the extent to
which the Provisionals had been either penetrated by their enemies or
betrayed by multiple informers within their ranks.
The dossier provides an elaborate account of IRA units stationed
along the Border, North and South. Some of the members named
currently hold positions in Sinn Féin.
After Operation Motorman, the IRA had been virtually routed in its
urban strongholds, according to the British, and forced to withdraw
to the Border to launch attacks in Britain and Northern Ireland.
This dossier, compiled by British army headquarters at Lisburn in
conjunction with the RUC, provides a list of major IRA personalities
involved in Border operations (including their addresses, occupations
and dates of birth).
It also provides statistics giving figures for all incidents
attributable to Provisional active service units. Finally, it
supplies a map setting out each unit's sphere of operation, and a
list of bases used by IRA personnel operating out of Monaghan.
In listing major IRA personalities, the dossier also provides an
assessment of key figures in the movement. The former vice-president
of Sinn Féin, Dáithí Ó Conaill [he was referred to as David O'Connell
in the dossier] is one example: "Holds a senior position on the
Provisional Army Council. . . considered to be one of the leading
political 'brains' of the Provisional IRA."
A separate file detailing unauthorised contacts between Ó Conaill and
a retired British army general, Sir John Hackett, corroborates the
British appreciation of Ó Conaill as a dove inside the movement.
But whatever Ó Conaill's predilections, he was in a position, during
a previous conversation with Hackett, to ask the general for an
assessment of the likely strategic impact on the British government
of a bomb attack on Whitehall.
That conversation took place on March 7th. The next day, the
Provisional IRA detonated car bombs at the Old Bailey and the
Ministry of Agriculture building in London. When news of Hackett's
dealings with Ó Conaill reached the Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, William Whitelaw, the British minister was dismayed by the
likely public reaction to this freelance interaction with the IRA.
According to Whitelaw, Hackett would be seen as "helping the Queen's
enemies. Not a good position for a general". In any case, such
contact was a waste of time in Whitelaw's judgement: "O'Connell will
probably let him down as he did me."
The wavering dovishness of Ó Conaill is contrasted with the
assessment of the former IRA chief of staff, Seán Mac Stiofáin, given
in a number of files available under the current release.
A telegram sent in May from the British ambassador in Dublin to the
Foreign Office in London reports a conversation with the secretary of
the Irish Labour party, Mr Brendan Halligan, betraying uncertainty
inside the Irish government about how to handle MacStiofáin on his
release from custody in the South, due the following week.
Mr Des O'Malley, minister for justice under Taoiseach Jack Lynch, is
presented as having originally planned to deport MacStiofáin to the
UK upon his release. But now that the time for a decision had
arrived, the Cosgrave government was torn between re-arresting
MacStiofáin under the Offences Against the State Act and allowing him
to walk free. Some ministers were pushing for the latter option "in
the hope. . . that this would bring about major splits. . . in the
Provisional leadership".
On no account, however, was Ó Conaill to be arrested "on any charge",
minister for justice, Mr Patrick Cooney is alleged to have decreed,
since he represented the best chance for moderation prevailing among
the Provisionals. "Irish ministers are well aware of the deep rift
which exists between MacStiofáin on the one hand. . . and O'Connell
on the other."
The presentation of Mac Stiofáin as incorrigibly militant (in speech
if not in deed) is echoed throughout the British army dossier on the
Provisional IRA. It is claimed that the activity of IRA Border units
increased noticeably after visits from MacStiofáin. He is alleged to
have been "particularly pleased" by the actions of the Donegal IRA
active service unit based at Lifford in burning Strabane Town Hall.
Sinn Féin chief negotiator and Northern Ireland MLA, Mr Martin
McGuinness, also appears in the dossier. He is identified as the
officer commanding on the Derry command staff, based at Buncrana, Co
Donegal, since the Provisionals were ousted from the cities by the
British army.
The Buncrana unit is identified as "a centre for the supply of
explosives". Domiciled in caravans and holiday cottages near the
Donegal border, the Derry IRA is alleged to have launched explosive
attacks on its home town with members transporting ready-made bombs
into the city centre from their Southern Irish exile. Recent attacks
by the Buncrana unit were alleged to have included a car bomb at a
Derry bakery on October 12th, 1972, and two bombs at a Border Customs
post on October 2nd and 10th 1972.
Much of the information contained in the dossier was collected during
the interrogation of IRA suspects. Confirmation of the organisation
of a key Dundalk unit of the IRA, for instance, "was provided by the
recent conviction and imprisonment by the Special Criminal Court in
Dublin" of Patrick Hamill, Hugh Mullen, Brendan Murray and Martin
McElligott. Other alleged members of the Provisional IRA with a
starring role in the British dossier include one supposed to have
been operating out of Dundalk; another from Cork, "an ingenious and
ruthless bomb-maker"; the director of operations for the Armagh
Brigade; a member "known to have been involved in recent. . .
explosions" and the alleged quartermaster of the Bundoran unit.
January 3, 2004
**Thanks to Seán at ira2 as I could not make the source site work.
The Politics of Terror
--Danny Morrison
Irish Examiner
In the current 'international war on terrorism' various civil rights and international human rights are being infringed. Such infringements happen in most conventional wars, and national emergencies, and are tolerated in the short-term by populaces as long as the war is perceived as being just, or the curtailments as measured, and they believe their government when it says it had no other choice.
Just two weeks ago the Barron Report into the Dublin/Monaghan terrorist car bombings in 1974 was released. It was heavily critical of the inactivity and ineffectiveness of Liam Cosgrove's Fine Gael/Labour coalition government and of the Garda investigation. The report revealed that Liam Cosgrove had been given the names of the bombers, that those names had not been passed to the Garda, that the forensic material had been lost, that the investigation was wound down after just 12 weeks and that the files on the case have gone missing from the Department of Justice.
The conviction that British Intelligence and not just a few of its operatives unofficially colluding with the UVF was heavily involved in the bombings has been strengthened by the refusal of the British authorities to fully cooperate with the inquiry and by the mystery of the missing case files and what they could reveal.
In the absence of an alternative explanation many commentators have concluded that the government of the day had a choice. It could have scrupulously pursued the case and had the suspicion confirmed that the British authorities were engaged in an act of terrorism against the Irish people. Such confirmation would have led to a total breakdown in Anglo-Irish relations, a radicalisation of Irish opinion and increased support for the IRA.
Long before May 1974 the coalition had already made up its mind which side it was on in relation to the North. Armed British soldiers caught in suspicious circumstances in border counties were returned to the North without prosecution. Special Courts were being used to convict republicans of IRA membership on the word of a Superintendent and Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act was censoring republican views. It was only a matter of time before this corrupting atmosphere gave way to the 'heavy gangs' when detectives could assault prisoners in order to force confessions which sent innocent people to jail (one of whom, Nicky Kelly, stood unsuccessfully for Labour in Wicklow in the last general election).
So, for the 'greater good' of Anglo-Irish relations there was no
enthusiastic pursuit of the killers and no justice for the dead.
Logically, it should be that the truth and facts – knowledge -
dictates one's decisions. But in politics it is often the choices
that politicians make that decide how the narrative is to be put, and thus it is that the powerful have a monopoly on how the story is told. So, for thirty years the British government were the 'good guys', the poor unionists were the ones under siege, and Irish republicanism, in armed struggle or in peace process, was to be denied, suppressed, censored and demonised. The background to the outbreak of conflict in the North (fifty years of unionist misrule) was to be muted and, instead, the IRA was to be held responsible for provoking British state repression and the loyalist campaign of assassination.
Republicans were laughed at when they spoke about shoot-to-kill, and state collusion with loyalist death squads - until the (heavily censored) Stephens' Report this year finally confirmed it. At the time of writing, the British government still refuses to publish the Cory report into collusion in the North.
Sinn Féin's vote was derided and explained in terms of mass
impersonation - until November's election, held under the strictest electoral identification laws in the world, resulted in the party emerging as the voice of the nationalist community in the North.
The case of the 'Colombia Three' presents yet another example of how prejudice can blind. In a few weeks time in Bogota a Colombian judge will rule on the fate of Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and Jim Monaghan who were arrested in August 2001 and charged with training left-wing FARC guerrillas.
Their arrest has had a profound effect on the peace process in Ireland and was used by unionists as one of the reasons for their withdrawal from and collapse of the power-sharing executive in the North from which politics has yet to recover.
Before they were even formally indicted the then President of
Colombia, Andres Pastrana, made prejudicial remarks and declared on television that the three were guilty. Earlier this year the current Colombian President Alvaro Uribe told Newsweek magazine, "We have in jail three IRA men who trained FARC."
All of this has undoubtedly placed the trial judge, Judge Acosta, under intense pressure to find the three guilty despite no evidence against them and strong evidence in their favour. Back in Ireland, anti-Agreement unionists, exploiting any issue to undermine the Belfast Agreement, also dismissed the Colombia Three as having any rights.
Coming from this quarter this was unsurprising. Of more concern were the remarks of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, reported on April 29th. He said: "What is required [of the IRA] is a commitment that paramilitary activity has ceased, will not occur again so that we can get on, so that we do not have another Colombia…"
Worse still were the remarks from Michael McDowell speaking to a Progressive Democrat party conference in 2002, prior to last year's general election. As the Irish Attorney-General he should have known better and known that his remarks would be picked up and published in Bogota, as they were. He said: "But I think I speak for the great majority when I say that a political party which sends fraternal delegates to Marxist-Narco terrorists in Colombia, which keeps closer ties with the government of Havana than with any other state…has little moral claim on the electoral support of the Irish people."
More recently, on Today FM, McDowell, who is now the Minister for Justice, said that Sinn Féin was "morally unclean" and alleged that it is in receipt of IRA proceeds from "organised crime". He refused to substantiate his remark, which was aimed at damaging Sinn Féin. Certainly, he is entitled to be concerned at the electoral rise of Sinn Féin, and the possibility that it could displace the PDs in a future coalition with Fianna Fail. But had he no thought for the
effects his cavalier comments would have on attempts to put together a power-sharing executive in the North? Indeed, anti-Agreement unionists to justify their refusal to share power with Sinn Féin seized on his remarks. Anti-Agreement unionists have done far more to undermine the peace process than the Colombia Three inadvertently have.
To make the peace process work republicans compromised and the IRA engaged in major acts of decommissioning only for the British government to default on the full implementation of the Agreement.
The peace process in the North, though still bedevilled by
difficulties, has provoked a reflection on the causes of the
conflict, a desire for truth and a demand to know who was responsible for what.
The censorship of Sinn Féin was an insult to the Irish people. It meant that the government didn't consider the electorate mature enough to decide for itself. It deprived Irish people of one side of an argument, which thus exaggerated the moral case of another side to the conflict – those for partition and the union with Britain. It meant not pursuing those ultimately behind the Dublin and Monaghan bombing. It meant distorting the truth. The culture that was then created persists.
Speaking aloud about his ongoing pipedream, Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Labour Minister for Communications who introduced Section 31 in 1973, said the other day: "I have some hope – though not much – that if there is ever again a Fine Gael-Labour coalition, it would reinstate the ban on broadcasts by Sinn Féin."
Such an infringement might have been possible and tolerated back in 1973 but in 2003 people have been able to read beyond the restrictions in the Barron Report, imposed by those who withheld full cooperation, and have began to understand who the international terrorists really are.
January 4, 2004
------------------------------
The Politics of Terror
--Danny Morrison
Irish Examiner
In the current 'international war on terrorism' various civil rights and international human rights are being infringed. Such infringements happen in most conventional wars, and national emergencies, and are tolerated in the short-term by populaces as long as the war is perceived as being just, or the curtailments as measured, and they believe their government when it says it had no other choice.
Just two weeks ago the Barron Report into the Dublin/Monaghan terrorist car bombings in 1974 was released. It was heavily critical of the inactivity and ineffectiveness of Liam Cosgrove's Fine Gael/Labour coalition government and of the Garda investigation. The report revealed that Liam Cosgrove had been given the names of the bombers, that those names had not been passed to the Garda, that the forensic material had been lost, that the investigation was wound down after just 12 weeks and that the files on the case have gone missing from the Department of Justice.
The conviction that British Intelligence and not just a few of its operatives unofficially colluding with the UVF was heavily involved in the bombings has been strengthened by the refusal of the British authorities to fully cooperate with the inquiry and by the mystery of the missing case files and what they could reveal.
In the absence of an alternative explanation many commentators have concluded that the government of the day had a choice. It could have scrupulously pursued the case and had the suspicion confirmed that the British authorities were engaged in an act of terrorism against the Irish people. Such confirmation would have led to a total breakdown in Anglo-Irish relations, a radicalisation of Irish opinion and increased support for the IRA.
Long before May 1974 the coalition had already made up its mind which side it was on in relation to the North. Armed British soldiers caught in suspicious circumstances in border counties were returned to the North without prosecution. Special Courts were being used to convict republicans of IRA membership on the word of a Superintendent and Section 31 of the Broadcasting Act was censoring republican views. It was only a matter of time before this corrupting atmosphere gave way to the 'heavy gangs' when detectives could assault prisoners in order to force confessions which sent innocent people to jail (one of whom, Nicky Kelly, stood unsuccessfully for Labour in Wicklow in the last general election).
So, for the 'greater good' of Anglo-Irish relations there was no
enthusiastic pursuit of the killers and no justice for the dead.
Logically, it should be that the truth and facts – knowledge -
dictates one's decisions. But in politics it is often the choices
that politicians make that decide how the narrative is to be put, and thus it is that the powerful have a monopoly on how the story is told. So, for thirty years the British government were the 'good guys', the poor unionists were the ones under siege, and Irish republicanism, in armed struggle or in peace process, was to be denied, suppressed, censored and demonised. The background to the outbreak of conflict in the North (fifty years of unionist misrule) was to be muted and, instead, the IRA was to be held responsible for provoking British state repression and the loyalist campaign of assassination.
Republicans were laughed at when they spoke about shoot-to-kill, and state collusion with loyalist death squads - until the (heavily censored) Stephens' Report this year finally confirmed it. At the time of writing, the British government still refuses to publish the Cory report into collusion in the North.
Sinn Féin's vote was derided and explained in terms of mass
impersonation - until November's election, held under the strictest electoral identification laws in the world, resulted in the party emerging as the voice of the nationalist community in the North.
The case of the 'Colombia Three' presents yet another example of how prejudice can blind. In a few weeks time in Bogota a Colombian judge will rule on the fate of Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and Jim Monaghan who were arrested in August 2001 and charged with training left-wing FARC guerrillas.
Their arrest has had a profound effect on the peace process in Ireland and was used by unionists as one of the reasons for their withdrawal from and collapse of the power-sharing executive in the North from which politics has yet to recover.
Before they were even formally indicted the then President of
Colombia, Andres Pastrana, made prejudicial remarks and declared on television that the three were guilty. Earlier this year the current Colombian President Alvaro Uribe told Newsweek magazine, "We have in jail three IRA men who trained FARC."
All of this has undoubtedly placed the trial judge, Judge Acosta, under intense pressure to find the three guilty despite no evidence against them and strong evidence in their favour. Back in Ireland, anti-Agreement unionists, exploiting any issue to undermine the Belfast Agreement, also dismissed the Colombia Three as having any rights.
Coming from this quarter this was unsurprising. Of more concern were the remarks of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, reported on April 29th. He said: "What is required [of the IRA] is a commitment that paramilitary activity has ceased, will not occur again so that we can get on, so that we do not have another Colombia…"
Worse still were the remarks from Michael McDowell speaking to a Progressive Democrat party conference in 2002, prior to last year's general election. As the Irish Attorney-General he should have known better and known that his remarks would be picked up and published in Bogota, as they were. He said: "But I think I speak for the great majority when I say that a political party which sends fraternal delegates to Marxist-Narco terrorists in Colombia, which keeps closer ties with the government of Havana than with any other state…has little moral claim on the electoral support of the Irish people."
More recently, on Today FM, McDowell, who is now the Minister for Justice, said that Sinn Féin was "morally unclean" and alleged that it is in receipt of IRA proceeds from "organised crime". He refused to substantiate his remark, which was aimed at damaging Sinn Féin. Certainly, he is entitled to be concerned at the electoral rise of Sinn Féin, and the possibility that it could displace the PDs in a future coalition with Fianna Fail. But had he no thought for the
effects his cavalier comments would have on attempts to put together a power-sharing executive in the North? Indeed, anti-Agreement unionists to justify their refusal to share power with Sinn Féin seized on his remarks. Anti-Agreement unionists have done far more to undermine the peace process than the Colombia Three inadvertently have.
To make the peace process work republicans compromised and the IRA engaged in major acts of decommissioning only for the British government to default on the full implementation of the Agreement.
The peace process in the North, though still bedevilled by
difficulties, has provoked a reflection on the causes of the
conflict, a desire for truth and a demand to know who was responsible for what.
The censorship of Sinn Féin was an insult to the Irish people. It meant that the government didn't consider the electorate mature enough to decide for itself. It deprived Irish people of one side of an argument, which thus exaggerated the moral case of another side to the conflict – those for partition and the union with Britain. It meant not pursuing those ultimately behind the Dublin and Monaghan bombing. It meant distorting the truth. The culture that was then created persists.
Speaking aloud about his ongoing pipedream, Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Labour Minister for Communications who introduced Section 31 in 1973, said the other day: "I have some hope – though not much – that if there is ever again a Fine Gael-Labour coalition, it would reinstate the ban on broadcasts by Sinn Féin."
Such an infringement might have been possible and tolerated back in 1973 but in 2003 people have been able to read beyond the restrictions in the Barron Report, imposed by those who withheld full cooperation, and have began to understand who the international terrorists really are.
January 4, 2004
------------------------------
Sunday Life
Force under fire: Internment
A disaster for the forces of law and order
04 January 2004
INTERMENT - introduced on August 9, 1971 - turned out to be a disastrous episode for Northern Ireland.
In a series of swoops, 354 out of 452 identified targets - all alleged republicans - were arrested and detained without trial.
It was Stormont PM, Brian Faulkner, who pushed the British Government for internment, despite advice from the Army's GOC, Lt General Harry Tuzo, that it was militarily unnecessary.
Against a background of increasing IRA violence, and pressure from hardliners in his own party, Faulkner wanted decisive action against the IRA.
Tuzo felt it would do more harm than good, and, instead, strongly favoured a more robust policy of short-term interrogations, utilising terms of the Special Powers Act.
Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling's insistence, that Protestants must be included on the internment arrest list, was also ignored.
And the Irish Premier, Jack Lynch, not only refused to simultaneously arrest IRA activists in the Republic, but strongly urged the British against internment, fearing "it would produce an explosion it would be impossible to contain".
The RUC chief constable, Graham Shillington, had agreed, however, that the time for internment had come.
Within 24 hours of the swoops, 13 people had been killed, as widespread rioting, shooting, arson and disorder erupted across Northern Ireland - 240 houses were destroyed in the Ardoyne district alone.
The violent reaction - on a scale totally unforeseen by the security forces - caused the authorities to drop plans for a second swoop, on 200 further suspects.
The IRA quickly demonstrated that it had been far from neutered by Faulkner's gamble.
In the pre-internment months, from January 1971, there had been over 250 explosions, and 27 people had lost their lives - two police, 10 soldiers, and 15 civilians.
In the remaining five months, after internment, the death toll jumped to 173, and explosions for the year totalled 1,022. Shooting incidents soared from 213, in 1970, to 1,756, in 1971, the vast majority of them after August 9.
Far from taking IRA leaders and activists out of circulation, as Faulkner suggested had happened, the devastating escalation in violence exposed the abysmal quality of the outdated intelligence, on which the arrests were made.
Many of those "lifted" were arrested on the basis of inadequate and inaccurate intelligence.
In some cases, fathers and sons with the same names were confused. Many of those lifted were traditionalist, well-known republicans, no longer active in the movement. Others were peaceful civil rights activists.
The identities of new, younger activists would take the authorities several more years to identify with any certainty, and in any numbers.
The one-sided implementation of internment, with no loyalists or Protestants arrested, justified the warning by nationalist critics that internment was the best recruiting sergeant the IRA could ever have hoped for.
Indeed, there is ample evidence that internment caused many people to become directly or indirectly involved with the IRA, and set off the uncontrollable "explosion" that Jack Lynch correctly predicted.
Despite Reginald Maudling's specific insistence that Protestants must be included on the arrest list, they were excluded at the last minute.
Faulkner told a concerned Stormont cabinet colleague that, at present, he was advised that there was no case to justify the detention of Protestants.
The attorney general, Basil Kelly, confirmed that the police had been genuinely unable to furnish them with any information, suggesting that a subversive organisation existed in the Protestant community.
This was plainly myopic.
One of the first signs of resurgent violence had come in May 1966, when Protestant extremists, designating themselves the 'Ulster Volunteer Force' , declared war on the IRA.
The warning was dismissed as the work of cranks, until a month later, when a Catholic barman was shot dead and two companions wounded, as they left a pub on the Shankill Road.
The first bombing of the Troubles, attacks on public utilities, in 1969, had been the work of loyalists, who also claimed the first police life, during a riot to protest against proposed police reforms.
By 1971, all sorts of shadowy loyalist organisations had been formed.
The omission of any Protestant subversives was a bigoted and costly blunder.
Catholics believed the RUC was being used as an instrument of repression by unionists.
More importantly, the loyalists, who would have been on a properly balanced internment list, would soon launch a campaign of brutal sectarian assassination, randomly targeting Catholics.
Dr Robert Ramsey, Faulkner's private secretary, has outlined a number of reasons for the failure of internment, including:
- "It had become so obviously 'inevitable' that many of its intended prisoners had already fled."
- "The intelligence on which the arrests were made proved to be sadly out of date . . . the Irish Republic took a cynically opportunist view of the situation, both providing a safe haven for men on the run, and adding a loud condemnatory voice against the measure, in the forum of world opinion."
- "It was seen as one sided. The arrest of some loyalist paramilitaries, who had been active a few years previously, had been considered at political level, in both Belfast and London, but on the advice of the security forces, had not been carried out."
Force under fire: Internment
A disaster for the forces of law and order
04 January 2004
INTERMENT - introduced on August 9, 1971 - turned out to be a disastrous episode for Northern Ireland.
In a series of swoops, 354 out of 452 identified targets - all alleged republicans - were arrested and detained without trial.
It was Stormont PM, Brian Faulkner, who pushed the British Government for internment, despite advice from the Army's GOC, Lt General Harry Tuzo, that it was militarily unnecessary.
Against a background of increasing IRA violence, and pressure from hardliners in his own party, Faulkner wanted decisive action against the IRA.
Tuzo felt it would do more harm than good, and, instead, strongly favoured a more robust policy of short-term interrogations, utilising terms of the Special Powers Act.
Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling's insistence, that Protestants must be included on the internment arrest list, was also ignored.
And the Irish Premier, Jack Lynch, not only refused to simultaneously arrest IRA activists in the Republic, but strongly urged the British against internment, fearing "it would produce an explosion it would be impossible to contain".
The RUC chief constable, Graham Shillington, had agreed, however, that the time for internment had come.
Within 24 hours of the swoops, 13 people had been killed, as widespread rioting, shooting, arson and disorder erupted across Northern Ireland - 240 houses were destroyed in the Ardoyne district alone.
The violent reaction - on a scale totally unforeseen by the security forces - caused the authorities to drop plans for a second swoop, on 200 further suspects.
The IRA quickly demonstrated that it had been far from neutered by Faulkner's gamble.
In the pre-internment months, from January 1971, there had been over 250 explosions, and 27 people had lost their lives - two police, 10 soldiers, and 15 civilians.
In the remaining five months, after internment, the death toll jumped to 173, and explosions for the year totalled 1,022. Shooting incidents soared from 213, in 1970, to 1,756, in 1971, the vast majority of them after August 9.
Far from taking IRA leaders and activists out of circulation, as Faulkner suggested had happened, the devastating escalation in violence exposed the abysmal quality of the outdated intelligence, on which the arrests were made.
Many of those "lifted" were arrested on the basis of inadequate and inaccurate intelligence.
In some cases, fathers and sons with the same names were confused. Many of those lifted were traditionalist, well-known republicans, no longer active in the movement. Others were peaceful civil rights activists.
The identities of new, younger activists would take the authorities several more years to identify with any certainty, and in any numbers.
The one-sided implementation of internment, with no loyalists or Protestants arrested, justified the warning by nationalist critics that internment was the best recruiting sergeant the IRA could ever have hoped for.
Indeed, there is ample evidence that internment caused many people to become directly or indirectly involved with the IRA, and set off the uncontrollable "explosion" that Jack Lynch correctly predicted.
Despite Reginald Maudling's specific insistence that Protestants must be included on the arrest list, they were excluded at the last minute.
Faulkner told a concerned Stormont cabinet colleague that, at present, he was advised that there was no case to justify the detention of Protestants.
The attorney general, Basil Kelly, confirmed that the police had been genuinely unable to furnish them with any information, suggesting that a subversive organisation existed in the Protestant community.
This was plainly myopic.
One of the first signs of resurgent violence had come in May 1966, when Protestant extremists, designating themselves the 'Ulster Volunteer Force' , declared war on the IRA.
The warning was dismissed as the work of cranks, until a month later, when a Catholic barman was shot dead and two companions wounded, as they left a pub on the Shankill Road.
The first bombing of the Troubles, attacks on public utilities, in 1969, had been the work of loyalists, who also claimed the first police life, during a riot to protest against proposed police reforms.
By 1971, all sorts of shadowy loyalist organisations had been formed.
The omission of any Protestant subversives was a bigoted and costly blunder.
Catholics believed the RUC was being used as an instrument of repression by unionists.
More importantly, the loyalists, who would have been on a properly balanced internment list, would soon launch a campaign of brutal sectarian assassination, randomly targeting Catholics.
Dr Robert Ramsey, Faulkner's private secretary, has outlined a number of reasons for the failure of internment, including:
- "It had become so obviously 'inevitable' that many of its intended prisoners had already fled."
- "The intelligence on which the arrests were made proved to be sadly out of date . . . the Irish Republic took a cynically opportunist view of the situation, both providing a safe haven for men on the run, and adding a loud condemnatory voice against the measure, in the forum of world opinion."
- "It was seen as one sided. The arrest of some loyalist paramilitaries, who had been active a few years previously, had been considered at political level, in both Belfast and London, but on the advice of the security forces, had not been carried out."
Sunday Life
Force under fire: Reverberations of 'white noise'
04 January 2004
TWELVE of the men arrested in the internment swoops - 'the hooded men' as they became known - were singled out for special 'white noise' interrogation.
Minutes of a British cabinet meeting reveal that Stormont Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, selected the candidates for interrogation, after Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, and Defence Secretary, Peter Carrington, gave political approval for the practice, on August 10, 1971.
The plan to introduce "interrogation in depth" had first been hatched inside the intelligence community, around March 1971, as moves towards internment appeared inevitable.
In order to gain high-grade information, some of those on the suspect list would be subjected to the terrifying - and disorientating - interrogation.
In preparation, officers from the Joint Services Interrogation Wing of the School of Intelligence conducted a seminar for RUC officers, in April 1971, to teach them the required techniques - the morality and legality of which were so doubtful that they had never been written in a directive, or training manual.
These provided for the suspects to be hooded, deprived of sleep, fed only bread and water, be subjected to continuous 'white noise', and made to lean at an angle against a wall for prolonged periods, supported only by their toes and fingertips.
All of this was designed to dislocate all sense of time and location, and impose fatigue.
The techniques had been deployed and developed by British forces, in operations since the war, including Aden, Cyprus and Malaysia.
Rules were issued in 1965, and revised in 1967, to allow for daily inspection by a medical officer.
At first, ministerial approval was not sought, in either London or Belfast, for this extraordinary interrogation method.
Some senior RUC officers expressed reservations about the proposed methods, which went well beyond anything even the paramilitary RUC had ever been permitted to do.
The RUC officers' objections were brushed aside, with assurances that the police officers concerned would be protected, and not held responsible, if the methods were subsequently criticised.
Of the men 354 'lifted, 104 were released within 48 hours, while a dozen were singled out for special treatment, by teams of police, and Army interrogators.
Clad in boiler suits, the men were subjected to the five interrogation-in-depth techniques, involving degrees of physical and psychological deprivation.
A Government report into the hooded men, hastily set up by Prime Minister Heath after the episode was exposed, concluded that the men had been ill-treated.
But the minutes of the cabinet meeting of October 18, show ministers took the view that it had been justified.
"We were dealing with an enemy who had no scruples, and we should not be unduly squeamish over methods of interrogation, in these circumstances," the minutes record.
Britain ended up in the dock of the European Court of Human Rights, facing complaints of torture.
The court ruled, in January 1976, that the interrogation techniques did not constitute torture, but did amount to "inhuman and degrading treatment".
In June 1974, one of the claimants received an out of court settlement, of £10,000, and in December that year, six others received awards totalling £76,000.
Internment was a more costly debacle in other ways - Catholics pulled out of Parliament, councils and public life, in protest at the operation.
Thousands embarked on a campaign of civil disobedience, refusing to pay rent and rates, until internment ended.
This was the point at which Northern Ireland's partial independence was finally doomed.
On December 4, the senior civil servant, Dr John Oliver, chairing a meeting of advisory committee on relations with the Catholic community, said, according to the minutes: "The Government needs to decide upon its basic philosophy, in relation to the minority. Did it consider itself at war with the minority, or did it believe in treating it fairly, firmly and openly? At present, the Government's attitude was not clear."
Force under fire: Reverberations of 'white noise'
04 January 2004
TWELVE of the men arrested in the internment swoops - 'the hooded men' as they became known - were singled out for special 'white noise' interrogation.
Minutes of a British cabinet meeting reveal that Stormont Prime Minister, Brian Faulkner, selected the candidates for interrogation, after Home Secretary, Reginald Maudling, and Defence Secretary, Peter Carrington, gave political approval for the practice, on August 10, 1971.
The plan to introduce "interrogation in depth" had first been hatched inside the intelligence community, around March 1971, as moves towards internment appeared inevitable.
In order to gain high-grade information, some of those on the suspect list would be subjected to the terrifying - and disorientating - interrogation.
In preparation, officers from the Joint Services Interrogation Wing of the School of Intelligence conducted a seminar for RUC officers, in April 1971, to teach them the required techniques - the morality and legality of which were so doubtful that they had never been written in a directive, or training manual.
These provided for the suspects to be hooded, deprived of sleep, fed only bread and water, be subjected to continuous 'white noise', and made to lean at an angle against a wall for prolonged periods, supported only by their toes and fingertips.
All of this was designed to dislocate all sense of time and location, and impose fatigue.
The techniques had been deployed and developed by British forces, in operations since the war, including Aden, Cyprus and Malaysia.
Rules were issued in 1965, and revised in 1967, to allow for daily inspection by a medical officer.
At first, ministerial approval was not sought, in either London or Belfast, for this extraordinary interrogation method.
Some senior RUC officers expressed reservations about the proposed methods, which went well beyond anything even the paramilitary RUC had ever been permitted to do.
The RUC officers' objections were brushed aside, with assurances that the police officers concerned would be protected, and not held responsible, if the methods were subsequently criticised.
Of the men 354 'lifted, 104 were released within 48 hours, while a dozen were singled out for special treatment, by teams of police, and Army interrogators.
Clad in boiler suits, the men were subjected to the five interrogation-in-depth techniques, involving degrees of physical and psychological deprivation.
A Government report into the hooded men, hastily set up by Prime Minister Heath after the episode was exposed, concluded that the men had been ill-treated.
But the minutes of the cabinet meeting of October 18, show ministers took the view that it had been justified.
"We were dealing with an enemy who had no scruples, and we should not be unduly squeamish over methods of interrogation, in these circumstances," the minutes record.
Britain ended up in the dock of the European Court of Human Rights, facing complaints of torture.
The court ruled, in January 1976, that the interrogation techniques did not constitute torture, but did amount to "inhuman and degrading treatment".
In June 1974, one of the claimants received an out of court settlement, of £10,000, and in December that year, six others received awards totalling £76,000.
Internment was a more costly debacle in other ways - Catholics pulled out of Parliament, councils and public life, in protest at the operation.
Thousands embarked on a campaign of civil disobedience, refusing to pay rent and rates, until internment ended.
This was the point at which Northern Ireland's partial independence was finally doomed.
On December 4, the senior civil servant, Dr John Oliver, chairing a meeting of advisory committee on relations with the Catholic community, said, according to the minutes: "The Government needs to decide upon its basic philosophy, in relation to the minority. Did it consider itself at war with the minority, or did it believe in treating it fairly, firmly and openly? At present, the Government's attitude was not clear."
The Observer | UK News | MBE for para angers Bloody Sunday relatives
MBE for para angers Bloody Sunday relatives
Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday January 4, 2004
The Observer
A British paratrooper who was on Derry's streets on Bloody Sunday has been appointed an MBE in the New Year's honours list.
The Observer has learnt that the ex-soldier gave evidence to the Saville Inquiry last year about his role on the day 13 civilians were killed. Families of those shot dead on 30 January, 1972, described the honour as a 'kick in the teeth' for relatives of Bloody Sunday victims.
The Observer is aware of the former para's identity, but cannot name him - both for security reasons and under the rules of anonymity imposed by Lord Saville.
Now in his mid-fifties, the recipient of the MBE gave evidence to the Saville inquiry in London from behind a screen. All soldiers and security personnel involved in the operation on Bloody Sunday were given the option of concealing their identity at the tribunal.
Last night relatives of those shot by the Parachute Regiment after the civil rights march through Derry contrasted the soldier's demand for anonymity at the inquiry with his willingness to be named in the honours list.
John Kelly, whose 17-year-old brother Michael died after being shot in the stomach by troops, said: 'The fact that he was part of the Bloody Sunday massacre and has now been granted an MBE is terrible. What's more it's totally insensitive, a kick in the teeth for the families.
'This man was screened at Saville in London and yet can come out and accept a medal openly from the Queen. That is a bit rich. The fact is that at an open and public tribunal he didn't have the guts to show his face. Yet the big contrast here is that he is willing to have his name printed in a public list. The authorities must have known his history and background.'
Kelly added that the decision to honour the soldier was not surprising, as other Bloody Sunday paratroopers had been given awards and citations. He cited the example of Colonel Derek Wilford, who was appointed an OBE. The Saville Inquiry resumes on 12 January with further oral evidence from eye witnesses in Derry. It will close down in late February and restart again whenever Lord Saville draws up his report. The tribunal's final report could be published as late as 2005 with the final cost running close to £200 million.
MBE for para angers Bloody Sunday relatives
Henry McDonald, Ireland editor
Sunday January 4, 2004
The Observer
A British paratrooper who was on Derry's streets on Bloody Sunday has been appointed an MBE in the New Year's honours list.
The Observer has learnt that the ex-soldier gave evidence to the Saville Inquiry last year about his role on the day 13 civilians were killed. Families of those shot dead on 30 January, 1972, described the honour as a 'kick in the teeth' for relatives of Bloody Sunday victims.
The Observer is aware of the former para's identity, but cannot name him - both for security reasons and under the rules of anonymity imposed by Lord Saville.
Now in his mid-fifties, the recipient of the MBE gave evidence to the Saville inquiry in London from behind a screen. All soldiers and security personnel involved in the operation on Bloody Sunday were given the option of concealing their identity at the tribunal.
Last night relatives of those shot by the Parachute Regiment after the civil rights march through Derry contrasted the soldier's demand for anonymity at the inquiry with his willingness to be named in the honours list.
John Kelly, whose 17-year-old brother Michael died after being shot in the stomach by troops, said: 'The fact that he was part of the Bloody Sunday massacre and has now been granted an MBE is terrible. What's more it's totally insensitive, a kick in the teeth for the families.
'This man was screened at Saville in London and yet can come out and accept a medal openly from the Queen. That is a bit rich. The fact is that at an open and public tribunal he didn't have the guts to show his face. Yet the big contrast here is that he is willing to have his name printed in a public list. The authorities must have known his history and background.'
Kelly added that the decision to honour the soldier was not surprising, as other Bloody Sunday paratroopers had been given awards and citations. He cited the example of Colonel Derek Wilford, who was appointed an OBE. The Saville Inquiry resumes on 12 January with further oral evidence from eye witnesses in Derry. It will close down in late February and restart again whenever Lord Saville draws up his report. The tribunal's final report could be published as late as 2005 with the final cost running close to £200 million.
