August 06, 2007
Sinn Fein has hijacked the history of Ulster
Sinn Fein has hijacked the history of Ulster - Times Online
Last week British troops withdrew from Northern Ireland. Behind them the story of the Troubles is being traduced
Driving up west Belfast’s Divis Street last week, the scene of the fierce
sectarian rioting that triggered the deployment of British troops 38 years
ago, I noticed a gap in the murals that have adorned its walls for so many
years, a visual barometer of the changing climate of the times.
I wondered if the creative talents of Sinn Fein’s art department were already
preparing to fill the space with a fresh mural depicting the withdrawal of
British forces. At midnight last Tuesday the army brought down the final
curtain on the longest campaign in its history. There was no great ceremony,
no Last Post, no rolling up of the Union Jack as in Aden 40 years earlier.
The army slipped out of the province in carpet slippers.
Driving on up the Falls Road I passed the narrow streets around the Clon-ard
monastery where Catholics had come under Protestant attack in that hot
August of 1969. I remember talking to soldiers about their experiences when
they first arrived to keep the two sides apart and prevent a feared Catholic
pogrom. Many of the troops barely knew where Northern Ireland was or
understood the bitter sectarian divisions that had flared into violent civil
conflict in this far corner of the United Kingdom. They were welcomed like
heroes. “I felt like a knight in shining armour,” one of them told me. “Tea
and an endless supply of buns were the order of the day.”
Within months the honeymoon was over and tea and buns were replaced with
rocks, petrol bombs and bullets. Soon the army became the enemy, as a result
of a series of misjudgments and catastrophic errors, largely through
ignorance and blind reliance on the unionist government at Stormont against
whom the civil rights campaign had been initially directed.
A disastrous curfew was placed on the Falls Road, alienating the very people
who had welcomed the soldiers with open arms. Internment was introduced in
1971, carried out by the army as young and old were dragged from their beds
and carted off in the early hours of the morning.
To make matters worse, a handful of suspects were subjected to controversial
interrogation techniques previously used by the army in colonial situations
in Malaya, Kenya and Aden, including hooding, wall standing and exposure to
an incessant high-pitched “white” noise. The techniques were subsequently
deemed to be illegal. But worse was still to come.
On January 30, 1972, paratroopers shot dead 13 unarmed civil rights marchers
in Londonderry on what became known as “Bloody Sunday”.
It was undoubtedly the darkest day in the army’s 38 years in the province, and
in the eyes of many nationalists it completed the transformation of the
troops from knights in shining armour to a murderous army of occupation.
In the bitter and bloody years that followed, army commanders emphasised the
need to win “hearts and minds” in order to win the war, but the message fell
on many deaf ears out on the ground as squaddies saw their mates shot, blown
up and maimed by an ever more effective IRA.
No love was lost on either side. “Grab ’em by the balls and hearts and minds
will follow” was a sentiment I heard from soldiers on the streets. “Chris”
gave me a graphic description of what that meant after he had intercepted a
gunman who had tried to kill him: “I did give him a good thumping. His
genitals were black and blue for a while. I think I must have cracked a
couple of his ribs. But that was the way you treat terrorists.”
Many of these early mistakes and abuses the army now recognises and puts down
to a long and difficult learning process.
This is only one side of the story. The problem is that it’s the side on which
Sinn Fein concentrates as it air-brushes the IRA’s own history. What about
“Bloody Friday” in 1972, when IRA car bombs in Belfast killed nine? The
Kingsmill massacre in 1976 when an IRA unit in south Armagh gunned down 10
Protestant workers returning home in a minibus? The La Mon restaurant
bombing in 1978 when an IRA incendiary bomb killed 12 Protestants?
Enniskillen in 1987 when an IRA bomb killed 11 Protestants during the
Remembrance Day ceremony? And these are but a few.
I ended my drive up the Falls Road at the Whiterock community centre on the
fringe of the once notorious Ballymurphy estate where soldiers used to
patrol at their peril. I had come to take part in a BBC Radio Ulster Talk
Back discussion on the final withdrawal of British troops. The new normality
hits you between the eyes. Unarmed officers of the RUC’s replacement, the
Police Service of Northern Ireland, stood at the door, smiling in the
sunshine. Inside was Gerry Kelly, Old Bailey bomber from 1973 and Maze
escapee 10 years later, sandwiched between two former British soldiers. All
were chatting without animosity as they reminisced about the “war”.
Although republicans would vehemently deny it, the army did play its part in
helping us to reach this year’s historic political settlement. At its most
basic, the army prevented the IRA achieving its original goal of driving the
“Brits” into the sea and reunifying Ireland. This was its agenda when Martin
McGuinness and Gerry Adams were part of the IRA delegation that met William
Whitelaw, the Northern Ireland secretary, in 1972 for secret talks in
London. Then there was no hint of compromise in the air.
The critical point in the army’s campaign were the years that followed the IRA
hunger strike of 1981 when 10 prisoners died. Sinn Fein was on the political
rise and the IRA had more arms than it could handle – 130 tons courtesy of
Colonel Gadaffi of Libya. That was when the SAS and other undercover units
made it clear that the Brits were not prepared to let the IRA win. In 1987
the SAS ambush at Loughgall wiped out eight members of one of the IRA’s most
experienced units. I remember Sir Robert Andrew, permanent undersecretary at
the Northern Ireland Office at the time, telling me of his satisfaction that
“we had won one”.
The SAS killing of three members of another IRA unit in Gibraltar the
following year drove home the message. Both operations were the result of
vastly improved intelligence from penetration of the IRA. Overall the army’s
special forces kept the IRA at bay, with the result that both sides
privately accepted that there was a military stalemate. Such were the
necessary conditions that preceded the long and tortuous peace process that
culminated in the historic agreement at Stormont earlier this year.
What of the cost? More than 3,500 people lost their lives in the conflict and
Britain put civil liberties on hold in the name of defeating terrorism. All
sides suffered horrendously before peace finally came.
What of the lessons? It’s easy to say they have been learnt and applied in the
very different theatres where the army is now involved: Iraq and
Afghanistan. But Basra is not Belfast. Initially the army patrolled its
dusty streets without helmets but these were soon put back on again as the
local militias turned against them, their support boosted by allegations of
abuses by the army during interrogation and elsewhere.
It seems like déjà vu: soldiers don’t make good policemen. In Afghanistan it’s
difficult for soldiers to win hearts and minds when they’re trying to
eradicate the heroin poppies from which local farmers and their families
make their living. In fighting terrorism and political violence, “hearts and
minds” needs to be more than a well meaning slogan, not least when it comes
to countering Islamist extrem-ism on the streets of Britain.
The government knows that gaining the support of communities, be they
nationalists in Northern Ireland or Muslims in Britain, is the key to
countering terrorism and isolating the enemy, real and potential. But as the
army’s 38 years in Northern Ireland have shown, it’s easier said than done.
Peter Taylor has reported the Irish conflict for 35 years for ITV and the
BBC and is the author of Provos, Loyalists and Brits
August 6, 2007 at 08:32 AM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
May 30, 2006
The spy who left peace out in cold - twice
The spy who left peace out in cold - twice - Britain - Times Online
By David Sharrock, Daniel McGrory and Sean O'Neill
Our correspondents investigate a murky world where politics collide with brutal realities
DENIS DONALDSON will be remembered as the British agent at the heart of the republican movement who nearly toppled the Northern Ireland peace process not once, but twice.
As Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, his Irish counterpart, unveiled their final plan this week to restore the Province’s political structures, they must have reflected on the cruel irony that a man at the centre of the IRA spy-ring allegations which brought down Ulster’s power-sharing executive 2½ years ago could yet, in death, scupper the prospect of restoring those same institutions.
Mr Ahern is on record as calling the “Stormontgate” affair “as bizarre as it gets, for who would have thought that an informer in the pay of the British Government could turn out to be the instrument for the undoing of all that Mr Blair has worked so diligently for throughout his prime ministership?”
But was Mr Donaldson’s exposure, set in motion by the uncovering of an IRA intelligence-gathering operation inside the Northern Ireland Office, a matter of conspiracy or cock-up?
Like a torch beam in a dark forest, the Donaldson affair has briefly sent shafts of light into the blackest recesses of the “dirty war” that has been waged down the decades in Northern Ireland.
It is a complex, murky world in which there appear to be no clear answers and where the imperatives of political deal-making collide, sometimes with catastrophic results, with the brutal realities of intelligence-gathering.
The facts are few. Irish police have established how Mr Donaldson died but have no clear lead, although they suspect Republicans were responsible.
Mr Donaldson was hit by four blasts from a shotgun as he tried to keep his killer out of his primitive cottage in Co Donegal.
The assassin or an accomplice initially threw a stone that smashed a front window, presumably to draw him outside. Mr Donaldson had no intention of revealing himself. He tried to bolt the front door or to put his weight against it. The gunman fired the first two shotgun blasts through the door and as Mr Donaldson staggered back towards the rear room, the killer reloaded, leaving the spent cartridges on the ground, and entered the cottage.
There was no back door and the 56-year-old victim, trapped and wounded, put his right hand over his face in a vain attempt to shield himself. The third and fourth shots, one to the body and the other to the head, killed him.
The attacker apparently fled immediately, without ejecting the other cartridges, and escaped from the remote wooded district, possibly with the aid of an accomplice. Nobody saw or heard the shots and because the murder weapon was a shotgun there is no trail for forensic scientists to follow.
The suspects are legion. As an informer and a British agent, in the eyes of the IRA Mr Donaldson automatically sentenced himself to death. If the organisation’s ruling Army Council did not pass the sentence or approve the killing, because of its commitment last summer to ending its activities, that would still leave any number of its members, past or present, with the incentive to carry out an unsanctioned murder. The sad and brutal truth is that in republican circles there will be few tears shed.
A second possibility is that the IRA is showing early signs of fracturing into factions as it lapses into inactivity and that mavericks carried out the killing to make a point to the leadership, knowing that Mr Donaldson’s unpopularity would make it impossible to punish them.
A third possibility is that the IRA approved and carried out the murder at leadership level, as a lesson to others thinking of selling secrets, and is lying. In the past it denied certain murders, including those of police officers and postmen, and later admitted them, claiming that they were unsanctioned.
After the murder of Robert McCartney in January last year it denied involvement but later, under pressure from the dead man’s sisters, went back on that and offered to shoot the perpetrators. It still denies carrying out the £26.5 million raid on the Northern Bank, though police on both sides of the Irish border say the IRA did it.
Another theory is that dissident republicans from the breakaway groups the Real IRA or Continuity IRA killed Mr Donaldson with the motive of wrecking the prospects of a political settlement.
But the counter-argument is that for those who parted company with the Provisionals, the continuing presence of Mr Donaldson was a reminder of how rotten the IRA had become; he achieved a certain “recruiting sergeant” status for those who disagree with Sinn Fein’s strategy.
Not surprisingly, the theory that Sinn Fein has been promoting is that the “securocrats” killed Mr Donaldson — the very people to whom he was carrying the republican movement’s secrets.
It is a view endorsed by Mr Donaldson’s family, who said yesterday that they believed the IRA’s denial of involvement, adding: “The difficult situation which our family has been put in is the direct result of the activities of the Special Branch and British intelligence agencies.”
This theory has the attraction of deterring other would-be informers from taking the shilling and of shifting the blame for everything that has gone wrong in the peace process to the “dark forces” of the British Establishment. The problem with this explanation is that the evidence of a Stormont IRA spy ring lies in documents that Northern Ireland police were led to, not by Mr Donaldson, but by another informer.
According to Brian Rowan, a former BBC security editor, who has written extensively on the subject, the source who uncovered the spy ring was a man who approached the police offering information, motivated by a falling out with a senior Sinn Fein figure.
“The informer is not a significant republican figure but he was able to identify the house that was being used to hide the Stormontgate documents,” Mr Rowan said.
This was just months after the IRA had carried out a daring raid on Castlereagh police station on St Patrick’s Day 2002, escaping with a bulging file of sensitive material. After that, Operation Torsion was launched, a bugging and surveillance operation whose targets included the IRA’s director of intelligence.
Instead of simply seizing the documents, Special Branch decided to try to catch the IRA chief with them in his possession, thus getting revenge for Castlereagh. The police even managed to remove the documents and a computer from the house where they were being hidden, make copies and return them with bugging devices attached so that their movement could be monitored. According to Mr Rowan’s sources, Mr Donaldson’s house was “the end of the chain” for hiding the documents but they were there “for a very short time”.
Furthermore, Mr Donaldson had not told his handler about them. “If he had, we would have let it (the bag containing the documents) make another move (to another location),” Mr Rowan’s source said. “Does anybody really believe that Special Branch would risk such a high-level source?”
As the trial preparations proceeded for Mr Donaldson and two others charged in relation to Stormontgate their legal teams pushed for disclosure on Operation Torsion.
But Special Branch had much to lose by revealing those details: the informer who identified a house where the Stormontgate documents were being held, and Mr Donaldson, who had not revealed that the documents were in his house but who had provided valuable political intelligence over many years.
It was in these circumstances that all charges were finally dropped last December, leading to Mr Donaldson’s triumphant appearance on the steps of Stormont, flanked by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, to claim that “securocrats” had destroyed the power-sharing executive.
“It came as a complete shock to everyone when he was exposed,” a republican source said. “Nobody had any suspicions about Denis — he just wasn’t seen as that sort of character, “He was an administrator and an awful lot of stuff went through him. From a Brit point of view he was useful because although he wouldn’t know any of the big secrets, he knew all of the wee ones.”
As the clock ticks towards Tony Blair’s November deadline it is yet possible that the Denis Donaldson mystery influences the course of politics. If it is established that the IRA did murder him, an act which it has performed on countless occasions in the past in the case of other informers, it is certain that the Unionists will use it as a justification for not sharing power with Sinn Fein.
There is one other legacy which Mr Donaldson and Stormontgate bequeathed to the peace process: as a sop to Unionists after it and the IRA’s Castlereagh raid, the International Monitoring Commission was established to test the ceasefires’ validity.
Sinn Fein hates the commission, which reported this year that while the IRA was moving in the right direction, it was still involved in serious crime and spying and had retained weapons. Its further reports will play a vital role in judging if republicans have passed the democratic test before Unionists will be ready to sit down with them in government.
WHERE DEATH HIDES IN THE SHADOWS
# Pat Finucane, a Belfast solicitor, was shot 14 times by the loyalist Ulster Defence Association/Ulster Freedom Fighters. His wife was wounded and their three children witnessed the attack in February 1989. The UFF claimed that Mr Finucane was an IRA officer, which his family deny, saying that he defended republican suspects. There are allegations that members of the security forces collaborated with loyalist paramilitaries.
# Brian Nelson was a former British army agent at the centre of alleged security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. He died in April 2003 of a brain haemorrhage. Nelson, who operated as the intelligence chief of the UDA, was recruited by British military intelligence at the height of the Troubles.
# The unmasking of a top-level mole in the IRA — named as Freddie Scappaticci — reopened claims that the security services ordered the murder of republican sympathisers to protect their informer. On October 9, 1987, Francisco Notarantonio, a pensioner, was shot dead by loyalist gunmen at his home in West Belfast. They appeared to believe that Mr Notarantonio, an old friend of Gerry Adams’s father, was a top IRA figure. Mr Notarantonio had been in the IRA in the 1940s but for decades was a taxi driver. His family deny that he knew about “Stakeknife”. His handlers are alleged to have let their prized informer carry out IRA killings so that he would not be discovered, so saving many more lives. In May 2003 Freddie Scappaticci denied that he was “Stakeknife”.
# Governors of Northern Ireland’s Maze prison were warned two months before the murder of the loyalist godfather Billy Wright that republican terrorists were planning to kill him in jail – but did nothing. Wright was shot dead by three Irish National Liberation Army activists on December 27, 1997. The hit team had been housed in the same H-block as Wright, the leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force. No guards were on the watchtower overlooking the yard in which Wright was shot and a security camera was out of action.
# Rosemary Nelson, a human rights lawyer, claimed that she had been threatened many times by RUC officers for her work in defending republican suspects. In 1998 Param Curamaswamy, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, said in his annual report he believed that her life could be in danger. He made recommendations to the British Government that were not acted upon. Mrs Nelson was killed by a car bomb in March 1999. The loyalist Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility.
May 30, 2006 at 11:40 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
April 06, 2006
The spy's tale: The life and death of Denis Donaldson
By David McKittrick, Ireland Correspondent
Published: 06 April 2006
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/ulster/article356032.ece
Within the IRA and Sinn Fein, Denis Donaldson was regarded as such a staunch republican that his incorrigible womanising rang no alarm bells, even in organisations forever suspicious of infiltration by the security forces.
Donaldson's frequent approaches to women were so well-known in republican circles that they were not regarded as rendering him open to recruitment as an agent. Indeed, one of a number of mysteries that remain about the Donaldson affair is exactly how Special Branch recruited him 20 years ago. He gave no details, apart from saying he was recruited "after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life".
According to one who knew him well, Donaldson was both charismatic and irritating, causing some to like him but others to dislike him. "He had been around a few corners, enjoyed the friendship of the Sinn Fein leadership and was always believed to be a 'sound' republican," the source said. The Irish feminist Marie Mulholland wrote of him: "Denis stood out, all five foot nothing of him. Yes, he was a small man but somehow it never seemed to matter because he had charm - buckets of it. Not the smoozing of an operator, but real charm. It worked wonders with women and Denis loved women - lots of them."
Donaldson's career in the IRA and Sinn Fein spanned the entirety of the Troubles, from the rebirth of the IRA in 1970 to Sinn Fein's growth into Northern Ireland's largest nationalist party.
A member of an old republican family, he was identified with crucial events in recent republican history. In 1970 he helped give the IRA new credibility as the defender of vulnerable Catholic communities when he helped fend off a loyalist assault on the Short Strand district of Belfast.
Later, he was photographed inside the Maze prison with Bobby Sands, the most revered republican martyr, their beaming faces conveying IRA prisoners not as sinister terrorists but as friendly comrades.
Donaldson travelled the world for the IRA, visiting Europe and many parts of the Middle East. In Lebanon he was closely involved in attempts to secure the release of the Belfast-born hostage Brian Keenan.
He was also sent to the United States, serving as a contact point with the important Irish-American community. In his travels he is thought to be have acted in a dual role, seeking to win friends for Sinn Fein within groups such as the PLO, but also looking out opportunities for the IRA to procure arms abroad.
More recently he became an important cog in the Sinn Fein machine, acting as the party's office administrator at Stormont. In this role he was not in the tight inner circle of Gerry Adams and his "kitchen cabinet", but he was close to the heart of the republican political operation, and has been party to many decisions, and involvedin many conversations with important figures.
Republicans thought of him as utterly dependable, first of all in the IRA and then during Sinn Fein's period of political growth. The revelation of his double role as republican activist and as Special Branch informer shocked and horrified Sinn Fein and IRA people.
Republicans had known there were agents in the ranks, but it seems none had suspected Donaldson, partly because of his identification with the birth of the modern IRA and his association with Bobby Sands.
His unmasking came about in the most bizarre circumstances in October 2002. Following televised high-profile raids at Stormont, police arrested him and others, charging him with being part of a republican spy ring. The allegation against him was that he had been at the centre of an IRA operation which had amassed large amounts of confidential documents from both the Northern Ireland Office and from local political parties. The raids and arrests in effect brought down the power-sharing administration, with David Trimble, who was Ulster Unionist leader at the time, declaring that it could not function in the light of such behaviour. The Stormont Assembly has been suspended ever since.
In political terms, the Donaldson killing could not have come at a worse time. Tony Blair is due to launch an initiative today aimed at reviving the Assembly.
One of the ironies in this saga is that the IRA instructed him, a police informer, to start spying at Stormont, co-ordinating the collection and photocopying of confidential documents. That is presumably exactly what he had been doing for British intelligence: collating documents and information on the activities of Sinn Fein and the IRA, and passing them to police.
The IRA, in other words, ordered the British spy to start spying on the British - a tribute to his skill in avoiding suspicion.
There is no definitive answer to the question of why, in arresting and charging Donaldson, the police should have moved against their own agent of 20 years' standing. The most likely explanation is that he was selective in what he passed to his handlers. Security sources say he did not inform the police that the IRA had appointed him as its spy master at Stormont, and thus forfeited any legal protections he might have had. In all probability, they suggest, he withheld the information to protect himself and his family.
Evading detection for two decades was a major achievement on his part, and during his long experience he doubtless worked out many tricks and techniques for his own self-preservation. He probably became adept at handling his handlers.
Security sources also say his importance decreased over the years, an assessment which may help explain why Special Branch was prepared to sacrifice him. It may also be the case that the police and other agencies have other agents implanted at even more strategic levels within Sinn Fein and the IRA.
It is certain that they continue to use technological means of surveillance, making use of ingenious bugging devices planted in or near homes and other premises used by republicans. These can look like old rafters in a house, or when planted outside resemble pieces of rotting wood. Several years ago, a car used by Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness was found to have fitted with a bug which broadcast their conversations to a satellite. In any event, Donaldson was clearly just one of a range of sources which the security forces used to maintain surveillance on republicans.
His unmasking presented the IRA with a huge dilemma, since its traditional punishment for informers is usually death. During the Troubles it killed at least 50 people, who it claimed were informers. But the Donaldson disclosure came after the IRA formally declared that it was abandoning violence.
In another irony, the republican used to announce this to the grass roots was Seanna Walsh, a friend of Donaldson's for decades.
Killing him would have made a mockery of what republicans saw as solemn and historic pronouncements that their movement had entered an entirely new phase of development, in which politics would displace terrorism.
The old procedure would have been to dispatch Donaldson with a bullet in the back of the head; instead, under the new dispensation, he was allowed to go free. The general assumption, which he himself shared, was that he was in disgrace, but not in danger of death.
Had he left Ireland he would probably still be alive: other informers have been spirited away to start new lives abroad. By staying in Ireland, Donaldson sealed his own fate, since there is nowhere that anyone can completely hide themselves away. Sooner or later, word would have got round about where the infamous informer was holed up.
His decision to stay was a fatal miscalculation: Ireland may be on the brink of a new and more peaceful era, but someone was determined that Donaldson would not live to see it.
How the IRA dealt with those it considered informers
CHRISTOPHER HARTE
Shot in 1993 by the IRA, who said he was a member of the organisation and claimed he was an informer. His body was found with gunshot wounds to the head.
PATRICK FLOOD
IRA member from Londonderry was killed in 1990, his body found hooded and gagged on a border road. He had been missing from home for seven weeks. His mother said: "At the end of the day it's people like me, and their families, that are left to pick up the pieces."
MICHAEL MADDEN
Pensioner was shot six times at his west Belfast home in 1980. The IRA claimed he had given information to police about an attack in which a police officer was killed. A detective told the inquest there was no truth in the claim. The coroner described him as "a recluse causing no trouble to anyone."
FRANK HEGARTY
Body was found on the border in 1986. Originally from Londonderry, he moved to England after an arms find, but later returned to the city. The Republican leader Martin McGuinness strongly denied claims by his mother that he helped persuade her son to return home, assuring him he would be safe.
CAROLINE MORELAND
Mother of three from Belfast was shot and her body left on the border in 1994. The IRA claimed she had been working as a police informer.
EAMON MAGUIRE
Former member of the IRA, his body was found close to the border in 1987. The IRA claimed he had worked for eight years as an informer with police in the Irish Republic, which his family denied.
Within the IRA and Sinn Fein, Denis Donaldson was regarded as such a staunch republican that his incorrigible womanising rang no alarm bells, even in organisations forever suspicious of infiltration by the security forces.
Donaldson's frequent approaches to women were so well-known in republican circles that they were not regarded as rendering him open to recruitment as an agent. Indeed, one of a number of mysteries that remain about the Donaldson affair is exactly how Special Branch recruited him 20 years ago. He gave no details, apart from saying he was recruited "after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life".
According to one who knew him well, Donaldson was both charismatic and irritating, causing some to like him but others to dislike him. "He had been around a few corners, enjoyed the friendship of the Sinn Fein leadership and was always believed to be a 'sound' republican," the source said. The Irish feminist Marie Mulholland wrote of him: "Denis stood out, all five foot nothing of him. Yes, he was a small man but somehow it never seemed to matter because he had charm - buckets of it. Not the smoozing of an operator, but real charm. It worked wonders with women and Denis loved women - lots of them."
Donaldson's career in the IRA and Sinn Fein spanned the entirety of the Troubles, from the rebirth of the IRA in 1970 to Sinn Fein's growth into Northern Ireland's largest nationalist party.
A member of an old republican family, he was identified with crucial events in recent republican history. In 1970 he helped give the IRA new credibility as the defender of vulnerable Catholic communities when he helped fend off a loyalist assault on the Short Strand district of Belfast.
Later, he was photographed inside the Maze prison with Bobby Sands, the most revered republican martyr, their beaming faces conveying IRA prisoners not as sinister terrorists but as friendly comrades.
Donaldson travelled the world for the IRA, visiting Europe and many parts of the Middle East. In Lebanon he was closely involved in attempts to secure the release of the Belfast-born hostage Brian Keenan.
He was also sent to the United States, serving as a contact point with the important Irish-American community. In his travels he is thought to be have acted in a dual role, seeking to win friends for Sinn Fein within groups such as the PLO, but also looking out opportunities for the IRA to procure arms abroad.
More recently he became an important cog in the Sinn Fein machine, acting as the party's office administrator at Stormont. In this role he was not in the tight inner circle of Gerry Adams and his "kitchen cabinet", but he was close to the heart of the republican political operation, and has been party to many decisions, and involvedin many conversations with important figures.
Republicans thought of him as utterly dependable, first of all in the IRA and then during Sinn Fein's period of political growth. The revelation of his double role as republican activist and as Special Branch informer shocked and horrified Sinn Fein and IRA people.
Republicans had known there were agents in the ranks, but it seems none had suspected Donaldson, partly because of his identification with the birth of the modern IRA and his association with Bobby Sands.
His unmasking came about in the most bizarre circumstances in October 2002. Following televised high-profile raids at Stormont, police arrested him and others, charging him with being part of a republican spy ring. The allegation against him was that he had been at the centre of an IRA operation which had amassed large amounts of confidential documents from both the Northern Ireland Office and from local political parties. The raids and arrests in effect brought down the power-sharing administration, with David Trimble, who was Ulster Unionist leader at the time, declaring that it could not function in the light of such behaviour. The Stormont Assembly has been suspended ever since.
In political terms, the Donaldson killing could not have come at a worse time. Tony Blair is due to launch an initiative today aimed at reviving the Assembly.
One of the ironies in this saga is that the IRA instructed him, a police informer, to start spying at Stormont, co-ordinating the collection and photocopying of confidential documents. That is presumably exactly what he had been doing for British intelligence: collating documents and information on the activities of Sinn Fein and the IRA, and passing them to police.
The IRA, in other words, ordered the British spy to start spying on the British - a tribute to his skill in avoiding suspicion.
There is no definitive answer to the question of why, in arresting and charging Donaldson, the police should have moved against their own agent of 20 years' standing. The most likely explanation is that he was selective in what he passed to his handlers. Security sources say he did not inform the police that the IRA had appointed him as its spy master at Stormont, and thus forfeited any legal protections he might have had. In all probability, they suggest, he withheld the information to protect himself and his family.
Evading detection for two decades was a major achievement on his part, and during his long experience he doubtless worked out many tricks and techniques for his own self-preservation. He probably became adept at handling his handlers.
Security sources also say his importance decreased over the years, an assessment which may help explain why Special Branch was prepared to sacrifice him. It may also be the case that the police and other agencies have other agents implanted at even more strategic levels within Sinn Fein and the IRA.
It is certain that they continue to use technological means of surveillance, making use of ingenious bugging devices planted in or near homes and other premises used by republicans. These can look like old rafters in a house, or when planted outside resemble pieces of rotting wood. Several years ago, a car used by Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness was found to have fitted with a bug which broadcast their conversations to a satellite. In any event, Donaldson was clearly just one of a range of sources which the security forces used to maintain surveillance on republicans.
His unmasking presented the IRA with a huge dilemma, since its traditional punishment for informers is usually death. During the Troubles it killed at least 50 people, who it claimed were informers. But the Donaldson disclosure came after the IRA formally declared that it was abandoning violence.
In another irony, the republican used to announce this to the grass roots was Seanna Walsh, a friend of Donaldson's for decades.
Killing him would have made a mockery of what republicans saw as solemn and historic pronouncements that their movement had entered an entirely new phase of development, in which politics would displace terrorism.
The old procedure would have been to dispatch Donaldson with a bullet in the back of the head; instead, under the new dispensation, he was allowed to go free. The general assumption, which he himself shared, was that he was in disgrace, but not in danger of death.
Had he left Ireland he would probably still be alive: other informers have been spirited away to start new lives abroad. By staying in Ireland, Donaldson sealed his own fate, since there is nowhere that anyone can completely hide themselves away. Sooner or later, word would have got round about where the infamous informer was holed up.
His decision to stay was a fatal miscalculation: Ireland may be on the brink of a new and more peaceful era, but someone was determined that Donaldson would not live to see it.
How the IRA dealt with those it considered informers
CHRISTOPHER HARTE
Shot in 1993 by the IRA, who said he was a member of the organisation and claimed he was an informer. His body was found with gunshot wounds to the head.
PATRICK FLOOD
IRA member from Londonderry was killed in 1990, his body found hooded and gagged on a border road. He had been missing from home for seven weeks. His mother said: "At the end of the day it's people like me, and their families, that are left to pick up the pieces."
MICHAEL MADDEN
Pensioner was shot six times at his west Belfast home in 1980. The IRA claimed he had given information to police about an attack in which a police officer was killed. A detective told the inquest there was no truth in the claim. The coroner described him as "a recluse causing no trouble to anyone."
FRANK HEGARTY
Body was found on the border in 1986. Originally from Londonderry, he moved to England after an arms find, but later returned to the city. The Republican leader Martin McGuinness strongly denied claims by his mother that he helped persuade her son to return home, assuring him he would be safe.
CAROLINE MORELAND
Mother of three from Belfast was shot and her body left on the border in 1994. The IRA claimed she had been working as a police informer.
EAMON MAGUIRE
Former member of the IRA, his body was found close to the border in 1987. The IRA claimed he had worked for eight years as an informer with police in the Irish Republic, which his family denied.
April 6, 2006 at 02:29 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
April 04, 2006
IRA man who spied for Britain is found shot dead
IRA man who spied for Britain is found shot dead - Britain - Times Online
By David Sharrock
A former agent who infiltrated the heart of Sinn Fein is murdered at his remote cottage hideaway just four months after being exposed
THE most senior British agent to have been exposed as having worked at the heart of Sinn Fein was found murdered at his home last night.
Denis Donaldson had been shot in the head, execution-style, inside the primitive cottage in Glenties, Co Donegal, where he had been living since he was dramatically outed as a spy in December.
Irish police said that Mr Donaldson had been killed with a shotgun, and that his hand had been severed during the attack. They would not comment on reports that he had been tortured before death and his body mutilated.
Mr Donaldson’s exposure and murder may seem to be the stuff of thrillers, but the repercussions were only beginning to sink in last night. A senior government source said that the murder was being viewed as an attempt to derail the latest — and possibly final — attempt to bring the Northern Ireland peace process to a successful resolution.
The source was referring to the visit by Tony Blair to the Province tomorrow during which he and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, will announce the revival of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Last night the Northern Ireland Office said: “Nothing will deflect the Government from its aim of ensuring political progress in Northern Ireland.” The Irish Government insisted that plans to announce proposals for a new power-sharing executive this week would go ahead despite the killing. “The dark detail that surrounds this murder is a tragic and regrettable reminder of Northern Ireland’s past,” a spokesman said.
Trying to coax the hardline Democratic Unionists into power-sharing with Sinn Fein will prove even more difficult after what will be seen as a highly political killing. Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said that he was “completely appalled by this barbaric act”. Mr Ahern said: “We condemn this brutal murder.” He said that a police investigation was under way.
Mr Donaldson had so many potential and real enemies that it may never be known who carried out the killing. He carried a heavy burden of secrets, from inside the deepest workings of the republican movement and also from the counter-terrorism elite.
Even so, suspicion is likely to be directed in the first instance towards his old comrades. It was only a few months before Mr Donaldson’s exposure that the Provisional IRA said that its “armed campaign” to end British rule in Ireland and all related activities were at an end.
Before that announcement it would have been a certainty that Mr Donaldson would have been treated the same as scores of fellow republicans accused of espionage before him — a bloody interrogation, a bag over the head, a bullet, and a body left on the side of a bleak border road.
Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, who shared a long and close working relationship with Mr Donaldson since they spent time together in jail, immediately condemned the killing and tried to distance the republican movement from it: “I want to disassociate Sinn Fein, and indeed all republicans who support the peace process, from that killing.”
Asked if he believed the murder was, therefore, the work of dissident republicans, he replied: “I’m not going to speculate. Denis Donaldson, as you know, worked for the British Government. He was an agent of the British Government, so I have an entirely open mind if he was killed or murdered, who was behind it.”
Sinn Fein had previously issued an assurance that Mr Donaldson’s life was not at risk, after his confession on television before Christmas. Mr Adams added last night: “How could Sinn Fein offer him any protection?” He said he presumed that the responsibility for doing that lay elsewhere.
The IRA statement said: “The IRA had no involvement whatsoever in the death of Denis Donaldson.” It was signed, as always, “P. O’Neill”.
Tracked down by an Irish newspaper last month to a cottage in Co Donegal, Mr Donaldson was said to appear gaunt and chastened by his change of circumstances. For years he had been liked, as much by journalists as by fellow republicans, for his humour, sharp mind and evident pleasure in the finer things in life. Little did anybody realise that he had been working for British Intelligence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary Special Branch for more than 20 years. That a man as trusted and apparently committed to the republican cause as Mr Donaldson could have been spying for the British for so many years posed the pertinent question: “If Denis, then who else?” Mr Donaldson was an East Belfast Catholic who joined the IRA as a teenager. He served a prison sentence for bombing a distillery and forged a close alliance with Mr Adams’s “kitchen cabinet”, a team who went on to reshape the Provisional IRA into the most lethal and efficient terrorist organisation in Western Europe.
The Rev Ian Paisley, the Democratic Unionist Party leader, was sceptical about the IRA denial of responsibility and said that the killing could affect the meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Ahern. “There are serious talks that are going to take place and I would say that this has put a dark cloud over those talks,” he said.
REPUBLICAN LIFE
1950 Born in republican Short Strand, east Belfast
Mid-1960s Joined IRA. Sided with the Provisional wing in 1969
1971 Caught trying to bomb government buildings. Jailed for four years, later became a key ally of Gerry Adams
1981 Arrested in Paris with false passports. Freed and fostered links with groups such as ETA and the PLO
Mid-1980s Recruited by British security services
Early 1990s Backed peace process and set up Sinn Fein office in the US
1998 Appointed head of Sinn Fein’s Stormont office
October 2002 Charged after a raid on Sinn Fein offices in inquiry into alleged IRA spy ring inside the Northern Ireland Office
December 2005 Admits being a British agent for 20 years, a week after he is acquitted of spy charges
March 2006 Tracked to a cottage in Co Donegal, Irish Republic by a journalist
Click here to find out more!
Copyright 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd.
April 4, 2006 at 11:28 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
February 01, 2006
IRA 'still involved in crime and spying'
ePolitix.com - IRA 'still involved in crime and spying'
The IRA has not given up all paramilitary activity, according to the International Monitoring Commission.
In a key step towards the possible restoration of devolution, the long-awaited assessment has confirmed the republican group has not been involved in direct acts of terror.
However, the independent commission declared that the IRA is engaged in criminality and surveillance operations.
Speaking in the Commons, Tony Blair conceded that while the IMC believed the IRA had taken a strategic decision to end the armed struggle, concerns about violence and criminality remained.
"Let me make it clear once again, all criminal activity has to cease, that is absolutely crucial," the prime minister said.
"But I think it would be quite wrong [to suggest] that there hadn't been very significant progress or that the statement that the IRA gave last July was not highly significant."
Disturbing
The report seems to confirm the police view that the republicans were still involved in organised crime, a view at odds with comments by Northern Ireland security minister Shaun Woodward.
But it said: "There are a number of signs that the organisation is moving in the way it had indicated in the July statement.
"Although some other signs are at best neutral and a few are more disturbing, most are in a positive direction.
"We are of the firm view that the present PIRA [Provisional IRA] leadership has taken the strategic decision to end the armed campaign and pursue the political course which it has publicly articulated.
"We do not think that PIRA believes that terrorism has a part in this political strategy."
The report did raise concerns over continued intelligence gathering.
"This is an activity which we believe is authorised by the leadership and which involves some very senior members," it said.
"While some of it may be for defensive purposes, it is predominantly directed towards supporting the political strategy.
"It involves among other things the continuation of efforts to penetrate public and other institutions with the intention of illegally obtaining or handling sensitive information.
"This raises the question of whether the commitment to exclusively democratic means is full and thoroughgoing, or whether there remain elements of a continued subversive intent going beyond the boundaries of democratic politics."
It concluded that the position of the IRA "is not entirely straightforward".
Response
Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain welcomed the report as "very encouraging".
He said ahead of talks with Sinn Fein next week that it was a good basis to look to restoring devolution on.
"It is very encouraging. It is a positive report which shows that the IRA is moving in the right direction: there are no murders, there is no recruitment, there's no bank robberies," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"There's enough evidence of progress to make the political talks which we are starting on Monday meaningful and serious and the beginning of a process of genuine engagement.
"But I don't expect a picture of perfection and I never did because it's a very difficult business closing down such a complex operation and there still is evidence of criminality and we need to drive that out.
"I don't expect the executive to be up and running tomorrow but I do think there's every reason, given the direction of travel, for everybody to sit down and discuss where to go.
"The assembly has been out of business for over three years now and this can't continue for too long in the future. We really do need to get purposeful politics running in Northern Ireland."
However, Sinn Fein attacked the IMC's credibility, with party chairman Mitchell McLaughlin claiming the body relied on biased information from the British security forces.
The report rejected claims from security sources that the IRA had not decommissioned all its weapons.
Normalisation
In July 2005, the IRA announced that it had formally ordered the end of its armed campaign.
This statement was further backed up in September when the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning said the organisation had put all of its weapons beyond use.
In its last report in October, the IMC reported that, although it was too early to draw firm conclusions about the IRA ending all activities, there were encouraging signs to show the organisation was moving away from its armed campaign.
The IMC was set up by the British and Irish governments in January 2004 to monitor the activity of paramilitary organisations.
It also monitors the "normalisation" of security measures in Northern Ireland.
Its four commissioners come from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, Britain and the US.
February 1, 2006 at 01:00 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 17, 2005
Focus: The spy at the heart of the IRA
Focus: The spy at the heart of the IRA - Sunday Times - Times Online
Denis Donaldson climbed his way from Belfast’s streets to the top of the republican movement. Yet on Friday it was revealed that for the past 20 years he had been passing secrets to London. Liam Clarke tells the story of his double life as a British agent in a dirty war
As a young man, Denis Donaldson was good at getting out of scrapes, both as an IRA volunteer and as a legendary seducer. Last week he found himself in a dilemma that tested his plausibility to the limit.
For nearly 40 years this diminutive charmer has been at the heart of the republican movement, first as a teenage gunman and later as Gerry Adams’s most trusted fixer — the clever little man doing the hard work while the big names enjoyed the limelight.
In 2002 he was arrested and accused of being a key figure in what the police claimed was a Sinn Fein spy ring at Stormont, the seat of British government in Northern Ireland. The ensuing scandal caused the collapse of power sharing between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.
Donaldson also had a hidden life. Last Tuesday, as the winter rain swept through Belfast, his past caught up with him. He was spirited to a furtive meeting with his Special Branch handlers who warned him that his secret was out: he was about to be unmasked as a long-standing British agent.
To his credit he took charge of his own fate. Three days later he confessed at a press conference in Dublin that he had been working for British intelligence and the Northern Ireland Special Branch for at least 20 years.
Reporters were startled. To some it was like a scene from Monty Python. Here was a republican veteran, regarded as one of the Sinn Fein leadership’s most trusted apparatchiks, a man who had been accused of spying against the British, telling them incongruously: “My name is Denis Donaldson . . . I was a British agent.”
He confessed: “I was recruited in the 1980s after compromising myself during a vulnerable time in my life.”
Donaldson’s pre-emptive “outing” of himself is more than one man’s personal drama. For Northern Ireland’s politics it is a huge shock that has unleashed a wave of conspiracy theories. For republicans it is yet more proof that their leadership has been penetrated for years by British intelligence.
For Adams it is a humiliation. The Sinn Fein president said he had suspected that an informant was at work but that Donaldson had never occurred to him as a likely candidate.
People who had known Donaldson for years were stunned by the revelation. A Sinn Fein colleague told Daily Ireland, a pro-Sinn Fein newspaper: “No one, I mean no one, ever pointed the finger of suspicion at Denis Donaldson. He was a loyal party servant. No task was too small for him, no obligation too onerous. He was at the heart of every election campaign.”
Who was this helpful little man and where did his true loyalties lie?
DONALDSON was born in 1950 into a traditional republican family in the nationalist enclave of Short Strand in east Belfast. A beleaguered area surrounded by larger loyalist communities, Short Strand has produced many republican legends.
He joined the IRA in the mid-1960s while he was still in his teens, well before the start of the Troubles. When the IRA split into Marxist Official and traditionalist Provisional wings in December 1969, Donaldson went with the Provos and quickly became involved in their urban bombing campaign. (He served alongside Seanna Walsh, who was chosen by the IRA to read out its statement ending all offensive activities earlier this year.) In 1971 Donaldson was caught during an attempt to bomb a distillery and government buildings and was sentenced to four years in the Maze prison, his first and only jail term.
In 1974 a camera was smuggled into his cell and a famous picture emerged. Intended as a joke to boost the morale of relatives and supporters, it shows four prisoners standing beside a mock-up of a Belfast street, pretending to have escaped from the Maze.
Among them is Donaldson, a slight bearded figure, with his arm stretched up to encircle the broad shoulders of Bobby Sands — who would be the first of 10 republican prisoners to die on hunger strike in 1981.
Donaldson and Sands spent three years in jail together and became close friends. This link helped to establish Donaldson’s credibility within the close group of former prisoners who would reshape the IRA and Sinn Fein under Adams’s leadership during the 1980s.
After he was released from jail Donaldson became a key Adams ally against the previous generation of IRA leaders. He also built up links with foreign revolutionary groups which would supply the Provos with weapons and training.
In August 1981, three months after Sands’s death, Donaldson and William “Blue” Kelly, a leading IRA gunrunner, were arrested by French police at Orly airport in Paris. The duo, who were travelling on false passports, told the French authorities that they were returning home after spending several months in a Lebanese training camp.
Donaldson was allowed to go home despite the admission and some suspect that this may have been the moment when he was turned by intelligence agents, but by his own account it is too early.
He continued to build republican links with groups such as Eta (the Basque terrorists) and Yasser Arafat’s PLO, travelling widely in Europe and South America as Sinn Fein’s director of international affairs.
By 1983 he was back in Short Strand where he stood unsuccessfully as a council candidate and reorganised Sinn Fein and the IRA in the area. Richard O’Rawe, who was head of the Sinn Fein press office at the time, remembers him as “a nice enough wee guy to talk to.
He represented Short Strand and would come into headquarters to report what was going on. He always took an interest in what was happening, but I can’t say I was suspicious of him.”
If, as Donaldson himself suggests, he was first persuaded by the security forces to work for them “in the 1980s after compromising myself”, then the reason may lie in an embarrassing incident in his personal life.
Former IRA colleagues point to an occasion when the police raided a house in the Ligoniel area of west Belfast and found Donaldson, a married man, in bed with a local woman. Even that may be a cover story, however, because Donaldson's wife Alice was told about what had happened by the police. Like many senior republicans in the mid-1980s, Donaldson seldom spent the night at home for fear of arrest or loyalist attack, and this provided many opportunities for extramarital liaisons.
One former IRA member said that he was a well known “chaser”, as it was known in Belfast. If so the police may have threatened to disclose other affairs; or perhaps this is yet another cover story thrown up by Donaldson to hide the deeper secrets of his double life.
Former Special Branch and military intelligence officers say that a grudge or an ideological change of heart is a more common lever for recruiting an agent than blackmail or money. One said: “If you want someone to work for you for several years you have got to look for a better motivation than catching him with his pants down. A guy who you are blackmailing can’t be trusted in the long term.”
As events were to show, Donaldson would indeed prove an unreliable agent.
IF this was the period when he was recruited, Donaldson initially brought a rich dowry to his handlers, including a full account of the Provos’ international allies and arms links.
He remained highly thought of within the republican movement and in 1987, when he was undoubtedly a police agent, he was dispatched by Sinn Fein to his old stamping ground in Lebanon to try to secure the release of Brian Keenan, the Belfast hostage.
His mission was unsuccessful but on his return he said that he had secured meetings with both Hezbollah and Nabi Beri’s Amal militia.
After that he sank into the background as part of the Sinn Fein bureaucracy, at one point claiming that MI5 had tried to recruit him as an agent during a holiday abroad.
By the early 1990s he was emerging as a key supporter of the peace process and was involved in the preparation for the IRA ceasefire, which came in 1994. This was a time when the British government was in secret contact with the IRA. Having someone like Donaldson in place would have given it an invaluable read-out on the true intentions of Sinn Fein and the IRA. Donaldson was later moved to America, after the Clinton White House overlooked his explosives convictions to give him a visa. He set up Sinn Fein’s first office there and organised the groundbreaking first trips to the United States by Adams and Martin McGuinness.
He had an invaluable listening post not only on the IRA’s US support network but also on the US administration, which was at loggerheads with the British government on many aspects of Irish policy. Donaldson met State Department officials regularly, carrying messages back and forth from the republican leadership.
He also met Larry Zaitschek, a New York chef who later travelled to Ireland and who is now wanted in connection with an IRA raid on Special Branch headquarters in Castlereagh.
Although Donaldson was an important agent to the British during these years, former intelligence officers doubt that he passed on all the information to which he had access. Otherwise he would not have survived for two decades.
As the peace process began to provide political dividends in the form of the Good Friday agreement and power sharing, Donaldson became head of the party’s administration in the parliament buildings in Stormont.
Police believe that he knew of an IRA spy ring at the heart of the British administration at Stormont but kept quiet about it for fear that his role would be exposed.
Donaldson apparently did not know that the spy ring was revealed to the RUC Special Branch by a lower-level agent whose information sparked a three-month surveillance operation known by the codename Operation Torsion.
A mass of intelligence material gathered by the IRA at Stormont was removed from a house in Belfast by the police, copied and returned in the vain hope that Bobby Storey, the IRA’s head of intelligence, would eventually take possession of it and expose himself to arrest.
This entrapment and surveillance operation took place against strong advice from MI5 who urged the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) to seize the papers and leave it at that. It reasoned that this would be enough to halt the spying operation and bring Donaldson into line.
In the end the police decided to recover the IRA intelligence cache and make what arrests they could — including Donaldson and his son-in-law Ciaran Kearney. The affair led to the collapse of power sharing and the fall of David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, who was blamed by loyalist voters for being too trusting of Sinn Fein. In the continuing political fall-out, Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist party ousted the Ulster Unionists as the majority party at the last general election.
Sinn Fein claimed that the whole “Stormontgate” affair had been designed to collapse the power sharing executive, but this was dismissed by Nuala O’Loan, the Northern Ireland police ombudsman, who said the police operation had been fully justified.
Just over a week ago, however, charges against Donaldson, Kearney and a former civil servant called William Mackessy had to be withdrawn when the police were refused a public interest immunity certificate, which would have protected the identity of the agent who tipped them off in the first place. A court hearing was told that the director of public prosecutions felt that proceeding was “no longer in the public interest”.
Events then moved fast. Summoned by his Special Branch handlers on Tuesday, Donaldson was told that they had been tipped off by yet another source within the IRA and Sinn Fein that the net was closing in on him. They were there to offer him protection under their “duty of care” to informants.
Instead of taking up the police offer, Donaldson decided to face the music. Resettlement and a new life would have meant losing contact with his family, many of them active republicans.
Ten years earlier Donaldson would almost certainly have taken the chance to get out of Belfast. The alternative then would have been interrogation, torture and execution by the IRA’s internal security squad.
FREDDIE SCAPPATICCI
A west Belfast republican, he was a senior figure in the IRA’s internal security division responsible for rooting out informants. He was also an agent, codenamed Stakeknife, for a British special forces unit.
Scappaticci agreed to change sides in 1978 after becoming disillusioned with IRA violence. He was trusted by senior republicans and was a friend of Gerry Adams, so his unmasking by the press in 2003 was a huge embarrassment to the republican movement.
He is now being investigated by police who are reviewing all unsolved murders during the Troubles.
The moles who pentrated the IRA
WILLIE CARLIN
Had a similar role to Denis Donaldson but at a lower level. From a nationalist area but a member of the British Army, Carlin was sent back to Derry in 1984 to spy on Sinn Fein. His handlers never asked him to join the IRA. Instead he reported to London on political thinking in Sinn Fein and was an invaluable asset in the early 1990s when he was able to confirm the bona fides of Martin McGuinness and Adams. Carlin’s cover was blown after a drunken MI5 agent described him to IRA prisoners. He has now resettled in Britain.
SEAN O’CALLAGHAN
This agent reached a more senior position within the IRA and Sinn Fein than any of the others. He was a member of the IRA’s GHQ staff, a Sinn Fein councillor and a member of Sinn Fein’s ruling council, all the time working for the gardai. It took MI5 a full year in Holland to debrief him. O’Callaghan’s biggest success was in 1984 when his information led to Martin Ferris, now a Sinn Fein TD, being arrested on board a trawler with seven tons of weapons. He now lives in London.
MARTIN MCGARTLAND
Known as Agent Carol he infiltrated the IRA in west Belfast in the early 1990s. He claims to have saved about 50 lives by tipping off the police about attacks. After his cover was blown, he escaped an IRA interrogation squad by jumping out of a third-storey window. After being resettled in Britain, he was tracked down by the IRA and shot. He survived and has moved again.
RAYMOND GILMOUR
The RUC convinced him to join the INLA; after he wrecked its operation in Derry, Gilmour was then encouraged to join the IRA and repeat the method. His supergrass evidence was the centrepiece of the largest criminal trial in British legal history, but was ultimately rejected by the court. He now lives in England and is one of several IRA agents to tell all in a book.
December 17, 2005 at 09:57 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
N.Irish spy revelations spark public inquiry calls
Top News Article | Reuters.co.uk
By Kevin Smith
DUBLIN (Reuters) - Northern Ireland's unionist politicians have demanded a public inquiry into revelations that a senior member of Sinn Fein was a British spy for more than 20 years.
Sinn Fein, political ally of the IRA, expelled party veteran Denis Donaldson, 55, on Friday after he admitted being a paid agent for British intelligence and the province's police Special Branch since the 1980s.
The admission, described as a "bizarre twist" by Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, came just a week after Donaldson was cleared of spying for Sinn Fein.
"A full public inquiry is the only way we can really get to the bottom of this -- there's just too many unanswered questions," a spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party said on Saturday.
The Democratic Unionist Party called on the British government to make a statement.
The arrest of Donaldson and two others accused of being part of a Sinn Fein spy ring in 2002 led to the collapse of the province's Protestant-Catholic power-sharing assembly at Stormont in Belfast, an affair that came to be known locally as "Stormontgate".
Last week the Director of Public Prosecutions decided it was "no longer in the public interest" to pursue the case.
In his statement on Friday -- made, he said, after police warned him his cover was about to be blown -- Donaldson said there had been no spy ring at Stormont and that Stormontgate was "a scam and a fiction created by Special Branch".
The Northern Ireland Office has denied the Stormont raid was politically motivated, saying it had been purely to prevent paramilitary intelligence gathering.
Donaldson, formerly Sinn Fein's head of administration at Stormont, said he deeply regretted his activities and apologised to his family and the Republican movement.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams accused elements within the British intelligence services of trying to undermine 1998's Good Friday peace accord as they were unhappy at changes that have largely ended 30 years of violence between Irish republican and pro-British paramilitaries.
"Those who ran those agencies ... they hate republicans with a passion. For them the war isn't over, for them Good Friday (Agreement) was a huge mistake," Adams told a news conference in Dublin on Friday.
He said it was too soon to say what the consequences would be in terms of kick-starting stalled talks on restoring the Belfast assembly.
© Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.
December 17, 2005 at 01:40 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 16, 2005
Sinn Fein expels 'British agent'
BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | Sinn Fein expels 'British agent'
A veteran Sinn Fein figure has been expelled by the party which accused him of being a "British agent".
Charges of involvement in an alleged IRA spy ring against the party's former Stormont head of administration, Denis Donaldson, were dropped by the Crown.
Party leader Gerry Adams claimed he was about to be "outed" by the same "securocrats" who set him up as a spy.
The government said the October 2002 Stormont raid was solely to prevent paramilitary intelligence gathering.
Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive collapsed following the arrests of three men, who had all charges against them dropped last week.
The Northern Ireland Office said in a statement on Friday that they "completely reject any allegation that the police operation in October 2002 was for any reason other than to prevent paramilitary intelligence gathering".
It said "the fact remains that a huge number of stolen documents were recovered by the police".
At a news conference on Friday, Mr Adams claimed Mr Donaldson had been approached by police officers earlier this week and told he was about to be "outed" as an informer.
Mr Adams said he contacted Sinn Fein and at a meeting at the party's Belfast headquarters on Thursday, he admitted that he had been working for the British authorities.
He said Mr Donaldson was not under any threat from the republican movement.
There has been no comment yet from Mr Donaldson.
Last week, Mr Donaldson appeared alongside Mr Adams at Stormont after the charges were dropped.
Mr Donaldson told the news conference that the "charges should never have been brought".
If... one of Sinn Fein's top administrators in Stormont turns out to be a British spy, this is as bizarre as it gets
Bertie Ahern
Irish prime minister
"It was political policing and political charges and the fact that we were acquitted today proves that," he said.
The police said on Friday that it was a matter of policy to neither confirm nor deny whether any individual is or had been an informant.
Police sources reiterated that the "Stormontgate" affair began because a paramilitary organisation was involved in the systematic gathering of information and targeting or individuals.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Mr Donaldson had been known to the Irish government and if "one of Sinn Fein's top administrators in Stormont turns out to be a British spy, this is as bizarre as it gets".
'Public interest'
The BBC understands that the mole whose information prompted the Stormont raids was not Mr Donaldson, nor was it the other two men against whom the charges were dropped.
Last week, the Director of Public Prosecutions would not be drawn on why the charges were dropped, only saying that it was "in the public interest".
Other parties have demanded that Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain or Attorney General Lord Goldsmith must clarify what were these public interest reasons.
The three men were arrested following a police raid on Sinn Fein's offices at Parliament Buildings on 4 October 2002, when documents and computer discs were seized.
Following the arrests, Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists and the Ulster Unionists, led at that time by then First Minister David Trimble, threatened to collapse the executive with resignations.
The British government then suspended devolution in the province, embarking on direct rule for the last three years.
4 October 2002: Three men arrested following raid on Sinn Fein's Stormont office. Power-sharing executive collapses and government restores direct rule to NI a week later
8 December 2005: Charges against three men dropped "in the public interest"
16 December 2005: Sinn Fein says one of the men was a "British agent" and expels him from the party
Government and police reject the party's claim raid was politically motivated
December 16, 2005 at 03:04 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
December 01, 2005
SDLP and Sinn Fein row over 'on the runs'
ePolitix.com - SDLP and Sinn Fein row over 'on the runs'
Moves to allow 'on the run' terrorists to return to Ulster have sparked a furious row between the SDLP and Sinn Fein.
The nationalist party said on Thursday that Sinn Fein had accepted proposals that would mean "state killers getting away with it".
But republicans hit back, accusing the SDLP of telling "lies" about its position.
SDLP MLA Alex Attwood said Sinn Fein and the government had agreed that the amnesty would apply to "scheduled offences" that included any offences committed by British soldiers.
"State killings in Northern Ireland are scheduled offences," said Attwood.
"So when Sinn Fein signed up to anybody who committed any scheduled offence before 1998 being able to skip jail, they accepted state killers getting away with it - now and in the future.
"They accepted this in black and white in the Hillsborough side deal."
But Sinn Fein MP Conor Murphy said the claim was "an absolute lie".
"The issue of British state violence and those involved in it had no part of these discussions," he said.
"The British government have unilaterally taken a decision to attach the provisions for Crown forces onto this Bill, a fact acknowledged by all parties including the two governments.
"We are absolutely opposed to this approach."
December 1, 2005 at 12:39 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
November 02, 2005
N. Ireland Police Arrest Two Over Belfast Robbery
Nov. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Northern Ireland police arrested two men in connection with the theft of about 27 million pounds ($48 million) from a bank in Belfast last December, the biggest bank robbery in U.K. history.
The unidentified men were arrested late yesterday in Kilcoo, around 32 miles (50 kilometers) south of Belfast, police said in a statement today. They said they would be providing ``absolutely no further details'' at this time.
Police have blamed the Irish Republican Army for the Dec. 20 robbery of the branch of Northern Bank, which hampered efforts to restore the power-sharing government that brought Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic communities together. The IRA, which in July pledged to end its armed campaign for a united Ireland, has denied involvement in the raid.
The robbery was carried out after the thieves took family members of two bank employees hostage and forced the workers to open doors to a safe at the bank, beside City Hall in central Belfast, before loading money from the safe into a nearby truck.
Kilcoo is a ``strongly republican'' area of Northern Ireland and close to where the wife of a bank employee was held hostage as part of the robbery, Dublin-based broadcaster RTE reported on its Web site.
Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political party allied to the IRA, told reporters in Dublin today he would be ``entirely and absolutely surprised'' if the men arrested were members of the illegal organization.
No Charges Yet
Police investigating the robbery have yet to charge anybody with the crime. Irish police, who are assisting detectives in Northern Ireland, said on Oct. 12 that 3 million pounds found in the city of Cork in February was part of the bank heist.
Northern Bank is owned by Danske Bank A/S, which agreed to buy the Belfast-based lender and National Irish Bank from National Australia Bank Ltd. last year.
Talks on restoring the Belfast-based executive stalled last December when unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the U.K., demanded photographs to prove IRA arms had been decommissioned. The IRA last month put all its weapons beyond use, a group that monitors decommissioning said. The illegal organization didn't supply photographs.
The power-sharing assembly was suspended in October 2002. The province has been ruled from London since then.
November 2, 2005 at 01:22 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 13, 2005
"Official IRA" Leader Worked With North Korea to Pass Counterfeit Dollars
The biggest international incident regarding the IRA since the Columbian terrorist training situation.
The Counterterrorism Blog: "Official IRA" Leader Worked With North Korea to Pass Counterfeit Dollars
Specifically, the indictment says that between December 1997 and July 2000, the seven handled up to $1m of counterfeit $100 bills from North Korean sources and arranged to transport, pass as genuine, or resell the bills in the the Republic of Ireland, the United Kingdom, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Germany, and elsewhere. The leader of the gang, Sean Garland, is referred to in the indictment as "the Chief of Staff” and "Colonel in Chief" of “the old style IRA,” also known as the "Official IRA," the military wing which split off from the political wing of the IRA (the "Provisional IRA") in 1969.
October 13, 2005 at 09:11 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 06, 2005
Police raids hunt property assets of 'IRA laundering'
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
By David Sharrock and Sean O’Neill
THE Provisional IRA’s chief of staff is suspected of using the proceeds of organised crime to invest in a portfolio of 250 properties in Manchester and the North West of England, according to financial investigators.
The Assets Recovery Agency (ARA), assisted by police, carried out raids yesterday aimed at closing down an alleged outlet for IRA money-laundering.
The searches, in Manchester and Cheshire, occurred as Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, met Tony Blair at Downing Street for talks on the future of the Northern Ireland peace process.
The operation comes after the IRA’s disarmament and is a signal that the authorities will not permit it to switch from terrorist group to criminal syndicate.
Investigators searched offices and homes in an inquiry aimed at tracing who owns the properties, valued at £30 million, and where the money to buy them came from.
The ARA refused to identify its main target but sources confirmed that the focus is Thomas “Slab” Murphy, the IRA’s chief of staff who has been described in an underworld rich list as Britain’s richest smuggler.
The ARA said officially that it was searching the homes and offices of two Manchester businessmen — thought to be Mr Murphy and Dermot Craven — linked with property management companies. The agency swooped after obtaining search and seizure warrants and a disclosure order in private hearings at the High Court in London.
The investigation is aimed at money laundered by “IRA plc”. The terrorists are believed to have invested money, obtained through criminal activity in the Irish Republic, in property in Manchester and the North West.
The IRA has made hundreds of millions of pounds from smuggling, counterfeit crime and robbery — including last year’s £26 million Northern Bank raid — and is believed to have laundered it around the world. But the suggestion that about £9 million was deposited to obtain mortgages on a property portfolio in England is a surprise to investigators.
A spokesman for the ARA said it would be interviewing people under powers that compel them to answer questions. Failure to answer or giving misleading information is an offence carrying a maximum penalty of six months in jail.
Police in the Irish Republic said last night that officers from the Criminal Assets Bureau had been working with the ARA for months on the Manchester investigation and other inquiries. The Gardai said the searches were conducted at professional offices, during which a quantity of documentary material was seized.
One source said that investigators on both sides of the Irish border had planned to seize assets allegedly connected with Mr Murphy but had been hampered by political concerns and fears of terrorist reprisals. “The key to these raids is decommissioning,” the source said. “We have had information about his financial empire for ages but it was difficult to hit him because of fear that it would trigger a series of events”.
Mr Adams, speaking at Downing Street, said that the timing of the raids was “obviously a political agenda at work”. But Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, dismissed Mr Adams’s allegation. He said: “Whether the ARA knew about the meetings today I rather doubt. Certainly their activities are quite independent of any political negotiations that have been taking place.”
Unionists have claimed that the Government has in recent years “gone soft” on the Provisionals in order to lure them into giving up the gun.
There is alarm in Dublin, too, that with the official end of the armed campaign but the IRA still intact, its Mafia-style empire could end up subverting democracy in the Republic.
Michael McDowell, the Irish Justice Minister, said that there was extensive co-operation with the ARA’s investigations. He said: “There is a joint determination to ensure that the border is not something behind which criminals can hide.”
THOMAS 'SLAB' MURPHY
# Smuggler, PIRA Army Council. Strongly built, 5ft 11in. Balding. An Irish Police Special Branch profile written in 1998 of Thomas Murphy chose to give precedence to his financial activities over his leadership of the Provisional IRA
# A batchelor and multimillionaire, courtesy of his smuggling empire on the Irish border in South Armagh, he has been under security forces scrutiny for more than three decades
# Still wanted for terrorist offences in Northern Ireland, he was born in 1949 and made his first fortune as a pig smuggler, later in oil smuggling
# By the 1990s Murphy was regarded by MI5 to be the single biggest domestic threat to the UK. The chain of army observation posts across South Armagh now being dismantled contains two that provide 24-hour observation of his farm
October 6, 2005 at 11:04 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Reputed IRA Chief Target of British Raids
Reputed IRA Chief Target of British Raids
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 6, 2005; 3:50 PM
DUBLIN, Ireland -- British detectives raided businesses and homes in England on Thursday in hopes of discovering a paper trail that could lead to the reputed chief of the Irish Republican Army.
For three decades, anti-terrorist police have monitored and arrested Thomas "Slab" Murphy but never charged him with a crime.
Police identify him as a multimillionaire fuel smuggler and the chief of staff of the outlawed IRA. Anti-racketeering agencies in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland say they suspect Murphy has built a massive portfolio of stocks and property.
On Thursday, the United Kingdom Assets Recovery Agency _ a two-year-old unit armed with powers to seize the cash, homes, cars and investments of members of Northern Ireland's myriad paramilitary groups _ announced it was investigating a property portfolio in Manchester, in northwest England, that involves about 250 residences and businesses worth an estimated $55 million.
Police, led by Belfast detectives and anti-racketeering inspectors, carted out records from a company called the Craven Group in the southwest Manchester suburb of Sale. They also searched the high-security mansion of Irish-born businessman Dermot Craven, whose company includes Craven Properties Ltd., a property rental agency, and Craven Scaffolding.
A British detective, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said several months of digging into Murphy's dealings had led them to Craven. He said Murphy was suspected of buying dozens of properties through intermediaries since 2002.
The detective said tracing Murphy's holdings was difficult because of the fuel dealer's insistence on all-cash transactions involving friendly business intermediaries and no bank accounts. He said Murphy's name was not on any of the properties investigated.
Murphy has never given an interview and has rarely been photographed. An AP reporter who tried to visit his farm _ which lies half in the Republic of Ireland, half in Northern Ireland _ was prevented by an unidentified young man from doing so.
Murphy came into the public domain in 1985 when a British newspaper, The Sunday Times, published a major expose. Murphy sued for libel but lost twice, most recently in 1998, when a Dublin jury ruled Murphy was an IRA commander and border smuggler.
Fuel tankers still regularly trundle in and out of Murphy's farm, which the 1999 best seller "Bandit Country," by Toby Harnden, said includes an underground pipeline for transferring fuel across the border. Today, fuel purchased in the south is sold in Northern Ireland, often in gas stations owned by IRA members, for about 30 percent more.
In the 1980s and 1990s, customs officials investigated the fuel business, but their efforts to pursue Murphy for tax evasion failed, partly because he dissolved businesses once authorities targeted them.
Thursday's raids began hours before Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, met British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London for the first time since disarmament officials on Sept. 26 announced they had scrapped all the IRA's stockpiled weapons.
With IRA disarmament finally fading from the political agenda, the IRA's decades-long involvement in crime _ including bank robberies, smuggling and counterfeiting _ immediately rose as the next political stumbling block. Britain and Ireland have commissioned expert reports, to be published this month and in January, into IRA crime.
In Dublin, Irish Foreign Minister Michael McDowell said he could not comment on Murphy or the specifics of the ongoing operation. But he said Britain and Ireland, using the same powers of assets seizure pioneered against organized crime in the United States, were determined to impound "the massive portfolio of assets" from the IRA's criminal empire.
"There is a joint determination to ensure that the (Irish) border is not something behind which criminals can hide, or which they can use to their advantage by concealing assets abroad," McDowell said.
___
On the Net:
Craven Properties, http://www.cravengroup.co.uk/
October 6, 2005 at 04:56 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Reputed IRA Chief Target of British Raids
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 6, 2005; 3:50 PM
DUBLIN, Ireland -- British detectives raided businesses and homes in England on Thursday in hopes of discovering a paper trail that could lead to the reputed chief of the Irish Republican Army.
For three decades, anti-terrorist police have monitored and arrested Thomas "Slab" Murphy but never charged him with a crime.
Police identify him as a multimillionaire fuel smuggler and the chief of staff of the outlawed IRA. Anti-racketeering agencies in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland say they suspect Murphy has built a massive portfolio of stocks and property.
On Thursday, the United Kingdom Assets Recovery Agency _ a two-year-old unit armed with powers to seize the cash, homes, cars and investments of members of Northern Ireland's myriad paramilitary groups _ announced it was investigating a property portfolio in Manchester, in northwest England, that involves about 250 residences and businesses worth an estimated $55 million.
Police, led by Belfast detectives and anti-racketeering inspectors, carted out records from a company called the Craven Group in the southwest Manchester suburb of Sale. They also searched the high-security mansion of Irish-born businessman Dermot Craven, whose company includes Craven Properties Ltd., a property rental agency, and Craven Scaffolding.
A British detective, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said several months of digging into Murphy's dealings had led them to Craven. He said Murphy was suspected of buying dozens of properties through intermediaries since 2002.
The detective said tracing Murphy's holdings was difficult because of the fuel dealer's insistence on all-cash transactions involving friendly business intermediaries and no bank accounts. He said Murphy's name was not on any of the properties investigated.
Murphy has never given an interview and has rarely been photographed. An AP reporter who tried to visit his farm _ which lies half in the Republic of Ireland, half in Northern Ireland _ was prevented by an unidentified young man from doing so.
Murphy came into the public domain in 1985 when a British newspaper, The Sunday Times, published a major expose. Murphy sued for libel but lost twice, most recently in 1998, when a Dublin jury ruled Murphy was an IRA commander and border smuggler.
Fuel tankers still regularly trundle in and out of Murphy's farm, which the 1999 best seller "Bandit Country," by Toby Harnden, said includes an underground pipeline for transferring fuel across the border. Today, fuel purchased in the south is sold in Northern Ireland, often in gas stations owned by IRA members, for about 30 percent more.
In the 1980s and 1990s, customs officials investigated the fuel business, but their efforts to pursue Murphy for tax evasion failed, partly because he dissolved businesses once authorities targeted them.
Thursday's raids began hours before Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, met British Prime Minister Tony Blair in London for the first time since disarmament officials on Sept. 26 announced they had scrapped all the IRA's stockpiled weapons.
With IRA disarmament finally fading from the political agenda, the IRA's decades-long involvement in crime _ including bank robberies, smuggling and counterfeiting _ immediately rose as the next political stumbling block. Britain and Ireland have commissioned expert reports, to be published this month and in January, into IRA crime.
In Dublin, Irish Foreign Minister Michael McDowell said he could not comment on Murphy or the specifics of the ongoing operation. But he said Britain and Ireland, using the same powers of assets seizure pioneered against organized crime in the United States, were determined to impound "the massive portfolio of assets" from the IRA's criminal empire.
"There is a joint determination to ensure that the (Irish) border is not something behind which criminals can hide, or which they can use to their advantage by concealing assets abroad," McDowell said.
___
On the Net:
Craven Properties, http://www.cravengroup.co.uk/
October 6, 2005 at 04:56 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
October 02, 2005
Experts Say IRA Has Criminal Empire
ABC News: Experts Say IRA Has Criminal Empire
IRA Has Built Sophisticated Criminal Empire Throughout Ireland, Beyond, Experts Say
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK Associated Press Writer
The Associated PressThe Associated Press
BELFAST, Northern Ireland Sep 29, 2005 — The Irish Republican Army may no longer want to fight the British, but detectives say it's still in business as owners of pubs and clubs, smugglers of fuel and cigarettes, bank robbers by night and property investors by day.
Throughout the past 35 years of conflict over this British territory, the IRA has built a sophisticated criminal empire throughout Ireland and beyond, laundering profits through legitimately owned businesses and properties worth more than $400 million, anti-racketeering experts say.
Now that weapons inspectors have announced the IRA's disarmament, the political focus has turned to whether the underground group will renounce crime, too.
The British and Irish governments say political progress depends on reports being published in October and January from the Independent Monitoring Commission. Both governments formed the four-man panel which includes a former top CIA official chiefly to publicize IRA activities.
If these experts rule that the IRA is withdrawing from criminal activity, Britain and Ireland say negotiations should resume to revive the cornerstone of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord: power-sharing between the British Protestant majority and Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party.
Even the most ardent advocates of power-sharing say the IRA's criminal power has become the new deal-breaker. But IRA experts warn that the group is not about to cede control to common criminals.
"The IRA's criminal activity will be hard to hide but easy to deny," said Ed Moloney, author of "A Secret History of the IRA," who forecast that IRA racketeering "may even intensify."
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, a veteran IRA commander who denies ever being a member, has repeatedly said IRA activity cannot be described as crime. At his most recent party conference in March, Adams said Sinn Fein would "refuse to criminalize those who break the law in pursuit of legitimate political objectives."
Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell, who is regularly briefed on IRA activity by the anti-terrorist and anti-racketeering branches of the Garda Siochana, Ireland's national police force, called Sinn Fein's line on IRA crime "a massive lie of Orwellian proportions."
October 2, 2005 at 02:24 AM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
September 27, 2005
Paisley accuses de Chastelain of a cover-up
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
By Jenny Booth
Unknown numbers of IRA weapons have ended up in the hands of splinter groups and no-one can say that all have been decommissioned, the Reverend Ian Paisley said today.
The veteran loyalist leader said that he had gone into a meeting with General John de Chastelain and his arms monitors this morning with serious questions about their statement that the IRA had disarmed.
The arms monitors reported yesterday that they had seen the destruction of weaponry which matched the estimates of both British and Irish governments.
But Mr Paisley said that he emerged from the meeting "shocked about what we learnt", and he accused the monitors of colluding in a cover-up.
He said the intelligence estimates used by members of the International Independent Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) to judge whether all the IRA weapons were gone had been revised.
"The more spotlight is put on this, the more we discover there is a cover-up," said Mr Paisley after he and Democratic Unionist Party colleagues spent over an hour with Gen de Chastelain.
"Even the security forces admit that some of the weapons that were in the original lists are now given to other dissident organisations, and that is very serious.
"Part of the weapons that should have been decommissioned have disappeared, and the security forces admit they are probably in the hands of dissidents."
He said even the weapons estimate used had an upper and lower tolerance - but the general had refused to disclose whether weapons actually decommissioned met the higher or lower level.
He said they "got the greatest surprise of all" when they discovered that improvised weapons were not covered on the intelligence lists.
Mr Paisley said: "These things put a question, a very big question, over what has taken place. When we came to any question which could unravel what needs to be unravelled and could put some light on these things, they refused to give us any answers."
He cast doubts on the impartiality of the Catholic and Methodist churchmen who acted as independent witnesses, saying he was told that they had been nominated neither by the Government nor the decommissioning body. "They were the IRA’s nominated witnesses," he said.
He rubbished the claims by the Rev Harold Good, a former Methodist President, and Father Alec Reid that they were satisfied all IRA arms had been destroyed.
He said that General de Chastelain had told him that the independent witnesses had not seen security estimates of weapons held by the terrorist group, and so could not know if the arms they saw destroyed were all there were.
The DUP leader said there was nonsense being trotted out about the gun having been taken out of Irish politics. "The gun is not out of Irish politics," he said.
Mr Paisley's suspicion is likely to delay the return of power-sharing devolved government at Stormont. Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, today held out the hope that if the Independent Monitoring Commission on paramilitary activity gave the IRA the all-clear next January, talks towards a resumption of devolution should take place.
But Mr Paisley made plain he will not be pressured into forming a government with Sinn Fein when "they couldn’t give a clean bill of health to the IRA".
Asked whether he could see himself in government with Sinn Fein, he said simply: "We will not be doing it."
General de Chastelain and his two fellow commissioners is also due to meet the Ulster Unionists, SDLP and Alliance parties today. The job of kick-starting the Northern Ireland peace process rests with convincing voters in the province that total decommissioning happened.
Overnight, the White House welcomed the IRA’s move as an "important first step" and the US State Department called on all paramilitary groups, both loyalist and republican, to work with Gen de Chastelain to bring about complete decommissioning.
A White House spokesman, Sean McCormick, said that the US "remains steadfast in its support for the peace process to achieve lasting peace and reconciliation for the people of Northern Ireland".
Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein chief negotiator, was today travelling to the United States to brief the Bush Administration and republican sympathisers.
Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said that republicans had mixed views about the decommissioning. Some were proud that the IRA had acted, some were apprehensive, and others were frustrated at the reaction of Mr Paisley.
"It’s a bit like waiting for a death in the family - even though you are expecting it, it still gives you a gunk," he said.
"We can mess about over all of this, but at the end of the day are they saying that de Chastelain and the other commissioners are liars? Are they saying that Harold Good is a liar? Are they saying Father Alex Reid is a liar? Is that what it amounts to?"
September 27, 2005 at 05:01 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
September 26, 2005
IRA 'has destroyed all its arms'
Despite the Unionist scepticism, the IRA continue on their declared track. Its unfortunate their is no accopanying footage, as the word of the Church as witnesses is what the Government is counting on.
BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | IRA 'has destroyed all its arms'General John de Chastelain made the announcement at a news conference accompanied by the two churchmen who witnessed the process.
"We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal."
September 26, 2005 at 11:17 AM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
September 24, 2005
IRA arms statement 'within days'
BBC NEWS | Northern Ireland | IRA arms statement 'within days'
An announcement on IRA decommissioning is believed to be just days away and could come at the beginning of next week, the BBC has learned.
Statements are expected from the body overseeing decommissioning, two church witnesses, the IRA, as well as Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.
Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness has said the expected announcement will be "more significant" than the 1994 ceasefire.
He is to brief Irish-American politicians on developments next week.
IRA disarmament is being overseen by an independent commission headed by Canadian General John de Chastelain.
BBC Northern Ireland security editor Brian Rowan said a meeting between the general and the IRA in July had started this latest process of decommissioning.
"The story of the end of IRA decommissioning is now only days away from being told," he said.
"Since the beginning of this month, all three decommissioning men - General de Chastelain, Andrew Sens and Tauno Nieminen - have been in Ireland to complete the job of putting the IRA's arms beyond use.
Martin McGuinness
Martin McGuinness expects a significant announcement
"This will not be the photographed decommissioning demanded by the DUP last year, nor is there anything to suggest that the DUP nominated church witness - the Reverend David MCGaughey - will be involved.
"But, when he emerges to speak in the next few days, de Chastelain will have to be definitive. He will have to say that all IRA arms have been decommissioned."
In July, the IRA said it had formally ordered an end to its armed campaign and said it would pursue exclusively peaceful means.
The republican organisation said it would follow a democratic path ending more than 30 years of violence.
Martin McGuinness told the BBC's Inside Politics programme on Saturday that he believed the IRA would fulfil that commitment to complete disarmament.
"General de Chastelain, when he deliberates on all of this and explains to the world whatever work he is engaged in with the IRA, will then make an announcement which, I think, is even greater and maybe of much more significance, than the events of the summer of 1994 or even the July 28th statement," he said.
His comments came as Sinn Fein supporters gathered to mark 100 years of the party at a Rally for Irish Unity in Dublin.
Mr Adams told the rally that republicans must reach out to unionists.
"There is a huge onus on Irish republicans to find an accommodation with unionism," he said.
'On the Cusp'
On Friday, Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said Sinn Fein had made it clear to the Irish government that decommissioning would happen soon.
He was speaking after Taoiseach Bertie Ahern held his first formal meeting with Sinn Fein since the Northern Bank robbery last December.
Party leader Gerry Adams said: "We believe we are all on the cusp of a future... to see democratic and peaceful structures in place."
Mr Ahern said a verifiable act of decommissioning would put it up to unionism that they must work in partnership with nationalists.
DUP leader Ian Paisley has claimed the government had made a "secret deal" with the IRA to exclude the need for an arms witness acceptable to unionists.
September 24, 2005 at 01:32 PM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
August 09, 2005
A farewell to arms
The IRA | A farewell to arms | Economist.com
Jul 28th 2005
From The Economist print edition
As one terrorist problem engulfs Britain, another subsides
IN POLITICS, even the violent politics of terrorism, timing can mean everything. On July 28th, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) at long last issued the statement for which most people in Britain and both parts of Ireland have been waiting for years. The IRA declared that its leadership had “formally ordered an end to the armed campaign”, and told all its units to “dump arms” and work through “exclusively peaceful means”. If it truly means a permanent end to Irish terrorism, then the statement will be as “historic” as Irish republicans are claiming. But even if the IRA means what it says, there are still many questions left unanswered.
Northern Ireland's unionists will be the loudest in voicing many of these. By the obfuscating standards of past IRA statements, this week's announcement is crystal clear. But unionists will point out that it does not contain the exact phrase “the war is over”, which is something that they have long sought, and it does not say explicitly that the IRA itself is disbanding, which is something they have long demanded. Both are fair points. And yet the IRA was never going to adopt the precise phraseology demanded by unionists. To all intents and purposes, the IRA has now officially ended its violent campaign, turning a prolonged ceasefire into a permanent halt.
The more important questions go beyond the critique of Northern Ireland's unionists. The first concerns the province itself. Can the IRA's statement break the stalemate in Ulster and help to establish something resembling a normal government? That is not clear (see article).
Five or six years ago, soon after the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, such a statement from the IRA would have been electrifying, and would probably have forced unionists into a power-sharing government. Today, 11 years after the IRA's first ceasefire and endless bitter arguments, it looks like too little, too late. The IRA is clearly trying to salvage the political fortunes of Sinn Fein, which have been badly tarnished by the IRA's own continuing criminal activity. For many in both parts of Ireland, the IRA's grand gesture will look like little more than a desperate ploy.
The second and bigger question is: what lessons does the IRA's abandonment of terrorism—or “armed struggle” as it always preferred to call it—hold for the task of combating and defeating today's more virulent forms of terrorism? Here the answer contains reasons for both optimism and pessimism.
The optimistic bit is that talking to terrorists can, sometimes, stop violence and bring peace. There was plenty of justified scepticism when the IRA first began to make its overtures to the British government in the early 1990s, and many strongly felt that speaking to bombers and assassins was not only morally reprehensible, but would not work. And yet the peace process has, after many ups and downs, brought real peace to Northern Ireland and a gradual halt to Irish terrorism.
Talking to the IRA was justified and effective, ultimately, because the unpalatable truth was that they were fighting for something that many in Northern Ireland believed was a legitimate goal—Irish unity. The IRA had an aggrieved constituency, which eventually realised that violence was getting it nowhere. Today's much more violent Islamic-inspired terrorism, by contrast, recognises no limits, makes no demands which can be addressed and seems to represent no one but the fanatics themselves. There is no point in talking to them. They can only be defeated.
August 9, 2005 at 09:12 AM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
August 02, 2005
Sinn Fein must work with police, says chief
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
By David Sharrock
SINN FEIN is behaving “ridiculously” by refusing to co-operate with the Police Service of Northern Ireland after the declaration by the IRA that it has ended its armed campaign, the force’s Chief Constable said yesterday.
Sir Hugh Orde said: “Every community in Northern Ireland has a right to be policed. We have a right to expect that Sinn Fein politicians will now engage directly, openly and constructively with District Commanders and all officers at local level. It is ridiculous they don’t speak to us on issues such as domestic violence, crimes against the elderly and race crime. It is ridiculous that they don’t speak to us pre-marching, in a formal way, so they can help to shape the marching season rather than criticise from outside.
“And it’s ridiculous that they don’t engage at the top level and represent their communities on the Policing Board.”
He said that the statement was the clearest that the IRA had issued. But he added: “We are not alone in our view that the actions that follow that statement will be crucial and I believe that the Independent Monitoring Commission will play an important part in verifying those actions.”
August 2, 2005 at 02:06 AM in IRA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
July 29, 2005
IRA realises time for war is finished, insists Adams
The Scotsman - Top Stories - IRA realises time for war is finished, insists Adams
FRASER NELSON
POLITICAL EDITOR
Key points
• Gerry Adams and the IRA have agreed the time for war is over
• IRA units have been instructed to disarm and engage in a political process
• Ulster Unionists remain sceptical and await proof
Key quote
"All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means," - IRA statement
Story in full AFTER decades of violence, the IRA ended its terrorist campaign for a united Ireland yesterday and pledged to hand over its weapons without any conditions.
Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, said the "time for war" was over and that the IRA had agreed. Both Dublin and London hailed the move as the most momentous peaceful development in the 36 years of the Troubles.
But reaction was more guarded in Northern Ireland, where the news was greeted by Unionists without celebration - Unionist political parties saying they would only be satisfied when IRA pledges were backed up by proof.
The extraordinary chain of events began on Wednesday night, when Sean Kelly, who was found guilty of the 1993 Shankill Road bomb attack that killed nine people, was freed from jail in an apparent deal with the IRA.
At midday yesterday, the IRA released a statement read out by a former prisoner, saying it had agreed to the April request by Mr Adams to give up what he called the "armed campaign".
"All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms. All volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means," it said.
In words which 10 Downing Street said are particularly important, the IRA appeared to call for an end to the racketeering, punishment beatings and drug dealing that the IRA has resorted to since declaring its ceasefire in 1998.
"Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever," the statement said.
Mr Adams insisted the IRA decision was a courageous and confident initiative and history would not be kind to governments which played politics with it. In Dublin he claimed: "There is a time to resist, to stand up and to confront the enemy by arms if necessary. In other words there is a time for war. There is also a time to engage, to reach out and put war behind us."
Mr Blair had been given notice of the statement, and read out a response in No 10 yesterday, hailing a move of "unparalleled magnitude" in the 12-year peace process.
"The instruction in the IRA statement that volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever will be taken as a forthright denunciation of any activity, paramilitary or criminal," he said.
"This may be the day when, finally, after all the false dawns and dashed hopes, peace replaced war and politics replaces terror on the island of Ireland," he said.
The next goal, Mr Blair concluded, was to reconvene the Northern Ireland Assembly which has been suspended for three years in response to ongoing low-level IRA activity.
The Rev Ian Paisley, whose hardline Democratic Unionist Party is now the largest in Northern Ireland, was unmoved yesterday, saying he had long ago stopped raising his hopes on the ground of statements from either the IRA or No 10.
"I've heard it all before. You can wrap it up any way you like or put a ribbon on the top. But it's the action that proves that this has happened," he said. "The whole thing is intended to sell the people a pup."
Sir Reg Empey, who has replaced the more moderate David Trimble as leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, said it would be "some time" before devolution returned to Northern Ireland.
His party has been "burnt so many times before", he said. "This is not simply whingeing or being difficult about it. It is being simply factual that we have had so many statements before that haven't been kept."
But there were signs that the proof Unionists seek may emerge in the next few weeks. There were reports yesterday that John de Chastelain, the Canadian general who heads the independent arms decommissioning body, is on the move in Ireland and may soon verify destruction of an arms cache.
But the dissolution of the IRA's organised crime network will be harder to monitor, as it still denies involvement in such activities - especially last December's £22.5 million Northern Bank raid.
Martin McGuinness, deputy Sinn Fein leader, seemed emphatic on this point as he spoke in Washington yesterday. "There is no possibility whatsoever of the IRA engaging in any activity whatsoever which would undermine the historic and momentous nature of the statement," he said.
But Catherine McCartney, whose brother Robert was killed by two IRA men outside a pub in January, said the IRA had not gone far enough.
"It has not spelled out where it stands on those within its ranks who indulge in criminal activity," she said. "It tells them they have to stop it. But it does not say what happens if they don't stop it."
The IRA statement has two notable omissions: it does not say the "war is over" nor does it pledge to disband. But British officials said that the IRA will continue to exist in theory so terrorists cannot take its place.
The Provisional IRA was formed in 1969, when it split from the now-defunct Official IRA. Since then it has killed some 400 soldiers, 800 police officers and 600 civilians.
Its last attack was made ten years ago, in a bomb at Canary Wharf in east London. But the "Continuity IRA" and "Real IRA" remain active, having committed the Omagh bombing in 1998, which killed 28.
Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said he had not lost sight of the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA. "They are small, marginalised and isolated, but they still pose a threat," he said. "But they must realise, like the Loyalist groups - who are engaged in a feud and are killing each other - that the old politics is over. We have entered a new Northern Ireland, looking forward to a future free of violence."
The lower ranks of both the republican and Unionist paramilitaries were last night asking whether the IRA