Gabriel Mackle released

Posted by Jim on March 20, 2018

Political prisoner Gabriel Mackle has been released following a period
of internment lasting over four months, it has been confirmed. It is
believed his release was made subject to legal conditions which have
prevented him making a statement on the matter.

In a post on its website, which was briefly removed last night,
Republican Sinn Fein said: “We are pleased to announce that our friend
and comrade Gabriel Mackle is today back home with his family.”

They said the delay in confirming his release was due to the possibility
that a statement could potentially see him re-interned. “The leadership
of Republican Sinn Fein took the decision to have the statement removed
because we did not want the statement to have an adverse effect on
Gabriel’s release. Anyone who knows why his license was revoked in the
first place will understand.”

Mr Mackle was released ‘on licence’ in November of last year but was
ordered to be returned to prison following his delivery of an oration at
Republican Sinn Fein’s annual Edentubber commemoration.

His release on Friday came as a new campaign against internment brought
protests and placards to cities across the North.

In another positive development, republican prisoners who were subjected
to internment by remand — denied bail for an unreasonable period while
awaiting trial — have recently been bailed, including Ciaran ‘Dingus’
Magee and Damian ‘Dee’ Duffy.

Tony Taylor, a former chairperson of Republican Network for Unity who
has spent two years behind bars on the orders of the British government,
is now the focus of the anti-internment campaign.

“Internment continues with Tony Taylor still suffering this injustice,”
Republican Sinn Fein said.

“We would urge all right thinking people to continue with every effort
to bring pressure on the establishment to have Tony released.

“We at Republican Sinn Fein will do everything we can in aid of Tony and
his family, and we are certain that Gabriel and his family appreciated
the solidarity shown by the entire Republican/nationalist community.”

Hooded men, Amnesty stunned by ECHR dismissal of torture case

Posted by Jim on

Hooded men, Amnesty stunned by ECHR dismissal of torture case

A decision by the European Court of Human Rights has been described as a
bad day for justice after it refused to revise a judgement that the
‘Hooded Men’ did not suffer torture at the hands of their British
military captors in 1971.

The 14 men, interned in 1971, endured a range of torture and terror
techniques, ranging from hooding with heavy sacks, sleep deprivation to
being thrown out of a helicopter. No one was ever convicted of
wrongdoing.

The Dublin government had called on the court to revise a 1978 judgement
and accept that the ‘Hooded Men’ suffered torture, not just inhuman and
degrading treatment.

The European Commission accepted that the mistreatment of the men was
torture, but in 1978 the European Court of Human Rights held that the
men suffered “inhumane and degrading treatment” that did not amount to
torture.

That judgement has always mystified Irish nationalists and human rights
organisations. Amnesty International has said that finding has had
disastrous consequences and has been used by the various governments to
justify the use of torture methods across the world.

Following new evidence and amid pressure from Amnesty, the Irish
government took legal action. New evidence which was uncovered from
national archives in London and presented to the court included a letter
dated 1977 from Britain’s then-home secretary Merlyn Rees to Britain’s
then-prime minister James Callaghan in which he states his view that the
decision to use “methods of torture in Northern Ireland in 1971/72 was
taken by ministers – in particular Lord Carrington, then secretary of
state for defence”. Rees added that “a political decision was taken”.

However, the court ruled today that Dublin’s legal team “had not
demonstrated the existence of facts that were unknown to the court at
the time or which would have had a decisive influence on the original
judgment. There was therefore no justification to revise the judgment”.

The court did not appear to reconsider the fundamental question of
whether the five techniques — hooding, stress positions, white noise,
sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and water, along with beatings
and death threats — amounted to torture.

The revision request was dismissed by six votes to one, with the Irish
judge dissenting. Judge Siofra O’Leary said she disagreed with the
decision of the majority to dismiss “non-disclosed” information from the
British government, as well as new evidence to do with medical matters.
She said the majority restricted their legal analysis further by
concentrating exclusively on just two internees.

Sinn Fein MEP Martina Anderson said she was disappointed by the
judgement.

“There was an onus on the Irish government to prepare a through,
exhaustive and well-argued case, and they failed. It is clear the five
cruel techniques that the British state used against 14 men is torture,”
she said. “Justice will be heard,” she added.

Grainne Teggart, Amnesty campaigns manager, said the court had “missed a
vital opportunity to put right a historic wrong. Instead, it relied
largely on procedural arguments to avoid substantively revisiting its
1978 ruling.

“Forty years ago, the UK succeeded in persuading the Court to absolve it
of the ‘special stigma’ of a finding of torture. It did this by
deliberately withholding from the Court evidence it had about the severe
physical and psychological suffering that these ‘techniques’ inflicted.
It also claimed this was the unsanctioned behaviour of local military
and police.

“When Amnesty visited the detainees in 1971, we found clear evidence of
torture. Our findings have not changed in the years that have passed.

“What has been revealed in the files withheld by the UK Government
cannot be denied. These men were tortured, and with approval at the
highest levels of Government. The record of what these men endured in
those interrogation rooms 47 years ago, and the devastating impact on
them afterwards, still stands.

“The ‘hooded men’ have been denied justice for too long. The UK
Government must now urgently conduct an independent and effective
investigation into what happened, and prosecute any state agents
involved in sanctioning or carrying out these violations at the time.”

In a press conference today, the Hooded Men asked for the ruling to be
appealed by the Irish government. Liam Shannon said they were “totally
dismayed” by the judgement and says he “absolutely” believes the men
were tortured.

“Justice Maguire in the High Court in Belfast two or three weeks ago
agreed with that. Lord Bingham, the highest law lord in England, agreed
with that, that what happened to us was torture. There’s no doubt it, it
was torture, and it will always be torture as far as we’re concerned.”

Another of the men, Francie McGuigan said the court had missed a great
opportunity to stamp out torture all over the world. He said the
judgment reinforced the notion that governments can “drag citizens from
their bed and degrade and humiliate them”.

He added that the ruling was “only a setback” on a “long and hard
struggle”.

Official Communication from the UFA

Posted by Jim on March 19, 2018

March 19th

Remembering Rosemary Nelson

Posted by Jim on March 18, 2018

Remembering Rosemary Nelson

By Mandy Duffy

Human rights lawyer, Rosemary Nelson, was murdered on this day 19 years
ago by an under-car booby trap bomb. The attack was later claimed by a
Loyalist death squad the LVF, but the level of sophistication points the
finger firmly at British military intelligence for Rosemary’s murder.
Mandy Duffy remembers Rosemary on her anniversary.

I first met Rosemary Nelson via a mutual friend. She was of course known
to me before that as she was a well-known solicitor in Lurgan, but I
really got to know her via our mutual friend and I quickly discovered
that this smart, accomplished woman loved nothing more than a night out
with her friends and we had many wonderful nights, leaving me memories
which I treasure and won’t share here!

Later I joined Rosemary on a committee to establish Irish Medium
Education in Lurgan and witnessed first hand the passion and commitment
she had for the Irish Language and when I look at the flourishing
Naiscoil/Bunscoil we have now in Lurgan I smile and think of Rosemary
and how proud she would be.

I don’t think I need to relay the astonishing work ethic Rosemary had as
that is widely known throughout the world, I witnessed first-hand the
work she did not just for Republicans but for the community of Lurgan.
There is a myth that Rosemary only had Republicans as clients but that
is simply not true Rosemary had clients from all sections of the
community and if Rosemary was your solicitor she gave you 100 percent.

When I met my now husband I saw a lot more of Rosemary in a professional
capacity and she was amazing and never afraid to push the boat out and
pursue complaints against the RUC. She let them away with nothing
including a false arrest case when they arrested the wrong brother and
held him for half an hour in a land rover before they realised. We were
filling her in on their mistake and laughing about it and straight away
she said “is that right? I will be suing them for false arrest.”

During the Drumcree standoff, I spent night after night with her in the
community centre on the Garvaghy Road and watched her in her element
taking everything in her stride despite being exhausted as she rarely
slept relying on her never-ending supply of coffee to keep her going. I
watched as she was spit at by the RUC and assaulted by the RUC in
Portadown and one thing was clear to everyone there; they hated her with
a passion.

I know so many people who were told during stop and searches by the
Brits and the RUC that Rosemary was going to be dead soon and Rosemary
herself told me about the death threats she received and the
intimidation she was under. She was stopped and searched so many times I
recall at one stage her being stopped and searched nearly every time she
pulled out of the car park beside her practice and she put in complaint
after complaint but it never stopped them from targeting her for
serious, persistent harassment or eventually carrying out what they
repeatedly said they would do.

My last conversation with Rosemary was a week or two before she was
murdered and I will never forget it: Sitting in her office in a cloud of
smoke drinking coffee and chatting about the Patten Commission (off all
things) as I was leaving she asked me what our RUC Harassment levels
were like lately and I told her honestly that we had, like a lot of
Republicans at that time, noticed a massive decline and that I felt that
they were under orders not to rock the boat she said ” well they are not
under orders to stop mine” and told me she was still being tortured. I
told her to be careful and she just laughed.

The night before Rosemary was murdered I can recall vividly the chopper
being up over Kilwilkie all night. I remember saying that something must
be going on down in Kilwilkie as that chopper has not moved all night
from the one spot. The next day I was walking into town and a fire
brigade went flying past me quickly followed by an ambulance and 5 mins
later a car pulled up and a friend of mine shouted out “they’ve got her
Mandy, they’ve got Rosemary”.

I have no doubt in my head that Rosemary was murdered by the State. The
conclusion of the inquiry into her murder which read: “The inquiry found
no evidence that state agencies (the RUC, British Army and MI5) had
“directly facilitated” her murder, but “could not exclude the
possibility” that individual members had helped the perpetrators. It
found that state agencies had failed to protect her and that some RUC
intelligence about her had ‘leaked’. Both of these, it said, increased
the danger to her life. The report also stated that RUC officers had
publicly abused and assaulted her in 1997, and made threatening remarks
about her to her clients, which became publicly known. It concluded that
this helped “legitimise her as a target in the eyes of loyalist
terrorists”.

I certainly don’t believe Rosemary was murdered by Loyalists. In my
eyes, they didn’t have the capability to carry out such a sophisticated
attack. She was murdered by the British State and sadly we lost a not
only a brilliant solicitor but also a beautiful, generous friend.

* Mandy Duffy is vice-chairperson of Saoradh and an IRPWA and community
activist, based in Lurgan North Armagh.

WAKE Sunday for WTC Marine Pilot Thomas Phelan Marine Company 9

Posted by Jim on

WTC Marine Pilot Thomas Phelan  Marine Company 9