Posted by Jim on November 13, 2015
To Friends & Supporters,
I thought it was important for you to know the latest happenings in my case.
The attached correspondence with the C5 Legacy Investigation Branch (LIB) of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has taken a little while to sink in but it looks like there is an investigation underway by the LIB into the attempted assassination of my family and I some twenty-seven years ago.
Since my status does not afford me the ability to fly back to Belfast to answer questions it is anticipated that LIB will travel here to interview my oldest son Gary and myself. (Gary was 12 years old when he witnessed the loyalist shooting into the living room of our home and then turning the weapons up towards the bedrooms when they spotted him at the window.)
The letter was forwarded to me by my lawyer Niall Murphy in Belfast from the LIB inquiring into the attack on Oct’ 2nd 1988.
This is in response to a telephone conversation initiated by the LIB advising me that they had new information.
Needless to say I was shocked to receive a call from them at 5.30am however, I am happy to comply with any requests by LIB for information that may eventually lead to some form of justice and closure if there is such a thing…!
I have always made a point of saying how lucky my family was to escape serious injury and that it was a miracle that no one was struck by the more than 26 shots that was fired indiscriminately into our home but, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t suffer from the affects of the shooting.
We have no visible scares however, the scares we do have are the ones you can’t see the psychological ones we live with every day.
When I pause to contemplate the past and our present status especially, our immigration status and the adverse affect this continues to have on our lives as well as the stress that it puts on us… (The same stress that, I believe lead to the sudden illness and death of my wife Bernadette) I have difficulty accepting that we were lucky. You simply cannot forget the past when it is affecting your everyday life.
And I know this is the situation for many families whom have lost love ones to collusion in Northern Ireland… We just want to know the truth no matter how hard it will be to accept.
The Sir Desmond de Silva Report concluded that the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) knew the attack was going to take place and that they (RUC) failed to act to prevent what could have been by all accounts a massacre of my family.
Instead of protecting my family…British Government Security Forces protected the; Red Hand Commando’s (RHC) the Loyalist group affiliated to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) who carried out the attack and made sure they escaped without apprehension.
They also made sure they protected there key British intelligence agent Brian Nelson whom provided the RHC with detailed information and photographs of me that reportedly came out off a British military installation dump...Futhermore he supplied the weapons used in the attack…a VZ58 automatic rifle was part of a haul of weapons that Nelson smuggled into Northern Ireland from South Africa that have been linked to nearly 100 loyalist murders.
Lastly, and what may be hard to believe Nelson actually handed over the keys of his own taxi cab to the RHC that was then used to carry out the gun attack and then reported to the RUC that he was hijacked.
The British Government have repeatedly lied and suppressed the truth about my case for 27 years..
They lied to the Canadian authorities and illegally participated in proceedings in an attempt to have me deported back to Belfast into the hands of the RUC Special Branch.
They sent RUC Special Branch officers over from Belfast to testify and lie under oath here in a United States Federal Court in front of Judge Henry Dogan who presided over our political asylum hearing in Newark NJ.
It is abundantly clear to me that in order to get any meaningful justice from the British Government my lawyers in Belfast will need all the help and support they can get.
To that end I will make any communication I have with the LIB of the PSNI public and will provide any and all information pertaining to our case available.
With regard to my present immigration status in the US the threat of deportation still shapes how I live my life. The latest news and information may not change my situation but, it validates the claims that we have made for all theses years. The real injustice here was when political asylum was taken from Bernadette and my children 29 days after it was granted by Judge Dogan..(one day short of the 30 day limit for appeals) Based on all the evidence that was presented by my lawyers then and what will be reviled shortly it should be given back…!
All said and done…my family and I are very happy and proud to be here in the US and I fully acknowledge that this would not have been possible but for all your support over the years and the support of our representatives and Irish American organizations especially the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America.
In the meantime I would like to reach out to our congressional leaders whom have supported me in the past to act immediately on my behalf by contacting the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) requesting that they join a motion to have our case deferred back to the Board of Immigration appeals for a review of the evidence that was not available at the time of our political asylum hearing in Newark NJ
I would also like to request the DHS to defer action indefinitely on my case based on the information in the Sir Desmond de Silva Report and the latest inquiry into the attack by the C5 Legacy Investigation Branch of the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
End,
Malachy McAllister
Posted by Jim on
Relatives of the Bloody Sunday victims say they feel “a flicker of hope”
following the questioning of a former British soldier involved in the
1972 massacre, despite renewed efforts to block their justice campaign.
Thirteen people were killed when British paratroopers opened fire on a
civil rights march through the city in January 1972. A fourteenth died
later.
‘Soldier J’, who appeared before the Saville Inquiry in 2002, was
questioned and released by detectives from the PSNI’s new Legacy
Investigations Branch, which replaced the discredited Historical
Enquiries Team (HET).
Kate Nash, whose 19-year-old brother, William, was killed on Bloody
Sunday, said she welcomed the news.
“I started to shake. I couldn’t believe it. I became very emotional. To
see a soldier even being questioned has truly shocked me. I never
thought it would get to this. There is a flicker of hope. It’s a very
positive step.”
The 66-year-old, who lives in County Antrim, is the first person to ever
be arrested as part of the Bloody Sunday investigation.
The PSNI man leading the investigation said the arrest “marked a new
phase in the overall investigation which would continue for some time”.
Family members have expressed their hope that murder charges against the
soldiers could finally reveal who ordered the massacre. But there were
signs that powerful forces in the British establishment remain
determined to maintain a cover-up.
Former British defence minister Gerald Howarth described the arrest of
ex-soldiers over Bloody Sunday as “not in the public interest”. The Tory
MP for Aldershot, where the Bloody Sunday paratroopers were based, said
the British prime minister David Cameron had intended the Saville
Inquiry and his apology to close a “painful chapter”. “Matters should
not be re-opened”, he declared.
Former British Direct Ruler Lord Mandelson also said the investigation
should be stopped. He told Channel 4 News: “There are perils in going
back so far into history. Perils over the evidence that is available,
people’s memories, people’s ability to produce their own evidence and
facts so long ago.”
Seven former soldiers have now begun legal action against the PSNI in
the High Court, demanding a judicial review of the way the PSNI is
conducting its inquiry.
According to reports, lawyers for the soldiers have questioned the
legality of the investigation and claim it is being pursued for
political reasons. They also claim it would be illegal to arrest any of
the soldiers in their homes without 24 hours prior notice.
The Bloody Sunday families have demanded that the PSNI treat former
paratroopers the same as any other suspect in a murder investigation.
John Kelly, whose 17-year-old brother Michael was shot dead on Bloody
Sunday, said the legal move was an indication that former soldiers
realise they could be receiving the “same knock on the door as Soldier
J.”
“As far as I am concerned it should be business as usual for the PSNI
investigation. Why should they be treated any differently; what sort of
a society would we live in if that was to happen?” he said.
Posted by Jim on
Peace activist and former republican prisoner Patrick Magee said he was
refused permission to board a flight last week, simply because it was
due to pass over US airspace.
Mr Magee was sentenced to 35 years in jail in connection with the IRA
attack on Britain’s war cabinet in Brighton in October 1984. He had
intended to fly from London to Mexico City to take part in a
high-profile conference on public policy when authorities turned him
away because the “flight would cross into US air space”.
Mr Magee was travelling directly to Mexico with Jo Berry, whose father
Anthony Berry died in the Brighton attack. She was allowed to continue
with her journey, but he was refused boarding, apparently at the request
of the US.
After being banned from the planned flight from London, the 64-year-old
then flew to Madrid where he was due to catch a second direct flight to
Mexico, but was again turned away.
After consulting with conference organisers he then caught another
flight from Madrid in Bogota in Colombia before connecting to Mexico
City. However, on arrival he was detained by authorities before being
deported back to Colombia and then Spain.
He said he was not given any explanation for his deportation but
believes it is due to his 12-year involvement in the IRA.
He had been expected to take part in an eight-day talking tour of Mexico
which was to finish off at the high profile Ciudad de las Ideas (City of
Ideas) conference.
In the past he has travelled across the world with Ms Berry giving talks
about reconciliation.
He said: “I have spent the last 15 years working in reconciliation field
but we still have a lot of work to reverse the American view of it.”
‘OTR’ MAN ARRESTED
In a separate development, a Tyrone man has been arrested and released
on bail in connection with a Provisional IRA bomb attack at Coalisland
PSNI (then RUC) station in 1997.
Paul Campbell returned to Coalisland in late 2001 and worked as a barman
in McGirr’s pub in the town. The court was told the police always had
evidence against Campbell, but “failed to act on it”.
He only became a ‘person of interest’ after a property connected to him
was searched as part of the investigation into an attack by a breakaway
IRA group in 2011. After living in the town for years without incident,
he was arrested late last month.
He was granted bail by Mr Justice Horner who said: “It seems absolutely
extraordinary that no steps were taken to detain him” before last week.
The father of three had been assured that he was not wanted in
connection with the attack as part of the ‘On The Run’ (OTR) scheme for
republicans facing potential prosecutions.
During the bail hearing it was pointed out that Mr Campbell was stopped
twice by the PSNI in 2010 in relation to driving matters and was not
arrested despite giving his personal details.
Last year Donegal republican John Downey, accused of involvement in the
1982 IRA Hyde Park bombing, was released from the Old Bailey after it
was confirmed he’d been given an OTR letter through Sinn Fein’s Gerry
Kelly. A judge ruled that despite a claim the letter had been given “in
error”, the 63-year-old could not be prosecuted.
Mr Campbell is expected to rely on a similar assurance he was no longer
wanted as part of his defence against the allegations against him.
Posted by Jim on
By Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams (for Leargas)
As long as Britain has been involved in Ireland it has bought or cajoled
or intimidated some people into acting as their eyes and ears, their
spies and spooks, and advocates. Some of these do so because it suits
their own politics and prejudices. But the end result is that citizens
die and freedom is denied.
These strategies are not unique to Ireland or indeed to the British.
They are as old as wars. However, in the most recent period of conflict
their use became an indispensible part of Britain’s counter insurgency
strategy in Ireland. As I have recorded in these columns before the
foremost counter-insurgency strategist was the British Army’s Frank
Kitson. When he arrived in Belfast in 1970 he set about restructuring
the RUC and British Army approach based on his experiences in post
second world war British colonial wars.
The British Army brought with it the techniques of torture; of
counter-gangs; of propaganda, and of media and political manipulation.
The key objective for Kitson, and for others in the British intelligence
and security services, was to reshape the government, the law, the
judiciary and the media to defeat Irish republicanism. It didn’t matter
how this was done or what the consequences were.
Kitson who served in many of Britain’s counter-insurgency campaigns
wrote: ‘The fundamental concept is the working of the triumvirate,
civil, military and police, as a joint and integrated organisation from
the highest to the lowest level of policy making, planning and
administration.’
For example Kitson rationalised the use of death squads and the
corruption of justice: ‘Everything done by a government and its agents
in combating insurgency must be legitimate. But this does not mean that
the government must work within exactly the same set of laws during an
emergency as existed beforehand. The law should be used as just another
weapon in the government’s arsenal, in which case it becomes little more
than a propaganda cover for the disposal of unwanted members of the
public.’
Of course, he wasn’t the first to apply these arguments. The stories of
spooks and spies, of agents and informers working for the British state
during the centuries of Ireland’s long struggle for freedom are legion.
An informer called Owen O’Connally gave information to the British
during the 1641 rebellion that led to the arrest and executions of two
of the leaders, Lord Maguire and Colonel McMahon. Money was his reward.
The 1798 rebellion by the United Irish movement was bedevilled with
informers. Many are named in the history of that period. Men like
Leonard McNally and Samuel Turner and Thomas Reynolds were informers. In
his ‘History of the Irish Rebellion of 1798’ WH Maxwell writes: ‘The
prisons were crowded with persons denounced by those infamous informers,
Armstrong and Reynolds, Dutton and Newell, with a list of subordinate
villains acting under the direction of police agents, themselves steeped
deeper in iniquity than the perjured wretches they suborned … Numbers,
innocent in most cases, through the instrumentality of those bad men,
were brought hourly to the scaffold.’
In later years agents and informers remained an integral part of
Britain’s colonial class in Ireland in their efforts to subvert the
Young Irelanders; the Fenians; the Land League and Charles Stewart
Parnell.
It was the evidence of Pierce Nagle, who met Chief Inspector Mallon each
week in Dublin Castle that led to the arrest of the Fenian leaders
O’Donovan Rossa, John O’Leary and others. It was also at this time that
the Special Branch was established. Mayo man Michael Davitt, leader of
the Land League, recorded some of the actions of the spies and spooks at
work against the tens of thousands seeking land reform. In his book,
‘The Informer’s’ by Andrew Boyd writes: ‘Davitt accused the British
government of employing terrorists to lure young Irishmen in political
crime and them have them arrested, imprisoned and even hanged’.
The Tan War saw the use of agents and informers increase enormously as
the British sought to defeat the IRA. For its part the IRA dealt with
such spies ruthlessly. Michael Collins execution of 14 British agents on
the morning of Sunday November 21st is one of the best remembered
actions of that period. But there were hundreds of others killed as
informers. One occasion two IRA volunteers brought one man out onto a
river and drowned him rather than shoot him.
In the most recent decades of conflict the application by MI5 and the
RUC Special Branch and British Military intelligence of evolving and
increasingly complex technologies to listen, record, monitor, track and
trap their enemy became an essential element in all of this. Recent
court cases show that this is still going on.
Forty years ago these same organisations were involved in the
establishment of armed loyalist paramilitary groups which they then
supplied with information and weapons to kill Irish citizens and foment
sectarian strife.
The recent publication by the British Secretary of State Theresa
Villiers of the MI5 report into allegations of paramilitarism but
specially the IRA, is an example of how the use by Britain of agent
provocateurs, and of spies and spooks continues. The political
exploitation of this report to attack Sinn Fein, especially by some
elements of the Dublin based media, is also evidence of the deep desire
on the part of some to use any excuse to criticise republicans. They are
unconcerned about the bone fides of the authors.
So, the fact that MI5 has been involved in the murder of countless
hundreds of Irish citizens, including those murdered by the
Dublin-Monaghan bombs, and has no credibility as an independent source,
is deemed irrelevant.
One contemporary example of this emerged within days of the publication
of the panel report. The Public Prosecution Service in Belfast revealed
that it was initiating a major investigation into the role of an MI5
agent – named Stakeknife – and his alleged involvement in the murders of
between 24 and 40 people. Critically this investigation will also
examine the roles of all of those in the RUC Special Branch and MI5 who
were involved in running Stakeknife.
But Stakeknife was not alone. MI5 and other British security agencies
ran hundreds of agents. Whether it was people like Mark Haddock, a
loyalist serial killer in north Belfast, or those who murdered human
rights lawyer Pat Finucane, MI5, British Military Intelligence and the
RUC colluded in the murder of citizens.
Today there are still some in those organisations who believe that the
peace process was wrong. That it was possible to defeat the IRA. And who
resent deeply the growth and popularity of Sinn Fein.
In my view the report from Theresa Villiers was and is primarily aimed
at undermining the political institutions and the Good Friday Agreement.
It is regrettable but not surprising that elements of the Irish
political establishment and sections of the Irish media are willing to
exploit this specious report to attack Sinn Fein.
Posted by Jim on November 12, 2015
by Sean Brown
This year, the New York Fire Department finally graduated one of its female recruits after quite some time of her trying, but there’s something major missing from the whole ordeal that’s raising eyebrows across the country.
This very topic has actually come up in the past, and it looks like yet again, the social justice warriors are winning the debate, according to the New York Post. Ever since 1999, Choeurlyne Doirin-Holder has been trying to get into the department after passing the Civil Service exam, and this year, she finally did so, but it wasn’t because of her merits.
No, Doirin-Holder didn’t pass any of the physical testing requirements, even after some were made easier, yet she graduated the academy just like the other three female recruits, who passed everything without help, and it’s all thanks to an activist judge in Brooklyn.
The 39-year-old never achieved a passing score of 17 minutes and 59 seconds on the Functional Skills Test, which is arguably the most important for firefighters since it’s a course of job-related tasks in full gear, such as stretching hoses and dragging dummies, and she couldn’t come in under 24 minutes in practice. But she’s still on the force.
Doirin-Holder also didn’t run 1.5 miles in under 12 minutes or less, even after the course was shrunk by a quarter mile. She came in at 12:06 on the shorter course, but she still graduated the academy. She was allowed to complete a supposedly “equivalent” test to show she was physically fit – they threw her on a StairMaster machine for an unspecified amount of time.
If you think that was special treatment, how about learning that in 2014, after dropping out of the course due to an injury, the department hired her on for a desk job, making the same money and benefits as actual firefighters – $81, 376 a year, plus overtime. Tell me again who’s benefitting from all of this, because it’s certainly not the taxpayers or society as a whole.
So you know why this woman, who couldn’t complete the physical requirements to become a firefighter, still graduate the academy? Social justice, of course. A judge ordered the department to hire a specified number of “priority hires,” regardless of what it took, to satisfy an arbitrary quota based on physical appearance alone rather than physical ability.
To be honest, I’m ecstatic I don’t live in New York because I feel this jeopardizes the safety of everyone in her district since the original physical requirements were created for a reason. But, equality! Right? Wrong.
Equality is passing the requirements despite physical differences, not because the standards were lowered to accommodate you. Equality is treating everyone the same, not carving out exemptions for people based solely on physical characteristics. Equality is expecting the same out of everyone, regardless of race, sex, color, or nationality, not giving them a free pass due to whatever injustices may have occurred to others in the past.
What we see here is not equality in the slightest – it’s a twisted definition of equality based off of perceived discrimination due to people ignoring the obvious physical differences between men and women, and as a result, the integrity of the FDNY is now compromised. But, great job, social justice warriors! Because of you, New Yorkers can now sleep a little less soundly, knowing that a woman, who failed the high physical standards required of firefighters, may be showing up to “save” them if a fire breaks out. Un-freaking-believeable.