Posted by Jim on May 1, 2014
Mr Adams is being questioned in Antrim. (© Pacemaker)
It comes after deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness blamed the “dark side” of policing for the timing of his party leader’s arrest in the run-up of the European and local council elections.
Mr McGuinness said: “People who could be described as former republicans (are) targeting the Sinn Féin peace strategy and targeting the leader of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams.
“It has been disappointing to see the efforts of some of those people together in consort with the dark side within policing.”
But David Cameron said: “There has been absolutely no political interference in this issue.”
“We have an independent judicial system, both here in England and also we do have one in NI. We have independent policing authorities, independent prosecuting authorities. Those are vital parts of the free country and the free society we enjoy today.”
Gerry Adams is currently still in custody at Antrim PSNI Station where he is being held as part of the investigation into the 1972 abduction and murder of west Belfast mother Jean McConville.
Mr Adams presented himself voluntarily to the station on Wednesday night where he was then arrested and questioned under caution by detectives from the PSNI’s Serious Crime Branch.
UTV understands he is being questioned under the Terrorism Act 2000 and can be held for 48 hours before police need to apply to the courts for additional time to continue their interview.
Mr Adams has always denied having any part in the murder.
Martin McGuinness went on: “I view his arrest as a deliberate attempt to influence the outcome of the elections that are due to take place in three weeks’ time, north and south on this island.
“That raises very serious questions around why that is the case and what is the agenda.”
Meanwhile the DUP leader and First Minister Peter Robinson has come out in support of the PSNI in the actions they have taken in the McConville murder investigation.
He explained: “I would suggest it would be political policing if the PSNI had not questioned those that were deemed to have been involved in any way.
“It strengthens the political process in Northern Ireland for people to know that no-one is above the law, everyone is equal under the law and everyone is equally subject to the law.
“I commend the police for the action they have taken. They must have known that by taking this step they would be criticised from some quarters but it is my duty as First Minister, as it is for others that have taken up ministerial office, to give their support to police and the rule of law.”
© UTV News
Posted by Jim on
Sinn Fein’s Six-County Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness has
said that the arrest of party leader Gerry Adams by the PSNI last night
was politically motivated.
Mr Adams spent last night at the PSNI’s main interrogation centre and
is continuing to be questioned there.
Mr Adams was first contacted by the PSNI on Tuesday and had volunteered
to help the investigation into the 1972 death of informer Jean
McConville, Sinn Fein said. He presented himself at 8pm last night and
within an hour the PSNI announced that a “65 year old man” had been
arrested in the case.
Reports have indicated he is being questioned under the Terrorism Act
2000 and can be held by the PSNI for 48 hours without recourse to the
course.
Unionists revelled in the development but demanded the Sinn Fein leader
face charged. Late last night, celebrating loyalists erected a large
British Union Jack outside the police base in Antrim town.
Mr McGuinness said Mr Adams was “the single most important person” in
the peace process.
“In that context I view his arrest as a deliberate attempt to influence
the outcome of the elections due to take place all over this island in
three weeks,” he said.
“That raises very serious questions about the agenda of those
responsible. There are people on the dark side of policing and this is
an attempt to flex their muscles.”
A recent poll showed Sinn Fein is on the brink of becoming the largest
party in both parts of Ireland in elections being held separately in
both jurisdictions later this month.
The Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald blamed “old guard
elements” within the PSNI and unionism were working against the party.
She said it was wrong to suggest that Adams was a suspect in the
inquiry, saying that he had volunteered to travel north to help the
investigation.
Ms McDonald said there were people who viewed the growing strength of
Sinn Fein with “very considerable alarm” and that there are people “who
would wish to do things to stop that” ahead of the elections on May
23rd.
Asked if the arrest had damaged the PSNI’s credibility and the peace
process, she said that the PSNI have “questions to answer” but added
that the peace process is “fairly robust”.
The arrest of Mr Adams is being reported in the mainstream media in the
26 Counties as a major setback for the party’s chances of a historic
breakthrough in the local and European elections there.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny denied charges of political interference, saying
that parties in the 26 Counties had “absolutely no connection with this
at all”.
Posted by Jim on
Over three days in August 1971 eleven people were killed by British troops in the Ballymurphy area
By Niall McCracken
THE British Government has rejected calls for an independent probe into the deaths of 11 civilians shot by British troops in Ballymurphy in August 1971.
In a letter sent to the families who were bereaved in the west Belfast shootings, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State Theresa Villiers refused the calls on the grounds that it would not be in the public interest.
In a statement the Ballymurphy relatives, who had pressed for an investigation by an independent panel similar to that which examined the Hillsborough football tragedy, said they were devastated by the decision:
“We, the Ballymurphy families, are shocked and outraged at the British Government’s response, particularly in light of the support which has been rightly provided in the Hillsborough case which includes supporting the legal costs of inquests.
“We have led our campaign for truth and justice in a dignified but determined manner and deserve the opportunity to have the innocence of our loved ones proven.”
The families added: “Our legal representative, Padraig Ó Muirigh is considering a judicial review against the decision by the British Secretary of State to refuse the establishment of an Independent Panel.”
The relatives gathered together this morning to receive a letter confirming the decision. In the letter the Secretary of State said “the balance of public interest does not favour establishing an independent review”.
In a statement the Secretary of State added:“I would like to reiterate my deepest sympathy and condolences for the families who were bereaved in August 1971. I am aware that this decision is not the outcome the families had hoped for. Having met them – and other families affected by other incidents throughout the Troubles – I know that the passage of time does not ease the pain and hurt felt about the loss of loved ones.
“I am willing to meet with the Ballymurphy families and their representatives again, if they wish.”
In recent years the families have been campaigning for an inquiry similar to the model used to examine the Hillsborough football disaster of 1989 which would review all documents relating to the deaths of their loved ones.
In a previous interview as part of The Legacy series professor Phil Scraton, a key architect of the Hillsborough Model, said he believed it could be used to examine controversial killings from the Troubles.
An independent panel was appointed to look at the 96 deaths which occurred as a result of a stadium crush during the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield.
In contrast, the Bloody Sunday Inquiry cost £191 million and following the publication of Lord Saville’s report the Prime Minister, David Cameron, publicly stated that there would be no more “open-ended and costly inquiries”.
But the panel model is seen as faster and more cost effective than other public inquiries and, after it was successfully used in the Hillsborough tragedy, the Ballymurphy families campaigned for a similar panel to be funded by the British and Irish governments.
Earlier this year the Irish Government backed the families’ campaign and in March the Taoiseach Enda Kenny raised the issue with Prime Minister Mr Cameron during a meeting at Downing Street.
However the Secretary of State’s letter marks the British Government’s first public confirmation that it would not help fund the panel.
“NOT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST”
John Teggart describes eye witness accounts of how his father was shot in Ballymurphy in August 1971 /
Over three days in August 1971 eleven people were killed by British troops in the Ballymurphy and Springhill area in West Belfast. Ten of the victims were shot dead, while another was wounded and died of a heart attack.
Eleven families lost loved ones and a total of 57 children were bereaved.
Mother of eight Joan Connolly was among the civilians shot dead by the Parachute Regiment. Eyewitness accounts compiled by the families detail how she was shot in the face when attempting to aid an already injured man.
Further accounts detail how local parish priest, Father Hugh Mullan, approached an injured man waving a white baby grow and was fatally shot in the back when returning to safety.
The events unfolded hours after the government introduced a policy of internment – the controversial detention of paramilitary suspects without charge or trial.
At the time army officials claimed troops opened fire in response to shots from republican paramilitaries – though this was rejected by the bereaved.
Families of the victims say the case raises serious questions over the human rights record of the army in Northern Ireland.
Graphic accounts of the events in Ballymurphy have been recorded . Speaking to The Detail before the Secretary of State’s decision was announced, John Teggart recalled how his father was killed.
“One of the eyewitness accounts, that saw my father get shot, said his body bounced with every bullet,” he said.
“That’s 14 bullets passing through his body from a distance of 50 yards across the road.
“I was 11 years of age at the time and we have been campaigning ever since.”
A number of investigations into the event have proved unsatisfactory for the bereaved families and they have taken their campaign for an independent investigation to Europe.
Legal representatives of the Ballymurphy families have openly questioned the fitness of the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), after the UK’s top policing watchdog, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, found it had serious shortcomings. It said the way the HETreviews deaths caused by soldiers was not sufficiently independent.
The shootings in Ballymurphy took place six months before Bloody Sunday in Derry where thirteen people were shot dead when British paratroopers opened fire on crowds at a civil rights demonstration.
In November 2011 the Ballymurphy families welcomed the Attorney General’s decision to re-open inquests into the deaths but raised concerns about the limitations of an inquest to investigate “the context, circumstances and aftermath”.
In June 2012, the former Northern Ireland secretary of State, Owen Paterson, turned down the campaigners’ request for a full public inquiry inquiry saying it was “not in the public interest”.
Today Ms Villiers repeated this position and said she did not believe a Hillsborough-style review would “provide answers which are not already in the public domain or covered by existing legal processes”.
In recent years families have been lobbying both the British and Irish governments for the appointment of an independent panel to instead examine all documents relating to the deaths of their loved ones.
Its focus would include the investigation of the role of the British Government, British Army, criminal justice agencies such as the RUC, the Coroner’s Office and the significance of the media.
In a previous article as part of The Legacy series, The Detail interviewed Queen’s University professor Phil Scraton who was a prominent member of the panel tasked with looking at the circumstances and aftermath of the Hillsborough disaster.
Professor Scraton believes killings from the Troubles could be investigated using the same model of inquiry and he is one of the proposed members of the seven member Ballymurphy panel put forward by campaigners. Other proposed members include civil rights lawyer Gareth Pierce and former police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan as chair.
Posted by Jim on
by Shawn Pogatchnik
Adams was arrested on suspicion of ordering the killing of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 in his Catholic west Belfast power base in 1972. That was the deadliest year in four decades of bloodshed, when the outlawed Irish Republican Army was committing killings daily — and Adams was already a commanding figure.
The IRA branded the 38-year-old woman a British spy but killed her secretly and told her children, who ranged in age from infants to teens, that she had abandoned them.
If Adams, 65, is charged with the murder of McConville — who disappeared without trace until her bullet-shattered skull was found near a Republic of Ireland beach in 2003 — it would be a profound surprise and deal a damaging shock to Northern Ireland’s precariously balanced peace.
Adams’ track record suggests he won’t be.
He was arrested and interrogated repeatedly in the wake of IRA bombings and shootings in the 1970s and 1980s, and even met British government leaders face to face as an IRA representative for failed cease-fire talks in 1972, followed by the IRA’s biggest car-bomb offensive on Belfast. Yet he insists he’s never held any position in the underground army and has been convicted of only one IRA offense, a failed escape when imprisoned without trial.
Adams gave every impression he intended to walk free again, giving TV interviews shortly before delivering himself to a Belfast police station Wednesday to begin an interrogation he has anticipated for months, if not years.
“I believe that the killing of Jean McConville and the secret burial of her body was wrong and a grievous injustice to her and her family,” Adams said. “Well publicized, malicious allegations have been made against me. I reject these. While I have never disassociated myself from the IRA and I never will, I am innocent of any part in the abduction, killing or burial of Mrs. McConville.”
The difference, this time, is that key potential witnesses against Adams have been speaking, on tape, from their graves.
Police investigating the long-unsolved killing of McConville have been making arrests based on tapes of interviews with IRA veterans that they obtained, after a two-year U.S. legal fight, from Boston College. Its Belfast Project involved the collection of audio interviews with 26 IRA veterans detailing their own and colleagues’ careers. They spoke on condition their words be kept secret until their deaths.
Detectives sought access to all of the tapes after one of the interviewees, Adams’ one-time IRA confidante Brendan Hughes, died in 2008. His Boston College interview became the subject of a 2010 book, “Voices From the Grave,” by project coordinator and IRA expert Ed Moloney.
View gallery
In this Tuesday Feb. 19, 2008 file photo, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, right, carries the coffin …
Hughes said he led the IRA team that “arrested” McConville, but her fate was sealed following a policy argument between Adams and the man who succeeded him as the IRA’s Belfast commander, Ivor Bell.
He said Bell wanted McConville’s body to be put on public display to intimidate others who might consider helping the British, but Adams wanted her killing kept a mystery, and she was buried in an unmarked grave.
“There was only one man who gave the order for that woman to be executed,” Hughes said in the audio recording, which was broadcast on British and Irish television in 2010. “That man is now the head of Sinn Fein. I did not give the order to execute that woman. He did.”
Adams and Hughes were arrested together in July 1973, when the British army pounced on an IRA commanders’ meeting in West Belfast. Both were interned without trial, the British policy at the time; IRA members did not face criminal trials until 1976.
After a protracted legal wrangle that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, the Northern Ireland police last year received many more of the IRA tapes from Boston College. Last month, they used the taped interviews of Bell to arrest the now 77-year-old and charge him with aiding McConville’s killing.
View gallery
FILE – In this Thursday Jan. 12, 2012 file photo, Helen McKendry holds a family photograph showing h …
Adams, sensing his own arrest was imminent, announced he would be happy to answer police questions and his lawyers negotiated Wednesday’s police appearance.
Moloney argues that the police investigation is designed not to bring justice but to claim the political scalp of Adams, who is Europe’s longest-serving party leader. He has led Sinn Fein since 1983 and used its growing popularity and clout to deliver IRA cease-fires in 1994 and 1997 and, eventually, a formal renunciation of violence and disarmament in 2005. Today Sinn Fein is the main Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, where Adams has taken a back seat to fellow IRA veteran Martin McGuinness. Since 2011, Adams has led Sinn Fein’s lawmakers in the Republic of Ireland parliament.
Moloney, author of the definitive “A Secret History of the IRA,” said in a phone interview that he doubted the taped accounts could be used effectively to prove any criminal charge, but the political damage to Adams would still be done when, as is expected, McConville’s children sue him for civil damages.
“Unless Gerry Adams actually breaks down and confesses and says ‘I did it,’ I think it’s very unlikely they’ll be able to charge him,” Moloney said.
Even if Adams were convicted of murder, he would win speedy parole under terms of the Good Friday peace accord. It offered quick freedom for all those convicted of pre-1998 IRA crimes.
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A Police vechicle leaves Antrim Police station in Northern Ireland, Wednesday, April, 30, 2014. Sinn …
Yet Adams’ murky IRA past has been repeatedly cited by Irish political opponents to undercut his message and credibility. He suffered embarrassment when two of his close colleagues, party mandarin Denis Donaldson and IRA internal security enforcer Freddie Scappaticci, were exposed as British double agents.
Worse followed last year when his brother was convicted of raping his daughter in the 1970s and 1980s, and Adams testified that he had known of the crimes since 1987 but did not tell Belfast police because they were his enemies.
Long before Wednesday’s arrest, some within his party have wondered when he would give way to a successor with no IRA pedigree, so that the party could grow stronger in the Irish Republic.
Moloney said Adams’ arrest and future threats of lawsuits would “strengthen the argument inside Sinn Fein that it’s time for people to retire and move on. There are too many of these ghosts from the past that keep haunting them.”
Others more concerned with maintaining stability in Northern Ireland warn that Sinn Fein must retain its reformed warlords in the leadership, lest room be created for a new generation of IRA die-hards to resume full-fledged violence against the British state.
The wild card in any prosecutions could be Bell, who had a bitter split with Adams in the mid-1980s, when Adams steered the party toward seeking and taking seats in the Irish parliament, a first step toward wider acceptance of political compromise. Bell was expelled from the IRA and joined those who criticized Adams’ acceptance of a 1998 peace deal that won prison paroles for hundreds of IRA convicts but kept Northern Ireland firmly within the United Kingdom.
Bell’s taped confessions, if accepted as admissible evidence, could be used against Adams because Bell is still alive. Those of Hughes and another IRA veteran who died in 2013, Dolours Price, might be harder to use because they cannot be cross-examined.
Before she died, Price told journalists she had driven the car that delivered McConville to her death. She said another IRA member ordered her to kneel and fired a single rifle shot through the back of her head. She recalled attending a meeting with Hughes, Adams and Bell to discuss how to handle McConville and others suspected of passing intelligence tips on IRA movements to the British Army.
Reflecting the embarrassment associated with killing a widowed mother, the IRA did not claim her killing until 1999, when it admitted responsibility for nine slayings of long-vanished civilians and IRA members, all branded informers. The IRA offered to try to pinpoint their unmarked graves, though with little success. An independent investigation by Northern Ireland’s police complaints watchdog in 2006 found no evidence that McConville had been a spy.
McConville’s children, who had been divided into different foster homes and grew up barely knowing each other, took turns keeping a vigil during months of digging at a beach specified by the IRA some 55 miles (80 kilometers) south of Belfast, but nothing was found.
Finally in 2003, a dogwalker stumbled across her remains protruding from the ground on a grassy slope above the shifting sands.
Posted by Jim on April 13, 2014
Posted by Neil F. Cosgrove in The Wild Geese
While the rest of Europe plunged into darkness with the fall of the Roman Empire, the light of learning and western civilization was kept flickering in Ireland, preserved in the monasteries established by the followers of St. Patrick. However, it would only be a matter of time before the “light” attracted the unwanted attention of those more interested in plunder than learning. A period of warming weather and a population explosion in what we now know as Scandinavia combined to unleash upon Europe a terror the likes of which had never been seen before: the Vikings.
In 795, the Viking attacks on Ireland began with the sacking and burning of a monastery on Rathlin Island . Hit and run raids along the Irish coast would continue for the next forty years. The Viking tactics changed however in 837; sixty Viking longboats appeared in the river Boyne while another sixty appeared in the river Liffy and began to raid inland and plunder the great monasteries such as Clonamacnois. In the winter of 841-842 the Vikings wintered in Ireland at a defensive position they had established: Dublin. The Vikings were now no longer raiders, they were occupiers and colonists. The Vikings began building fortified towns, longphorts, near the sea which was the source of their strength. These Norse settlements would be the basis for the future Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, Cork, Wicklow, Limerick and Stangford. The drawback to these settlements for the Vikings is that they provided fixed targets for the Irish to attack. The result was the establishment of a chaotic and often violent status quo, with Viking Jarl and Irish Chieftain making and breaking alliances as part of ongoing power struggles in both communities
One of the contributing factors to the success of the Viking invasion was that the Ireland of that time was made up of dozens of small kingdoms and competing kings and chieftains. Brian was the younger son of Cennedi (Kennedy), the King of the Dal Cais of north Munster, what would be equivalent to modern County Clare (“Boru” was not a family name, but a cognomen given after Brian’s death; either a reference to “Béal Bóruma” a fort where his family held sway or the Gaelic “bóruma” meaning “of the tributes” indicating a powerful lord to whom homage was to be paid.). The Dal Cais had recently risen in power due to the strategic position of their lands straddling the river Shannon, which combined with knowledge gained from Norse tactics allowed them to become a formidable military force. Brian’s older brother, Mathgamain, succeeded to the kingship of Munster and successfully captured and sacked the Viking settlement of Limerick. Mathgamain success was short lived; he was betrayed by supposed allies and murdered. Brian avenged his brother’s death and assumed the throne of Munster.
For the next twenty years Brian would increase his power with a vision of becoming Ard Ri, “High King “of a united Ireland. The title of Ard Ri was an ancient one, that had long been held by the O’Neill’s of Ulster, but it was more honor than substance, with the minor kings giving or withholding support as suited them. This was to change with Brian. In 999 Brian captured Dublin, the last of the Viking cities yet to fall under his control. Brian became High King in name and fact with the submission of the then current High King, Malachy the II, in 1002.
The next decade was a period of relative peace and prosperity in Ireland. Under Brian’s protection, the plundered monasteries were rebuilt. It is said that Brian sent emissaries abroad in an attempt to acquire and return treasures and artifacts that had been taken from Ireland. Relative peace and stability gave rise to a new golden age of Irish culture.
However, such a Golden Age would not last long. In an attempt to consolidate his power through reconciliation, Brian had allowed Sitric, the Viking King of Dublin, and Mael Mordha King of Leinster to retain their positions after swearing fealty to Brian. Combining forces along with Viking allies that had been recruited by Sitric from the Orkney Islands Sitric and Mael Mordha decided to challenge Brian at Clontarf, located outside of what was then Dublin, on Good Friday April 23, 1014. What resulted was one of the largest and bloodiest battles of the Dark Ages. The battle swayed back and forth throughout the day when finally Brian’s forces gained the advantage. The result was a slaughter ; Sitric and Mael Mordha killed and many of the Orkeny Vikings drowning as they attempted to flee in panic to their Longships as the tide was coming in. Out of an estimated force of 6,500-7,000 Vikings who fouht that day nearly 6,000 were killed; such was the magnitude of the route by Brian’s forces, However, in winning the battle the Irish had also lost heavily; Brian’s son and grandson were both killed in the battle. Legend says that Brian, now an old man in his seventies, was killed by a fleeing Viking who found the old man at prayer for his lost son, grandson and in honor of Good Friday. Without Brian’s strong leadership and the succession of his house in shambles, Ireland rapidly reverted to the disjoint and feuding kingdoms that had preceded Brian’s reign.
Legends says that Brian Boru drove the Vikings out of Ireland. Brian’s victory at Clontarf did mark the last time the Vikings would attempt a major landing in Ireland, but the Norse of the longphort’s had been in Ireland for generations and had become, and would continue to be, an integral part of Irish Society. At the same time the descendents of Vikings that settled in France, the Normans whose name was a corruption of “Norse Men“, invaded Ireland 55 years later and would begin another conquest of Ireland. One wonders what might have been the result if Brian Boru’s united Ireland had been able to persist longer, could the Normans have conquered a united Ireland rather than playing minor kings off against each other as events transpired.
It would be equally wrong to view the end of Brian’s High Kingship at Clontarf as a hollow victory that brought to an end Brian’s vision of a unified Ireland on that Good Friday 1014. It was memories of the Golden Age of Brian’s reign that would keep alive the vision of Ireland’s nationhood in the face of conquest and oppression; that would inspire the volunteers who rose in Dublin on Easter Monday 1916, not far from where Brian had asserted Ireland’s right to sovereignty 900 years before, and set Ireland once more on the path of independence and unity. On another Good Friday, 984 years later, 10 April 1998, the light of the promise of a free, peaceful and united Ireland was lit again with the Good Friday agreements. Despite the winds of politicians and voices of division that light continues to flicker and we must nourish and protect that small flame of freedom until all of Ireland bask in the light of freedom as it was in the time of Brian Boru.
