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Posted by Jim on September 21, 2011
Posted by Jim on September 11, 2011
Pressure is growing on the authorities at Maghaberry prison to release internee Gerry McGeough, who suffers from a serious heart condition, into hospital care.
Mr McGeough is a republican ‘dissident’ and a former member of the Sinn Fein leadership. He was arrested four years ago in connection with an IRA attack in 1981. Although qualifying under the release terms of the
1998 Good Friday Agreement, the prominent Tyrone republican was handed a 20-year prison sentence by a non-jury Diplock court earlier this year in a judgement widely seen as politically motivated.
Despite winning a judicial review of his case in July — on the basis that he served three years for IRA offences in the US and should be eligible for immediate release — he learned this week that a hearing of the review will not be possible until December at the earliest.
The following article by Martin Galvin summarises the background to the case.
A growing online campaign can be found at http://freegerry.com/ and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/groups/freegerrymcgeough/
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It has been said that Republicans who do not view joining Britain’s Stormont administration as a means to end British rule, are permitted to disagree. Those holding such views require no such permission, any more than would their commitment to a united Ireland need the terms of the Good Friday deal to become a legitimate aspiration. The script usually follows with a challenge to put it to the test at elections, in words reminiscent of John Hume or Gerry Fitt during the years when the SDLP claimed to be the elected representatives speaking for the community.
This challenge, and boasts about a new era of justice were literally put on trial in a Belfast Courtroom in the case of Gerry McGeough. It was a trial conducted after the appointment of a compromised justice ministry, agreed by the DUP and Sinn Fein. All of the constabulary boards and partnerships which were touted as safeguards of this new era of justice were clearly in place. Such claims were in the dock alongside the Tyrone Republican. The verdict is clear.
SINGLED OUT
The arrest, trial and 20 year sentence imposed in the case of Gerry McGeough seem far less to do with events of thirty years ago, than with retaliation for his actions in March 2007 and his temerity in standing for election as an Independent Republican, opposed to any embrace of a re-branded Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Gerry McGeough, now over fifty, married and settled with four young children, was charged with joining the Provisional IRA in 1975 at age seventeen, and in the midst of the 1981 Hunger Strike, taking part in an IRA ambush of an armed member of the UDR, in which McGeough was seriously wounded.
He could have been arrested more than 20 years earlier simply by lodging an extradition warrant during his four years of imprisonment for the IRA in a notorious German bunker prison, or later during the three years spent imprisoned in the United States on IRA related weapons charges.
Nor were charges made when he returned to live openly in Tyrone, nor even as he campaigned in BBC studio debates, at public rallies, or speeches given outside constabulary barracks with his campaign posters prominently displayed. Instead the crown moved against him only in March 2007, outside the polling centre where his votes were being tallied.
Why was Gerry McGeough singled out, at a time when former senior IRA members are part of a British Stormont Administration?
The explanation seems unmistakable. Gerry McGeough was the victim of a retaliatory arrest which brought new meaning to the phrase political policing. His arrest was intended to stop him from standing again as an Independent Republican, and perhaps more importantly as a message to other veteran Republicans, who had earned their stripes in the struggle and might consider putting it to the test at elections. If you stand for election as an Independent Republican, decades old charges will be trumped up against you.
ABUSE OF PROCESS
McGeough’s solicitors believed that the thirty year delay in bringing charges warranted dismissal as an abuse of process. They were encouraged by a case that seemed to be directly on point under consideration by the very same judge. The family of Nora McCabe, helped by Relatives for Justice, applied for charges against RUC members for her murder on July 9, 1981, and for perjury during the cover-up which followed. RUC members claimed that they fired the fatal plastic bullet in response to rioting, burning vehicles and an attack by petrol bombers. Film taken by a television crew showed none of it was true. Crown Judge Coghlin denied the McCabe family’s application. Too much time had passed, he said. Any charges preferred now after so many years would be a clear abuse of process and inevitably dismissed. While deeply disappointed for the McCabe family, the case seemed to guarantee a dismissal for Gerry McGeough
However Coghlin applied different rules in the case of Gerry McGeough, for an incident which occurred four weeks before Nora McCabe was killed by the RUC. Time and delays here meant nothing. Representatives from British-Irish Rights Watch and the Committee for the Administration of Justice had traveled to the court to monitor the hearing on this crucial issue. Coghlin began the hearing by excluding them from the courtroom.
The pledges from the crown to Mr. McGeough conveyed through Sinn Fein that he was free to return to Tyrone were discarded. Delays were McGeough’s fault. He was somehow faulted that no extradition warrant was filed or that no attempt to arrest him was made at his home or at campaign events and debates. Meanwhile RUC members were excused for colluding in the ongoing cover-up of Nora McCabe’s murder. If the vaunted safeguards of a compromised justice ministry, constabulary boards and partnerships mean anything in bringing justice to nationalists, how can the same judges still bend the same rules in favor of the RUC and across the backs of nationalists?
SELECTIVE AMNESTY
During the period from his arrest until last February’s sentence, the British government acknowledged several murders and murder cover-ups of innocent nationalists committed by crown forces. When Cameron euphemistically called the Bloody Sunday murders, unjustified and unjustifiable killings, he was tacitly admitting that British troopers had committed crimes of murder or manslaughter, and that their sworn testimony before Widgery or Saville was perjury. No arrests of any of these troopers followed. The crown apologized to the family of 12 year old Majella O’Hare, murdered as she walked to confession. While admitting that sworn testimony about IRA snipers and crossfire was false, the crown made no arrests of those troopers for a murder cover-up. No one expects arrests of any members of the British Army or RUC who colluded in murders by their loyalist agents or tortured nationalists at interrogation centers and then sent them to Long Kesh or Armagh, with perjured accounts of voluntary confessions. Clearly the crown has bestowed an amnesty on members of the British Army and RUC that does not extend to those Republicans like Gerry McGeough who speak against the British administration.
DIPLOCK COURT
A Diplock trial was ordered. Those tasked with drawing up repressive British laws often seem to choose their terms with a deliberate sense of irony. Words like ‘temporary’, ’emergency’ or ‘special’ invariably create provisions and powers which are permanent, lasting and routinely used.
Diplock Courts were deliberately created to replace Internment, with a sham trial that could be counted upon to dispose of Republican opponents. Diplock Courts were abolished, as British secretary Owen Patterson emphasized, in responding to an inquiry from then MEP Joseph Higgins. Abolished of course means never used except in each and every case where the crown deems them useful.
The evidence was such that only a Diplock Court would entertain much less credit. There was no identification by any witness. McGeough was forcibly stripped and photographed after his arrest. Photos of an old wound were displayed as the crown speculated that it might possibly be a bullet wound, and possibly sustained in 1981.
A bullet fragment with no forensics or DNA link to McGeough was introduced. The smashed fragment may or may not have been the same caliber fired by then UDR member Sammy Brush. A key Garda witness, known as the “The Badger”, was described by former MI6 officer Fred Holroyd as someone with ties to British intelligence. When asked about his these links with British intelligence the “Badger” refused to answer.
Pages from a fictional book authored by Gerry McGeough were read into the record as evidence. Finally a political asylum application, whose confidentiality is a cornerstone of international law, was admitted without hesitation.
During the trial McGeough suffered two heart attacks. The judge ordered constables to view him at the hospital where he was confined and retrieve his medical records. In 1916, British commanders monitored the work of doctors to keep James Connolly alive until troopers could shoot him. Here it seems that the crown judge feared Gerry McGeough might die from a heart attack before being sent to prison. The verdict was a foregone conclusion. The flimsy evidence somehow became inescapable proof of guilt. The crown judge would not delay jailing McGeough for medical documents but directed that he be taken forthwith to Maghaberry.
Senior DUP members who attended the trial expressed joy that the judge had delivered for them.
MAGHABERRY
Thirty years ago Republican political prisoners were in the midst of a Hunger Strike in Long Kesh. It had been forced on the prisoners by years of beatings and brutality, much of it accompanying mirror searches or strip-searches of the prisoners. Today in Maghaberry the same sort of brutal strip-searches are being inflicted, despite an agreement last August that the practice would be halted. On his day of sentence McGeough was subjected to such a search. He was brought to hospital instead of court. His solicitors noted that brutality of this type could be life threatening. Again the compromised justice ministry or Stormont offices brought no protection to Republican prisoners facing the same sort of callous brutality that Brendan Hughes and Bobby Sands resisted.
He was sentenced by video-link and was not brought to the court. The judge imposed a twenty year sentence, angry that Gerry McGeough expressed no remorse for IRA membership. It is said that he will only serve two years. To paraphrase the old saying made famous by Ernie O’Malley, it is easy to sleep on another man’s two years.
However the early release provided by the Good Friday deal is by no means guaranteed. Already Republicans have seen such releases arbitrarily revoked and license used as a license to jail at will in cases like those of Marian Price, Terry McCafferty and Martin Corey. No one who has followed this case would be surprised if still more injustice awaits Gerry McGeough.
PostScript: Following the publication of this article Gerry McGeough was granted a judicial review of his claim that he should have been credited with the three years served in America for IRA offenses in the 1990s and immediately released under the GFA. A schedule for briefs and proceedings will be set in September.
Posted by Jim on September 6, 2011
Ten years ago this week, schoolgirls and their families making their
way to and from the Holy Cross school in north Belfast came under
attack on a daily basis.
The families ran a gauntlet of verbal abuse and attacks by loyalist
“protestors”, separated by a line of RUC police who formed what became
known as the “corridor of hate”.
The attacks, involving bottles, bricks and other missiles,
continued on a daily basis for weeks, creating an international outcry.
The following extract from the book ‘Holy Cross: The Untold Story’ by
Anne Cadwallader, recounts a notorious episode in recent Irish history.
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The sequence of events was as follows: the children and parents walked
through the British army metal blockade; the metal ‘wings’ closed and
they were now out of sight of those waiting behind; the slow
hand-clapping began.
A fusillade of loyalist bricks and other missiles rained down from
overhead. The policeman walking beside Lynda and Amanda Bowes reached
out with his right hand.
“He grabbed me by the arm,” Lynda says, “and pulled me right in beside
him. He pulled his shield up over our heads and the bricks bounced off
it. He was crouching me down, shouting – and then the protesters started
to clap again, very slowly.”
Other police officers moved in to push the brick-throwers down a side
street. A few seconds later, the bomb was thrown from the cover of the
protesters towards the parents and children, falling amongst the lines
of police.
Liz Murphy first knew of the bomb when it exploded. “It was as if your
insides had shattered. I ran for all I was worth. My heart was beating
wildly. Niamh was crying and shouting. Everybody was running about
screaming. It was like a horror movie.”
Elaine Burns says, “I can remember Father Gary (Donegan of Holy Cross
Church) grabbing my arm and saying ‘Run to the gates of the school’. It
was chaos.”
Sean Carmichael says, “I felt Emma’s hand gripping mine very tightly.
The next minute there was a large bang, not far from us. A police dog
was hit and bolted in front of us and I nearly fell over it.
“A memory that will always stick with me was when I turned round and saw
a fella I went to school with, Chris McDonald, and his wife. They were
in the middle of the road, frozen to the spot with fear, and had their
arms wrapped around their child. People were shouting at them to get
down.
“We knew how bad the loyalists were, we had lived with them for
generations, but never would I have thought they would stoop so low as
to throw a pipe bomb at children.”
Martin Monaghan says, “Everyone started to panic, parents and children
were running all over the place, some were lying on the ground covering
their children and the children were screaming. Other parents tried to
run back down the road to safety. There were parents and kids stuck in
the middle, not knowing where to go. The RUC just scattered.”
Lisa Irvine describes how the police told her to get down. “You were
afraid to look behind you in case there were people lying dead. I
grabbed my child and ran like hell.”
Roisin Kennedy was with a Channel 4 cameraman when the bombers struck.
“He had asked if he could walk with me and I said it was no problem. For
some reason it was unusually quiet. It was dead eerie.
“Then, all of a sudden, the Channel 4 man shouted ‘Duck!’ He had seen
stones flying over. Niamh and I hit the ground. The next thing was the
bang. Even now I can still hear that bang. I froze on the spot but the
cameraman grabbed my arm. I wrapped my arms around Niamh’s neck and ran.
“If that guy hadn’t grabbed my arm when he did, I think I would have
collapsed. He was still holding his camera and running backwards,
pulling me by the arm and shouting ‘Just keep running’.”
The three of them made it to the school grounds. Roisin says the
cameraman still keeps in contact.
Tina Gallagher claims she saw a unionist representative smiling in the
immediate aftermath of the explosion and, beside herself with rage,
threw herself at a police vehicle to try and get at him.
“I wanted to kill him. He just stood and smirked at us. The unmerciful
screams of the kids were truly horrific. My eldest daughter, Roisin,
felt the rush of air coming from the explosion and was almost knocked
off her feet.”
September 5 was David and Maura Lindsay’s daughter’s 10th birthday.
Maura says, “We were all gathered like a load of cattle at the top of
Alliance Avenue, standing waiting to get through. All of a sudden there
was a real slow and steady clap. Then bricks came flying towards us and
we ducked down and put our hands over the kids’ heads.
“Father (Aidan) Troy was just in front of us, telling people to protect
themselves. Then the bomb went off. David scooped Amy up in his arms and
ran. Women were screaming, children were screaming, cops were screaming.
“I turned to see if there was anyone I could help and a big policeman
ran into me and screamed into my face, ‘F****** run, and keep moving’.
“When we got to the school the teachers were crying and hugging
everybody. I was vomiting, violently sick. Anne Tanney came running
down, very upset. The sight of women and kids coming up that hill was
something I will never forget. Even the men were crying because of the
state of their kids.
“There were kids who were absolutely screaming and their parents were
using all their strength to try to calm them down. Everybody was hugging
each other. We thought they could stoop no lower until that day.”
Posted by Jim on August 19, 2011
An account of the strange predicament facing the 76-year-old IRA Veteran and former Workers’ Party leader, Sean Garland.
Veteran socialist Sean Garland, 76, faces extradition to the United States on the basis of untested allegations compiled by the US intelligence services during the government of George W. Bush.
They claim Garland conspired with the North Korean government in the late 1990s to undermine the US economy by distributing forged near-perfect $100 bills, so-called ‘Big head super dollars’.
This is despite a renowned currency expert Klaus Bender stating that the Asian country could not produce such notes. Bender’s research shows the ink used, in the sample notes provided by the US intelligence services, and the paper they are printed on, with microfibres marked ‘USA 100’, is only available to the American government.
At no time is Garland supposed to have handled these ‘super dollars’, the case against him is based entirely on alleged contacts with a UK criminal gang. A member of this gang Terence Silcock, 62, publicly claimed the US secret service have attempted to pressurise him into implicating Garland in circulating forged notes.
Garland’s supporters, among them many elected representatives, believe that the case against the Dubliner emerged from a black propaganda campaign by the Bush administration.
Garland has devoted his life to political activity. On New Year’s Day 1957, aged 22, he led a legendary, but ill-fated, IRA operation in which his young comrades Sean South and Fergal O’Hanlon died.
Since 1962, Garland, along with the late Tomas Mac Giolla and Cathal Goulding, sought to transform the republican movement into a socialist political force that would unite Protestants and Catholics.
During the Northern Irish troubles, Garland was an outspoken critic of terrorism, from whichever quarter it came from. As a leader of the Workers’ Party, he has been a relentless critic of US foreign policy.
On May 19 2005, a US grand jury court, based purely on information provided by the US intelligence services, issued a secret arrest warrant for Garland. This process was overseen by Kenneth L. Wainstein, then a US Government Attorney, later George W. Bush’s Homeland Security Adviser.
With the governments of Tony Blair and Bush having agreed in 2003 a near-automatic right to extradition between their two states, the US intelligence services waited until Garland was visiting Belfast on October 7 2005 to activate their arrest warrant.
Allowed return to the republic for medical tests, Garland was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He remained at his Navan home for treatment, forfeiting #27,000 bail.
In the last days of the Bush government, the then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a new warrant. On January 30 2009, Gardai arrested Garland. He is currently on #300,000 bail, raised by supporters, and must carry a mobile phone with him at all times so he can be tracked.
Garland’s supporters believe that the source of the charges against him make a fair trial in the US impossible. They are calling on US President Barack Obama to recognise Garland’s contribution to peace and Irish society and withdraw the threat of extradition.
Among the many prominent people and organisations supporting the call for the threat of extradition to be removed from Sean Garland are: Mick Finnegan (President of the The Workers’ Party), Rev. Chris Hudson MBE (Chairman of the Stop the Extradition of Sean Garland Campaign), The Executive Council of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Dublin City Council, The Parliamentary Labour Party, Sinn Fein Parliamentary Group – Northern Ireland Assembly, Dublin City Council, South Dublin Co.
Council, Cork City Council, Kerry County Council,Gerry Adams MP (President of Sinn Fein), Dawn Purvis MLA (Leader of the Progressive Unionist Party), Bairbre de Brun MEP (Sinn Fein), Joe Higgins MEP (Socialist Party), Alan Kelly MEP (Labour), Sean Kelly MEP (Fine Gael) and former GAA President, Jack O’Connor (General President, SIPTU), Jimmy Kelly (Irish Secretary, UNITE), May Mac Giolla (the wife of the late Tomas Mac Giolla), Pete Seeger (Folk Singer and US political activist), Tommy Sands (Folk singer), Bobbie Hanvey (Broadcaster), Dr.
Kieran Allen (UCD sociologist). Numerous other trade unionists, social and political activists.
* The Sean Garland anti-extradition campaign is located at seangarland.org
Posted by Jim on
There was shock, disbelief and tears of joy for the friends, family and supporters of critically ill prisoner Brendan Lillis on Thursday when news emerged that their campaign had succeeded in securing his freedom
— and a rare victory against state brutality in the North of Ireland.
Confirmation that the crippled, bedridden prisoner had been released from his abuses at the hands of the British and Six-County authorities came when prison warders simply melted away from their guard post outside his hospital ward.
Brendan had been under guard at Belfast City Hospital, having been moved there from the North’s notorious Maghaberry jail last week after a doctor working for the Irish United Nations Association insisted that he needed urgent treatment.
The 59-year-old, who has interned by a British order two years ago despite suffering with a debilitating bone disease, was informed that he would be released with immediate effect. No reason was given for the decision by the Parole Commissioners, who, along with Six County Minister for Justice David Ford, had been subjected to a high-volume international human rights campaign on Brendan’s behalf.
A spokeswoman for the North’s Prison Service said only that the Parole Commissioners had “informed the Department of Justice of its direction to release Mr Lillis on licence back into the community. Arrangements are being made to facilitate the release.”
Speaking from his hospital bed, Brendan thanked his partner Roisin Lynch and all those who had campaigned assiduously for his release.
“Roisin has moved mountains. Somebody who can do that on their own, well, I can’t say enough about her,” he said.
Roisin also thanked all those who had supported the campaign. She said Brendan had been freed without conditions or stipulations, largely thanks to their efforts.
“I had fought and fought but I really wasn’t expecting it,” she said.
“The governor of Maghaberry rang me at 5.50pm and said the commissioners had decided Brendan should be let out with immediate effect.
“The guards left then and there. He’s a free man and back on his [original 1993 prison release] licence.”
She said it “would have been insane” to keep him in custody.
“I can’t thank people enough for their support. Brendan is out,but we have to fight on for other people who are being brutalised,” she said.
She was referring to other internees and political prisoners who remain at Maghaberry, such as IRA veteran Marian Price, who was interned only last month.
Roisin said she felt vindicated by the verdict.
“It’s hard to believe, it’s been a long hard fight. The first thing I said was: ‘Is this real? Are the guards [gone] away?’ I was crying. They told me from this minute, Brendan is free — both the hospital doors are unlocked.”
However, she said Brendan remains seriously ill and is likely to remain in hospital for some time to come. He suffers from the condition ankylosing spondylitis, which saw him confined to bed in Maghaberry’s medical unit for 18 months. His weight had decreased to under 80 pounds as a result of his life-threatening illness.
Earlier on Thursday, the mood among campaigners was much different when it emerged the prison authorities had secretly placed spy cameras in Brendan’s hospital ward and toilet. Planning was already underway for a human-rights based legal action to remove the cameras, when the good news came through.
With tears in her eyes and “in bits”, Roisin immediately rushed to the hospital.
“I wanted to lift him out of hospital and bring him home; I can’t because he’s not well enough to come home,” she said.
“We’ve just learned recently that we’re going to be grandparents again.
There’s just so much that we’ve missed out on, but there’s so much that I’m going to be able to share with him.
“You have to fight tooth and nail, and that’s what I’ve done for a long time. It’s over for Brendan but the fight is not over,” she added.
She described the justice system as “very flawed” and said it was “the only logical, humane decision” the Parole Commission could have taken.
She couldn’t understand why it had taken so long and required such a huge campaign effort.
Last month, the commissioners refused Brendan’s release on compassionate grounds, while David Ford insisted that the matter was out of his hands.
Roisin said the Justice Minister had attempted to dodge taking a position.
“I think David Ford didn’t make the decision because he was relying on the Commissioners making the decision and then he wouldn’t get caught in the trap between DUP and Sinn Fein,” Ms Lynch added.
“He didn’t have the backbone to make any decision.”
In the end, the campaign to free Brendan Lillis was supported by a wide variety of political opinion, from the traditionalist republican groups to Sinn Fein and the moderate nationalist SDLP.
West Belfast Sinn Fein MP Paul Maskey welcomed the decision to release Brendan and said compassion had been needed from the criminal justice system, given his medical condition.
“Sinn Fein are absolutely opposed to the revocation of licenses – it is tantamount to internment and goes against natural justice,” he said.
“From the start what this case required was compassion from the criminal justice system. It was obvious that Brendan Lillis posed no threat to society, he has been bed-ridden for almost two years.
“Myself and colleagues have held numerous meetings with the prison administration and the Justice Minister David Ford in an attempt to secure Brendan Lillis release.
“Last week Sinn Fein made a written submission to the Parole Commissioners. We are satisfied that common sense has now prevailed and Brendan Lillis has been freed from prison to continue his medical care in hospital.”
SDLP Justice Committee member Colum Eastwood also welcomed the release.
He said: “Fortunately common sense has prevailed and the parole commissioners have made the right decision to release Brendan Lillis.
“This is a victory for justice. However, it is a such a shame that David Ford didn’t make this decision earlier when he had numerous opportunities to do so.
“The case has been proven that Brendan Lillis shouldn’t be in custody given his condition and on behalf of the SDLP, I would like to congratulate his partner Roisin who led the excellent campaign for his release and everyone involved in this fight for justice.”