Bit Of British Terror

[Gary Sisco]

The same could be said for many murders and attempted assassinations -- for example, when they shot Bernadette Devlin (nine times) and her husband, in their home, in front of their children, with British soldiers outside in the street, who arrived and left at the same time as the Prot "paramilitary" (note: the IRA has "terrorists"; the Protestants' have "paramilitaries").

And many, many imprisoned without trial.

Yet, all we ever hear about is how the IRA must disarm for the "peace talks" to move on. As if the agreement called only for the IRA to disarm. Why no like commotion over the Prot terror groups not having disarmed. Never mind the British army and cops in Ireland, the original reason for the armed struggle to begin with.

From the Guardian (UK) today:

Security forces aided Ulster murders

· Scandal confirmed by Met chief
· Finucane, Lambert killings avoidable
· Prosecutions under consideration

Staff and agencies
Thursday April 17, 2003


Geraldine Finucane, widow of Pat Finucane (in picture), and her son John. Photograph: PA

Widespread security force collusion with loyalist paramilitary killers led to a number of murders in Northern Ireland, Metropolitan police commissioner Sir John Stevens confirmed today.
The murders of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane in February 1989 and Protestant student Brian Lambert in November 1987 by paramilitaries "could have been prevented" if the security forces had not been involved in the plots, Sir John said.

Sir John carried out a four-year inquiry into allegations of widespread collusion between Special Branch, army officers and Protestant terrorists. He concluded there was damning proof of the use of agents in assassinations and withholding evidence.

Sir John, whose inquiries centred on the shooting of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane by the Ulster Defence Association in February 1989, said that that killing and the death of Protestant student Brian Adam Lambert in November 1987 could have been prevented.

In a 20-page summary of his report, the Met chief also made 21 recommendations in a bid to safeguard future intelligence operations. These include a call for the police service of Northern Ireland to carry out a full review of all procedures for investigating terrorist offences.

In his report Sir John said: "My inquiries have highlighted collusion, the wilful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder.

"These serious acts and omissions have meant that people have been killed or seriously injured," he said.

Sir John also set out how his investigation - the third since he was first brought in to examine collusion claims in 1989 - have been obstructed.

He added: "I have uncovered enough evidence to lead me to believe that the murders of Patrick Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert could have been prevented. I also believe that the RUC investigation of Patrick Finucane's murder should have resulted in the early arrest and detection of his killers."


Anyone want to wager that they'll do any time at all?

[MRS]

And they still haven't banned Orange parades. Trimble will hang.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

Don`t know anything about the case, but the unilateral requirements on the IRA seem to be a deliberate attempt to maintain impasse on the part of the Unionists.

[Dennis Gonzalez]

My family and I travelled around Northern Ireland two years ago, including Belfast, about a week after the OrangeMen paraded. Everybody on the streets of Belfast looked worn out and pissed off.

[MRS]

Yeah DG I have family in Derry and Belfast whom I visit quite frequently. . .methinks I should temper my words on this thread lest I get censured.

[Gary Sisco]

Bullshite. Speak away, lad.

(My maternal family name: McRoy)

Demanding unilateral, complete disarmament of the IRA, but not of the others, amounts to demanding an unconditional surrender from an undefeated military force. Which is why it hasn't happened, and won't. Why would any army that hasn't been militarily defeated (by a long shot) unconditionally surrender? Especially when all of the issues that sparked the armed struggle to begin with, still remain intact as ever?

Nonsense. I wouldn't disarm, either.

Never mind the obvious case for not disarming while your opponents continue to both go armed and launch armed attacks.

Methinks someone believes the lads to be stupid. But you can't be stupid and survive as long as they have, in so small a place, in such long-maintained secrecy. Nor can you survive in such circumstances without very substantial and considerable support from the civilian population.

[Douglas]

Gary, as far as I was aware all parties have to disarm. You can find this in the text of the so-called Good Friday Agreement.

3. All participants accordingly reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations. They also confirm their intention to continue to work constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission, and to use any influence they may have, to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years following endorsement in referendums North and South of the agreement and in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement.

[Nathaniel Catchpole]

More on this:

It happened here

Come clean about the dirty war

Leader
Friday April 18, 2003
The Guardian

The third Stevens report is one of the most shocking commentaries on British institutions ever published. It is necessarily brief for fear of prejudicing any number of possible future criminal prosecutions. But even the sparse 19-page document released yesterday tells a shameful story of state-sanctioned murder, collusion and obstruction more commonly associated with South American dictatorships than with western parliamentary democracies.
Some of the events in the report date back 15 years, at a time when the IRA was waging a bitter war against the British state. In the view of some, even today, it was legitimate for the forces of the state to fight dirty in return - "big boy games where big boy rules prevailed". Sir John Stevens, who was brought in to investigate these big boy games 14 years ago, begs to differ. He assumes that those involved in policing and security duties in Northern Ireland "work to, and are subject to, the rule of law".

It is not an academic point. Sir John, the most senior policeman in Britain, is one of those most directly involved in a new, and even more dangerous, fight against terrorism. Politicians need to level with us about the nature of that fight. Is the state going to get down in the gutter with the terrorists, or is it going to operate to clearly defined and properly monitored standards? There are few more fundamental questions for a civilised democracy.

It is now clear that, for a period in the 1980s and early 1990s, a small group of policemen and army officers decided the normal rules did not apply to them. A few people within the force research unit - a firm within a firm inside a force within a force - decided to team up with loyalist terrorists in targeting and assassinating people they decided were IRA terrorists. It is likely that dozens of victims - some innocent, some guilty - were killed through this unholy alliance between the state and terror groups.

Apologists for this dirty war - including Brigadier Gordon Kerr, once of the FRU, now military attache in Beijing - have argued that hundreds of lives were saved by preventing attacks, or simply by murdering suspected terrorists. Even if it were true, this would still be no justification for this kind of unapproved, unsupervised, freelance killing spree. In fact, Sir John's team can only identify two occasions on which murders were prevented.

Almost as shocking as these killings has been the subsequent cover-up. The RUC, the army and the Ministry of Defence have used every possible weapon - including obstruction, intimidation and arson - to prevent Sir John and his team from discovering the truth. As recently as last November the MoD reluctantly handed over a mass of documents which it knew were central to the case.

Geoff Hoon owes parliament an explanation for these disgraceful delaying tactics. Those responsible should be sacked. The former minister, Douglas Hogg, should explain, and apologise for, a repulsive smear which led - directly or not - to the murder of the solicitor Pat Finucane. Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, needs to act quickly to reassure Catholics that rogue elements - particularly within the old RUC special branch - have been purged from his force. The director of public prosecutions should expedite all the cases referred by Sir John. And Tony Blair should not only ensure that Sir John's recommendations are implemented in full, but that he can finish his inquiries with no further obstruction - wherever they may lead.

[Gary Sisco]

Well, obviously, that's what it says in the agreement, or Sinn Fein would never have agreed to it. You make my point. You don't hear anyone "responsible" (eg, Tony Blair) demanding that the Prots disarm immediately and totally, even though that is a condition of the agreement.

Like I've always said: It matters not what anyone says. You have to watch what they *do,* if you want to understand the world. Talk is cheap. Word meaningless if not accompanied by actions.

[Gary Sisco]

Report Says British Officers Helped Kill Ulster Catholics
By WARREN HOGE (NYT)


ONDON, April 17 — Officers from British Army intelligence and the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland actively helped Protestant guerrillas kill Roman Catholics in the late 1980's, a report by Britain's senior police official said today.

Sir John Stevens, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said that his 14-year investigation into the explosive allegations of official collusion had found that members of the army's covert Force Research Unit, which handled informants, and the police Special Branch espionage arm "were allowed to operate without effective control and to participate in terrorist crimes."

Speaking at a news conference in Belfast, Sir John said, "My inquiries have highlighted collusion, the willful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence and the extreme of agents being involved in murder."

The report said that officers helped Protestant paramilitary fighters single out Catholics for attack, and that they failed to warn Catholics of intelligence they had which cast them in danger. Sir John said that innocent people had died because of the collusion, and that the Troubles, as the three decades of violence that cost the lives of more than 3,600 people are known, had been prolonged as a result.

He said the inquiry had taken so long in part because it was "willfully obstructed and misled from day one" by police and military intelligence officers intent on covering up critical evidence.

The Belfast office he set up in 1989 was burned down by arsonists five months later, and in the years since, Sir John said, a pattern of concealment and noncooperation had emerged in which official papers were destroyed or held back, investigators were spied on, arrests were sabotaged and misrepresentations were planted "deliberately designed to throw us off course."

"It should not have taken 14 years to get to the point we are now," he said. "None of us are above the law, and no future inquiry should have to be conducted in the way we have had to conduct ours."

The original investigation was set up to examine the 1989 murder of Patrick Finucane, a 39-year-old Catholic civil rights lawyer who defended several Irish Republican Army suspects. Mr. Finucane was gunned down during a Sunday dinner at his Belfast home with his wife and three children. He was accused by the Ulster Defense Association, the Protestant guerrilla group that took responsibility for his murder, of being a member of the I.R.A. himself.

The Finucane (pronounced Fin-OOO-kin) murder became a rallying cry for international human rights organizations and convinced Catholic politicians in Northern Ireland that it represented widespread official collusion between Protestant assassination squads and government security agents.

Sir John said today that Mr. Finucane was not a member of the I.R.A., that his killing could have been prevented by officials who knew he was a target of Protestant paramilitaries and that arrests of his killers would have followed rapidly had security officials not blocked them.

William Stobie, a former British soldier and police informer who is the only man ever charged in connection with Mr. Finucane's murder, was shot dead in Belfast in December 2001. His slaying came two weeks after his trial collapsed when the court accepted a claim from the key prosecution witness that that he would suffer a nervous breakdown if forced to testify.

Brian Nelson, a British Army informant who infiltrated Protestant paramilitary groups and said his handlers assisted Mr. Finucane's killers, died last week of natural causes. Mr. Finucane's family has been calling for an independent judicial inquiry and has expressed no confidence in one conducted by the police. They refused for that reason to cooperate with Sir John and expressed bitterness today at the continuing inconclusiveness of the investigation into the killing.

Mr. Finucane's widow, Geraldine, told the Press Association, Britain's domestic news agency, that "I would not be confident they will be able to charge anybody with my husband's murder when they haven't been able to do it up until now."


Continued

*******

See, now, Geraldine is a woman whose life experience has taught her the essential lesson. Never mind what they say; watch what they do.

It's not like any of this is news to anyone in the north of Ireland, or to anyone who's bothered to actually look into this struggle in depth.

[MRS]

Originally posted by Nathaniel Catchpole
Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, needs to act quickly to reassure Catholics that rogue elements - particularly within the old RUC special branch - have been purged from his force.

This has been promised for years. The Ulster Constabulary have no interest in mitigating their tact in the North, and frankly neither does London. What of these forces are not indeed rogue elements? UVF? Right. Trimble is an abomination. I was born and raised in the United States and I routinely get stopped and on two occasions roughed up by RUC (whilst visiting family), or whomever the fatigued men were. Just look at the layout of the city of Derry and tell me Blair or anyone else of significant influence are doing anything to support peace.

[Al in NYC]

I have relatives on BOTH sides of this conflict (RC in Armagh, Prots in Belfast), so maybe I'm also a bit too emotionally close to the conflict, even though I'm 4 generations away from Ireland. But one thing that struck me during my time there visiting the two branches of my family was the seemingly endless well of violent boneheaded idiocy that runs through both sides in this conflict. There seemed to be almost no will, on either side, amongst my family and friends to sit down and address today's problems in a peaceful balanced manner, but an almost isatiable desire to rehash matters centuries-old via appalling violence and confrontational hate today.

The fact that the Prots had the RUC, the British, and therefore the "law" on their side makes their actions particularly despicable (and most particularly the actions of the British military) of course, but IMO that does nothing to let the Provos off the hook for their own thuggishness and murderousness. Nor does it absolve any of those broken-down Irish-American asshole drunks I used to see in the bars my grandfather frequented, gleefully collecting money for "their" gang of murderers. The fact that religion, and the peaceful gospel of Jesus no less, was used as an excuse for the conflict by both sides only made it worse.

My grandfather, an Irish-American of Catholic descent (he was a Socialist himself), married to an Irish-American of Protestant descent, always told those jerks where to get off, and got in more than a couple scrapes over it. But he always tried to remind those people that we were now here in America, and if they wanted to go kill people over some ancient BS perhaps they should get the hell back to Ireland and do it themselves. But, perhaps they might also look around them here and maybe try to carry back with them some lessons from America, since Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Athiests all seemed perfectly capable of living and working together here, and could even be seen to co-exist peacefully and lovingly within one Detroit family.

[Gary Sisco]

In which historical period did the "peaceful gospel of Jesus" pan out? I've been reading a very long and involved history of the religion and it's done nothing but murder since there was a church instituted. Nothing.

Prot or catholic means nothing to me. That whole business is just an accident of history. Nationalist and loyalist is much more accurate. This has never been a religious struggle (except by the accidents of history). It's always been a class struggle (in the north especially and still) and a political struggle over self-determination. The Irish are the only "euros" who continue to be denied by the "democracies" their own self-determination.

They're also the only "race" that hasn't been subdued, even after more than eight centuries of trying by the Brits.

For that alone, I'm with the lads, now and forever.

[MRS]

No one has asked why they're aren't any trees in Ireland yet. . .

[james harrigan]

Originally posted by Gary Sisco
The Irish are the only "euros" who continue to be denied by the "democracies" their own self-determination.

what a crock of shit, Gary. The reason Northern Ireland belongs to the UK is that, today, the majority of its inhabitants want it that way. Whatever the ghastly historical record of British rule in Ireland, any fool knows that the British public and government would *love* to be rid of it now. Partition was a historic tragedy, but reversing it now in contravention of the wishes of the majority in the North would be fundamentally undemocratic.

This Irish-Catholic American finds your support of "the lads" disgusting. The IRA are anti-democratic murdering bastards (and gangsters to boot: they finance their operations largely by drug dealing and protection rackets, not to mention donations by sentimental fools in the US). The democratically elected government of the Republic understands this, which is why they have cooperated with the British in fighting the IRA, and in trying to implement the Good Friday peace accords. Sinn Fein has never won a majority of even the Catholic vote in the province, and most Republicans who live there hate and fear them.

(btw, "Republican" is the correct term for a resident of the North who favors unification with the Republic of Ireland. You can say that religion has nothing to do with it, but virtually all Republicans are Catholics and virtually all Loyalists are Protestant)

[MRS]

Originally posted by james harrigan
The IRA are anti-democratic murdering bastards (and gangsters to boot: they finance their operations largely by drug dealing and protection rackets, not to mention donations by sentimental fools in the US).

Drug dealing and protection rackets. . .utterly unsubstantiated. Support this with fact. . .even though I largely agree and can quite personally attest to the sentimental fools in the US part.

Even though your comments toward the IRA make my blood absolutely boil as I have had close friends and distant family members perish in this conflict over my twenty-five years, I can see your point and respectfully disagree with you.

How do you feel about parades?

[Al in NYC]

I agree 100% with James.

I've seen the Orange parades first-hand, and they are revolting, but they are only a symptom of the deeper rooted pathology and cycle of provocation, counter-provocation, victimization complex run amok, and violently ethnically divisive stupidity that characterizes both sides in this "conflict."

I have also seen the protection rackets, or, to be more proper, threat-induced "fund-raising" of the IRA first-hand in Armagh and Enniskillen. It was just as disgusting, if not more so, than the parades. At least the parades don't kill anyone.

I don't know about your family Gary, but on both sides of my family Roman Catholics and Presbyterians use their own reading of the gospel to support their otherwise unreasoning ethnic hate and bigotry, and to excuse their divisive unyielding political positions. I am as unreligious, or even anti-religious, as they come, but using the gospel this way (and, whatever you think of the religion, the words are mostly about peace) is just as unsupportable and perverse as Bin Laden's reading of the Koran.

I'm sorry, but the IRA are in no way my "lads," (and neither are any of those gun-toting Prot assholes) and murderous terrorists get no break from me just because we happen to be of the same ethnicity.

[Gary Sisco]

No one can hide the truth forever:

From The Guardian today:

British Army ran second Ulster spy

Questions asked after top MoD civil servant retires on eve of publication of report into official collusion with loyalist gangs

Martin Bright, Kamal Ahmed and Henry McDonald
Sunday April 20, 2003
The Observer

The identity of a second British Army agent working inside one of Ulster's most notorious loyalist terror gangs can be disclosed today by The Observer.
Ned Greer worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU) at the same time as he rose through the ranks of the Ulster Defence Association to become one of its most trusted members, helping to to run a cell linked to the deaths of half a dozen Catholics.

An Observer investigation has established that Greer was operating within the UDA at the same time as the informer Brian Nelson. The revelation will re-ignite controversy over the collusion between security forces and loyalist paramilitary organisations, highlighted in last week's report by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens.

'Greer did as much damage to us as Nelson, in fact he's done maybe more,' one senior UDA member said. 'Ned has as many secrets in his head as Nelson took to his grave.'

And a shadowy unit in the Ministry of Defence with responsibility for special forces will be the focus of inquiries into the obstruction of the Stevens inquiry.

The Home and Special Forces Secretariat is responsible for 'Northern Ireland deployments' and 'terrorism', according to internal MoD documents. The head of the unit, Colin Davenport, retired last Wednesday, a day before the publication of the report.

The report confirmed for the first time that there was security service collusion in the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.

Opposition politicians last night called on the MoD to clarify the role of the Secretariat in the cover-up and the full circumstances of Davenport's retirement. The official, who was given a CBE in the last New Year's honours list, was appointed to the post in 1997. Any decision to withhold documents of such sensitiv ity should have been reported to Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon and his predecessor, George Robertson, now Secretary General of Nato.

The MoD said there said there was no connection between Davenport's retirement and the timing of the report. Officials said he had planned his retirement some time ago.

'Even to the most casual observer, the timing of Mr Davenport's retirement must raise questions,' said Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Paul Keetch.

'What are the terms of the retirement and do they contain a gagging clause? Whilst we must protect our troops and especially our special forces, who carry out a very difficult role, there is no operational reason why civil servants could not be open to far more scrutiny.'

The MoD said it could not comment on how often Sir John Stevens asked for disclosures that were finally made last November. But Whitehall sources said Stevens had made repeated requests to the MoD since 1990 about releasing the documents and had eventually made a personal appeal to the Prime Minister to use his influence. It was shortly after a meeting between the two men that the MoD suddenly disclosed the information.

One military insider said the work of the department not only concerned operational responsibility for special forces and anti-terrorism in Northern Ireland, but also covered the release of documents relating to special forces and the vetting of any memoirs such as Andy McNab's Bravo Two Zero. The Secretariat controls all records relating to the activities of the FRU.

The documents requested by Stevens are thought to contain Northern Ireland Source Reports detailing contacts and interviews between FRU agents and their handlers; assessments of the reliability of sources, and FRU staff lists. Asked if Stevens was investigating the Secretariat, a spokesman said: 'While there is an ongoing police investigation, it would be inappropriate to comment.'

The MoD initially said that all inquiries about Stevens were being handled by the Northern Ireland Office, but a spokesman for the NIO made it clear that the issue was a matter for the MoD alone. 'As to why the documents were not furnished until November, that is definitely an MoD matter; it is clearly not a Northern Ireland matter,' a spokesman said.

[Gary Sisco]

Once again, Blair makes my point for me. Note that it is the *republican* movement that must do this and must do that. Where are the demands on the *loyalists* who signed the same documents and made the same agreements to disarm and decomission?