http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0122/1232474673278_pf.html
Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Thu, Jan 22, 2009
THE NAMES of the Loyalist Volunteer Force gang members who killed Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson in a booby-trap car bomb attack almost 10 years ago were known to police shortly after the murder, former RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan has told the Rosemary Nelson Inquiry.
While no one was convicted of the March 1999 murder, Sir Ronnie said yesterday that soon after the killing, RUC special branch had identified the two people who carried out the bombing and the person who made the bomb.
Sir Ronnie, on his third and final day giving evidence, said special branch was “confident in this view. It was not a question that these three were mere suspects.”
While the LVF admitted the bombing, using the Red Hand Defenders’ cover name, Sir Ronnie said the person who actually made the bomb may have come from another loyalist organisation. He said the murder of Mrs Nelson was a dreadful human tragedy: “It remains my hope that some time those responsible might be brought to justice.”
Sir Ronnie said there was nothing he or his officers could have done to save the life of Mrs Nelson. He said he had gone over in his mind whether he could or should have acted differently in relation to the period before she was murdered.
In that regard he would have made sure that Mrs Nelson was seen personally by police and given advice about her safety, he told the inquiry. “That didn’t take place,” he acknowledged.
Nonetheless he was convinced that with the absence of intelligence about a threat to her life it would not have been possible to protect Mrs Nelson from the loyalist paramilitaries who were determined to kill her.
“With the benefit of hindsight I come to the genuine conclusion that, in the absence of any intelligence that Mrs Nelson was under threat from the sort of thugs and cowards that murdered her, it would not have made any difference – that is the sad conclusion that I come to.”
He added: “Quite a number of my friends died in the way that Mrs Nelson died and it was not possible to protect their lives.”
He said to describe her killing as a police intelligence failure would be to “denigrate” officers who strove to carry out their duty. “To describe it as a failure is an unfair description,” he said. “Intelligence is not infallible.”
Sir Ronnie referred to the fact that 302 police officers were killed and 7,000 seriously maimed or injured in the Troubles and said if that were replicated in England and Wales, the figure would be 10,000 murdered and 250,000 seriously maimed or injured.
The inquiry was shown a number of RUC special branch documents which contained references to the alleged relationship between Mrs Nelson and Lurgan republican Colin Duffy, whom she successfully represented against murder charges.
Mrs Nelson was baldly referred to as Mr Duffy’s “lover” and there was also reference to IRA “alibis”, and of the IRA being “assisted by their solicitor”.
The inquiry also heard that former Northern secretary Mo Mowlam authorised the bugging of a house owned by Mrs Nelson which Mr Duffy was renting, and that she was conscious about sensitivities around this.
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0122/1232474673242.html
Steven Carroll
Thu, Jan 22, 2009
THE PARTITION of Ireland has distorted and stunted its economic and political potential, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said last night.
Mr Adams said levels of unemployment, poverty and homelessness were too high across Ireland and that having two health services, two education systems and competing economies on a single island was not logical.
“An all-island economy makes sense,” Mr Adams said. “Ireland, North and South, needs a new joined-up economic strategy for the 21st century and for the new realities of today.”
Speaking as Sinn Féin commemorated the 90th anniversary of the first Dáil at the Mansion House in Dublin, Mr Adams said the Ireland of equality and solidarity envisaged by those elected to the first Dáil has not been achieved and that the party is going to look abroad for help in furthering its hopes for the country.
Mr Adams announced Sinn Féin is to hold major conferences in the US and UK this summer to help generate extra support among the Irish abroad for a united Ireland. The party is planning to hold the two events in the summer, with dates and locations yet to be finalised.
Sinn Féin said a third conference is planned for London early next year and that activists are already actively lobbying Irish communities, MPs and trade unionists across the UK. “There are tens of millions of people across the globe who can proudly trace their lineage back to Ireland,” he said.
“Sinn Féin will be inviting Irish-America to discuss with us how we can advance a united Ireland campaign . . . Our intention is to engage with the diaspora and seek to marshal its political strength.”
Mr Adams said he believed there was a good deal of support in the US for a united Ireland and he stated that Sinn Féin also intended to reach out to unionists to ensure they would feel comfortable and secure if such a development were to happen. “Now is the time to promote a united Ireland as desirable, viable and achievable in this generation through peaceful and democratic methods,” he said.
Sinn Féin hosted a series of events yesterday to mark the 90th anniversary of the first Dáil, including a photographic exhibition and historical walking tours of the Mansion House and surrounding streets.
The party also published a commemorative pack, to be sent to schools around the country, containing reproductions of the documents adopted by the first Dáil.
Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said the event remains relevant in 2009.
“The Irish Republic established here 90 years ago was based on the proposition that the people are sovereign and that the public right and welfare comes before the interests of profit and property,” he said.
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=19012
By Susan Falvella Garraty
January 21, 2009 Lawyers, representatives of the Irish government and members of the broader Irish community gathered in downtown Manhattan last week to celebrate the life of murdered Belfast human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane.
The event, organized to raise funds to support the 20th anniversary commemorative conference 'Pat Finucane; His Life and Legacy', in Trinity College Dublin next month, took place at the waterfront restaurant Harbour Lights and was hosted by the Brehon Law Society.
Newly elected president of the society, Robert Dunne, told the gathering that it was poignant that they were gathered on the "birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King," as both he and Pat Finucane had "fought passionately" for equality and civil rights and both had been shot down for this.
"Martin Luther King famously wrote 'an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' Pat Finucane was murdered because he represented a threat to injustice wherever he found it," said Dunne.
Dunne said the Brehon Law Society would be calling on President Barack Obama to fulfill his campaign promise to support a full, independent, public inquiry into the murder and that the "fight will continue until it happens."
The pledge to hold the new president to his promise was echoed by Brehon vice-president Niall MacGiollabhui who said after almost 20 years, a fully independent public inquiry into Finucane's murder was long overdue.
In a statement read out at the event, the murdered lawyer's brother, Martin Finucane, relayed his thanks on behalf of the Finucane family to the organizers for their support of the Dublin conference.
"It is 20 years since my brother Pat was killed and my family and I have traveled a very long road," he said.
The murder, he said, went to the heart of the security services, the judicial system and indeed government. "It is a prominent example, perhaps the most prominent we have yet witnessed, of collusion, the state's policy of murder by proxy, using Loyalist assassins as the killers.
"Pat's case is the very definition of an everyman crime because his murder was something that could have happened to any of us if the whim or 'interest' of the state decreed it," Finucane said.
"The British government," he added, "made a commitment to implement the recommendations of Judge Cory and I believe that they are breaking that commitment by delaying the commencement of an inquiry. It is not difficult to understand the motivation for this. The British government is trying to postpone the day when it will be exposed to the world as having engaged in the murder of its own citizens.
"It has delayed the establishment of an inquiry for 20 years, despite calls from distinguished individuals and organizations worldwide that such an inquiry is necessary. It is vital that a full public judicial inquiry is established and that Judge Cory's recommendations are not allowed to be watered down through use of any lesser mechanism," Finucane said.
Speaking at the event, one-time client of Pat Finucane's, Sean Mackin, said that anywhere Pat Finucane had seen injustice, "he wouldn't put up with it. Internment was a nightly occurrence. You were arrested to ID you. It was just harassment."
But, Mackin said, Pat Finucane's refusal to put up with all this hadn't been done before.
"He said he had to stand up and do this. He knew what it meant. He was under no illusion, he knew his life was in danger; it's a tribute to the man," Mackin said.
Irish Deputy Consul General, Breandán Ó Caollaí, told the Irish Echo that the taoiseach Brian Cowen had met Geraldine Finucane, Pat's widow, last week and had given his personal support and that of the Irish government for a full, independent judicial inquiry into the February, 1989 murder which occurred in the Finucane home just as the family was gathering for dinner.
In relation to the TCD conference, the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ó Caollaí said, was giving a grant of €18,000 and the taoiseach's office would be hosting a dinner for the speakers.
Former U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps lawyer, General James Cullen, paid tribute to Finucane, saying that "when you attack a defense lawyer, you attack society itself".
Pat Finucane, he said, had a "heroism that goes beyond what anyone of us might imagine."
"He knew he was under threat, yet never stepped back from his obligations to his clients."
Cullen said the British had, in a "hypocritical and bare-faced way," repealed the Inquiries Act of 1921, which has so well served people for over 80 years, "in order to place a shield around those who authorized the murder of a defense counsel.
"I think that courageous members of the British bar will even realize what is at stake and join the rest of the human rights community in insisting that the cosmetic legislation passed to facilitate the cover-up is moved aside and that they return to a credible legislation for an inquiry under 1921 legislation," he said.
One of the founding members of the Brehon Law Society and prominent New York criminal lawyer, Tom Fitzpatrick, said that he was supporting the event because the issue was too important to ignore. It was always such an outrage that nothing has ever been done, he said.
"It's such an important cause, it's just shocking," Fitzpatrick added.
On behalf of the Brehon Law Society, co-organizer Sean Downes told the Irish Echo that the turnout and funds raised were particularly impressive, but that more needed to be done.
"I think people are surprised that we were able to gather such a large group of attorneys on a cold January night to the waterfront. I'm not, because I know the issue of Pat Finucane's murder is not over and it's something which the Brehon Law Society of America has pledged to see through to the end," he said.
Funds donated by the Irish government, Downes said, would be matched by contributions and donations that can be sent to the Brehon Law Society at 52 Duane Street, 5th Floor, New York NY 10007 or by calling (212)571-7100.
Anyone wishing to attend the Trinity conference can also get further information this way or by registering online with British Irish Rights Watch at .
This story appeared in the issue of January 21-17, 2009
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5h7hXVi8skOo3-JsQzpR7ghBgtSKw
8 hours ago
Sinn Fein is to hold major conferences in the US and UK to rally support among the Irish Diaspora for a united Ireland.
At the party's celebrations to mark the Dail's 90th anniversary, president Gerry Adams said the meetings were designed to drum up international support.
The party chief said the Ireland of today was not the state dreamed of by the 1916 leaders as partition had politically and economically stunted its potential.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0122/1232474673284.html
Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Thu, Jan 22, 2009
RELATIVES OF the Omagh bomb victims will tell British prime minister Gordon Brown next month that he must support their calls for a cross-Border tribunal of inquiry into the full circumstances behind the 1998 Real IRA bombing, according to spokesman Michael Gallagher.
Mr Gallagher, who lost his son Aidan in the bombing which killed 29 people including a woman pregnant with twin girls, said Sir Peter Gibson’s report was a “missed opportunity” to help get to the truth behind the bombing.
“It appears there is an attempt to shoot the messenger,” he said of the British intelligence services commissioner’s criticism of the Panorama programme about the investigation into the bombing and the role of the security intelligence monitoring agency, GCHQ.
“There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that there are serious problems connected with Omagh. [Panorama’s] John Ware merely highlighted that to the wider public. The families have known that for 10 years,” said Mr Gallagher.
Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward has arranged a meeting of the relatives with Mr Brown next month. Mr Gallagher said they would avail of this opportunity in Downing Street to again argue the necessity of a detailed cross-Border inquiry.
“We will present the prime minister with some very difficult questions. But we need answers and we will be saying to him the best way of bringing a conclusion to Omagh is not to continue to have inquiries looking at individual sectors of the case but to have an overarching inquiry,” he said. “Both governments must put all of their information on the table openly . . . so that we can bring a public end to Omagh,” added Mr Gallagher.
DUP West Tyrone Assembly member Thomas Buchanan said it was clear that “many of the claims which were made in the Panorama programme in particular have not stood up to scrutiny”. “Unfortunately, as yet another investigation has been carried out and another report published, those who suffered most as a result of the bombing are no further forward in their quest that justice might be served on those who carried out this atrocity,” he added.
Sinn Féin West Tyrone MP Pat Doherty said he was not satisfied with the official report on the Panorama programme, while SDLP Assembly member Alban Maginness called for further examination of the role of the security services in Omagh.
In a statement last night, the BBC said: “We stand fully by the Panorama programme. Both the programme and Sir Peter Gibson’s report raise many new questions of significant public interest about what happened before the Omagh atrocity and in the aftermath.
“Nowhere does the report or the Northern Ireland Secretary’s statement deny that interception was being carried out by GCHQ or that any intelligence flowing from it did not reach the investigating officers.
“The thrust of the programme has therefore yet to be addressed – at least publicly – by the government.
“Contrary to what Sir Peter and the Northern Ireland Secretary have stated we did not assert that the bombing could have been prevented. Instead we laid out a series of important questions flowing directly from the knowledge that some mobiles had been intercepted, including whether the bombing could have been prevented.”
© 2009 The Irish Times
http://www.irishecho.com/newspaper/story.cfm?id=19009
By Irish Echo Staff
January 21, 2009 Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams was in Washington, D.C. for Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama.
While the U.S. does not extend invitations to overseas politicians and government leaders for inaugurations, it is understood that Adams made the transatlantic journey in his capacity as a private citizen.
He was accompanied by long time party colleague and adviser Richard McAuley.
"The United States has played a consistently significant role in the Irish peace process over the last decade.
"President-elect Obama has already committed to continuing U.S. support for the Irish peace process," Adams said before leaving Belfast.
"The new U.S. president has also made positive comments on trade and investment, and has acknowledged the need for immigration reform.
"Sinn Féin is committed to working with Irish America toward building on the positive relationship we have with both Democrats and Republicans and with the new administration in Washington.
"The coming into office of the Obama administration will present many positive new opportunities and," Adams added.
Meanwhile, from next week, Gerry Adams will begin a new monthly column for the Irish Echo associated with his new blog, Léargas (Irish for "perspective,") which can be accessed via the paper's website, www.irishecho.com.
Adams was due to make a quick turnaround in order to be back in Dublin for celebrations marking the 90th anniversary of the first Dáil.
His party is convening today in Dublin's Mansion House where the first Dáil met on Jan. 21, 1919. The other parties represented in the current Dáil, both government and opposition, marked the anniversary Tuesday in nearby Leinster House.
This story appeared in the issue of January 21-17, 2009
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0122/1232474673026.html
Thu, Jan 22, 2009
Unionists may need leadership but will have to make do. Sinn Féin’s old guard may hope to retire but must wait, writes FIONNUALA O CONNOR.
THE SIGHT of the youthful Obamas taking the heights of Washington brought to mind images closer to home, and raised the question of image, its power and its decline. It seems longer than a mere 12 years ago that the tall, young Tony Blair strode into the sedate King’s Hall in Belfast to launch his stage of the peace process. Now he’s grey, his image dulled long since, and upstaged conclusively as Middle East envoy, a role in which he has been underwhelming, by new Obama appointee George Mitchell. Who was also one of ours: grey for decades, aged 75, but still gleaming with American get-up-and-go.
It was, of course, a little pathetic that the North, or a fair few Northerners, should behave as though Blair, Mitchell and Bill Clinton were adopted sons, their characters, history and true objectives irrelevant once they came aboard in Belfast. But neither Clinton’s disgrace nor Blair’s alliance with Bush dented the memory of Blair/Clinton contributions at a crucial stage. Nor should they. Mitchell’s tangled ancestry and years of US Senate power-broking produced the seriousness and unflappability that kept negotiations going in the teeth of tantrums and despite insults. The performers Blair and Clinton lightened moods and changed dynamics. On a lesser scale, even Bertie Ahern was a mood-shifter, though he acted as lightning-rod too for unionist fears and tempers.
No local figure could act on the other players with anything like the incomers’ flair.
Disabled by their own local interests, unionist, nationalist and republican figures could work no magic on their counterparts. Trailing clouds of history is no asset in negotiations. The most bizarre facet was Blair’s ability to present himself as dispassionate, a British prime minister who convinced republicans of his sincerity more than unionists, since unionists thought he had no business lacking passion on the union.
A bit of outsider glow rubbed off on local players especially when translated abroad. So when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness took the peace show on the road and when it was clear that the IRA was going out of business, gradually, and with lapses, Adams and McGuinness burnished images which did them proud for years inside and outside their own organisation. Those images no longer work magic, inside or out. The republican leaders must have watched the inauguration with a strong sense of their own mortality.
But it was the oldest player whose image played the largest part in the lights, mirrors and smoke techniques of shifting or bypassing attitudes. Ian Paisley stood on his head with all the panache of the lifetime showman. His people held their breath, and their tongues. It took most of a year after the powersharing deed was done for internal opposition to come sidling into the light. Not long afterwards the Paisley mystique crumbled as though it had never been. Only that great brazen bellow, fading though it was, could have drowned out doubts and fears and made open disaffection unthinkable for just long enough to shift the party. The uses and abuses of images have given way to surly dog in the mangerism and low-key muddling through.
Paisleyism has had its day. Northern Ireland is too small for healthy politics to develop if one whole section is dominated by an outsize personality.
Watching the installation of President Obama made many wistful at the sight of such enthusiasm, the evidence in the stately heart of Washington of that particularly American characteristic of innocence in small-town floats and bands and costumes. There was emphasis enough on America the powerful, service chiefs rubbing shoulders with the new president, Obama’s salute sharp and practised as platoons of scarved and ear-muffed troops marched by. Tears on old black faces at the young black family on the reviewing stand gave the day a different edge. A yearning to put cynicism aside is only human, and deep mid-winter frost makes yearning for spring all the stronger. There must have been Northerners of all stripes, not least new residents looking round them with dismay, who sighed at the contrast between Tuesday’s images from the US and the face of Northern politics. As well they might. London and Dublin have little interest, less time and no inclination at all to spend more scarce cash on Northern Ireland.
Unionists may need leadership but will have to make do. Sinn Féin’s old guard may hope to retire but must wait for a new generation to emerge. The SDLP faithful are stubborn but morale has rarely been lower. The world of “small p” politics, of pressure groups and community centres, has arguably been more damaged than energised by “empowerment” through stop-go official grants, and co-option as agents of the lacklustre new Stormont.
Spring feels far away, but newcomers can emerge fast at least occasionally in US politics if not in Ireland, North or South. The first images of President Obama have lifted American spirits already.
© 2009 The Irish Times
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