Tuesday, 17 November, 1998
Wednesday, 18 November, 1998
Thursday, 19 November, 1998
Friday, 20 November, 1998
Weekend, 21/ 22 November, 1998
Monday, 23 November, 1998
Tuesday, 24 November, 1998
British justice back in court
The Court of Appeal in London was yesterday presented with new evidence in a legal challenge to one of Britain's most notorious outstanding miscarriages of justice.
The British tabloid press has dubbed Danny McNamee, from Crossmaglen in South Armagh, the‚ Hyde Park Bomber'. McNamee always protested his 1987 conviction conspiracy to cause explosions in England. Consistently denying membership of the IRA or any other armed group, the IRA itself has said he is not one of their members.
The appeal marks the high water mark of an exhaustive campaign by family and friends of McNamee to expose the wrongful conviction. The hearings come just after McNamee's release from Long Kesh jail last month after eleven years behind bars.
Mr Michael Mansfield QC, counsel for McNamee, told yesterday's opening day of the court hearing that the characterisation of his client as a "master bomber" was known to be a false picture by the prosecuting authorities at the time.
Mansfield also told the crowded courtroom of many evidential discrepancies which have come to light since McNamee's conviction for the 1982 IRA bombing of Hyde Park in London, which killed four British soldiers.
The only physical evidence against Danny was three fingerprints, without any corroborating evidence whatsoever. It emerged after his trial that one of these fingerprints is not Danny McNamee's and that there are no written or photographic records of where the other two were found. It also emerged that more than two dozen fingerprints of another IRA Volunteer, Dessie Ellis, were present on the equipment that McNamee was accused of manufacturing, and that the prosecution and police deliberately withheld this information.
Mr Mansfield revealed that circuit boards with identical artwork to those which had formed such a significant part of the case against Mr McNamee had been found in Ellis's possession in 1981. He submitted that if the information concerning Ellis had been known to Mr McNamee at his trial, it would have considerably strengthened his case that the fingerprints attributed to him were more consistent with innocent contact within the electronics factory where he worked.
Mansfield yesterday accused the prosecution of conducted the original trial in a highly prejudicial fashion.
Among the tactics used by the original prosecution was the attempt to smear Mr. McNamee by alleging that his defence was paid for with "IRA money"-because an American judge had been invited by the family to observe the trial, and there were several US experts standing by. Mr McNamee's solicitor was forced to take the stand to testify with regard to this.
The fact that McNamee hails from Crossmaglen, a village of strong nationalist sentiment, was also used against him in 1987. At one point the prosecution QC waved a Sinn Fein election leaflet about and declared that it had been found in Mr. McNamee's flat. The leaflet had never been presented as evidence and when challenged the Prosecution could not provide any information about it - but in the minds of the Jury the damage was done.
With the prosecution changing the charges within days of the original Old Bailey trial, McNamee was ultimately convicted of a different charge than the one he had prepared his defence for.
"I came here sure in the belief that British justice was the best in the world and found that this just wasn't the case for Danny McNamee", said US Judge Andrew Somers after McNamee's 1987 trial. Somers remains a campaigner for McNamee's freedom, as are other victims of British miscarriages of justice, including Paul Hill of the Guildford 4 and Judith Ward.
McNamee's appeal continues today.
Trimble 'attempting to dismantle Agreement'
With little progress reported in round-table discussions yesterday on the creation of new North/South bodies, the Ulster Unionist Party has been accused of engaging in a "planned, programmatic attempt" to dismantle the Good Friday Agreement.
For several hours at Stormont Castle in Belfast, unionists appeared content to simply go back and forth over the same ground.
All the parties, apart from the hardline unionist DUP and UKUP, took part in the discussions which ended with little agreement.
David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party repeatedly rejected proposals to set up agreed cross-border bodies, insisting on no more that seven devolved government departments so as to limit Sinn Fein to just one Ministerial position.
Although UUP leaders may be willing to accept new cross-border bodies on isolated issues such as inland waterways, they still appear firmly opposed to even the most fundamental of the planned North-South institutions, including those on tourism and industrial development.
Yesterday the Sinn Fein Chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin said that having successfully blocked the establishment of the Executive and All-Ireland Ministerial Council, the unionists were now turning their attention to other elements of the agreement which are not to their liking.
He pointed to weekend calls by the Ulster Unionist Party's leadership for a halt to the continued release of political prisoners.
This was "an indication that unionists are involved in a planned programmatic attempt to dismantle the Good Friday Agreement," he said.
"It will come as no surprise if in the next coming days and weeks the unionists turn their attention to the equality provisions and the elements of the agreement dealing the Irish Language."
David Trimble has been accused of shirking his obligation to implement the Good Friday Agreement, which the Irish electorate overwhelmingly voted for in May. Nationalists now fear Trimble lacks the courage to follow though with the people's mandate.
"The Agreement in its entirety has been ratified by the overwhelming majority of the Irish people," said McLaughlin.
"Attempts to systematically dismantle the provisions of the Agreement is an attempt to ride rough-shod over the expressed will of the Irish people."
The new political institutions must be up and running by next Spring to facilitate the devolution of powers from London. If this fails, the Agreement collapses.
Speaking at a labour union conference in Dublin on Saturday alongside Mr McLaughlin, loyalist spokesman David Ervine said:
"It scares the life out of me that we've got such a short time to create a formula between two implacable opposites."
Last week, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness had an urgent meeting with Tony Blair to reiterate his party's concerns over the lack of progress. But calls for Blair to move the process forward have so far fallen on deaf ears. Republican activists are continuing a letter-writing campaign aimed at urging Blair to take immediate action.
Analysis: Governments must intervene
Sean Brady
The Ulster Unionist Party, already in breach of the Good Friday Agreement, has so far sucessfully frustrated the establishment of an Executive in the Six Counties and an all-Ireland Ministerial Council.
This week they turned their attention to the issue of the release of political priosners, and the creation of an acceptable police force, both vital ingredients of the Agreement, and began what seems to be the beginning of a concerted attempt to have progress on these issues frustrated too.
As pointed out by Sinn Fein Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin the unionists are clearly involved in a "programmatic attempt to dismantle the Agreement" itself.
It seems to be only a matter of time until the unionists attempt to prevent any progress on the issues of equality and the Irish language, provisions for which are contained in the Agreement.
It is the responsibility of all the political representatives of the Irish people and both the British and Irish governments to ensure that the express wishes of the people are not trampled underfoot by those who want to bring down the Agreement and prevent political progress and that such attempts are exposed and confounded.
It was therefore annoying to hear Seamus Mallon in his address to the SDLP annual conference attempt to equate Sinn Fein with the UUP in terms of attitudes to the Good Friday Agreement. He decried the placing of sectoral party interests before those of the wider community and lumped Sinn Fein in with the UUP in putting "party before the agreement".
Nothing could be further from the truth and Mallon knows it. Sinn Fein has consistently attempted to uphold the Agreement and to see that all of its provisions are adhered too. The pursuit of this course of action has resulted in what has been described here before as collateral damage. Sinn Fein has met all of its requirements under the Agreement and seeks to have its provisons brought into reality. In contrast the unionsts are in breach of the Agreement and are actively attempting to destroy it.
The antics of unionists in trying to re-write and overturn what they already agreed comes as no surprise to republicans. This rearguard reaction is central to the nature and practice of unionism over many decades.
For political unionism to accept full equality for Irish nationalists would signal the end of the ‚Northern Ireland' state as we know it. Unionism's raison d'etre has been the maintenance of that state in all it's sectarian, gerrymandered, and undemocratic glory. They are not prepared now to volutarily forego that task.
But the refusal to establish the Executive and the all-Ireland Ministerial Council and the associated implementation bodies has put the future of the Agreement in serious doubt. The Peace process cannot stand still --- it either goes forward or it eventually starts going backwards. This should be a matter of deep concern to everyone. Above all it should be a matter of concern to the Irish and British governments.
Unionism's successes so far in stymying the wishes of the people is leading to a growing sense of despair and disillusionment. Faith in the Agreement is being steadily eroded. Urgent action is required.
The challenge once again is to dispense with the unionist veto. That veto has been one of the factor's in Irish politics which has sustained the conflict over the years and the removal of which is central to conflict resolution. In the past, both recent and distant, British government's gave way to it and we have all had to live with the consequences of such an appeasement policy.
The current impasse around the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement has been created by the mentality within unionism which is refusing to change and which wants to impose a veto over political change.
The British and Irish governments must not allow the unionist veto to prevail over the implementation of the agreement. To do so would be to fly in the face of the expressed wishes of the people of Ireland who voted for the agreement in overwhelming numbers. It is time now that they intervened directly.
The British and Irish governments and all of the political parties including Ulster Unionists themselves know that Unionist arguments around decommissioning do not equate with the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
The choice they have to make is whether they will keep their word and implement what they signed up to or whether they will allow the process to collapse.
For David Trimble, this means abandoning attempts to turn back the clock. As it seems he is as yet unwilling to do so the impetus must come from others.
Tony Blair cannot allow the Agreement to fail. He must force the pace of political change in the Six Counties, tackle the causes of conflict and render redundant the unionist veto.
Bertie Ahern must stand full-square in defence of nationalist interests at a time when they are under direct attack. Nationalist unity around the issues which have been so hardly fought in recent years is now essential so that what has been achieved is not lost by default.
As has been stated here before it is now time to bring to bear on the entire process the influence and direct involvement of all those forces which were so crucial to securing the Agreement itself last April and that includes the US administration.
RUC abuses slated in UN human rights report
The United Nations' Committee Against Torture has delivered a devastating report on Britain's human rights record, condemning the militarised RUC police in the north of Ireland for a catalogue of abuses and calling for the force's "reconstruction".
It is the third time the influential UN committee has protested the British government's attitude to human rights, but this time the gloves finally came off on Britain's abuses in occupied northern Ireland.
In its principal recommendations, the UN committee yesterday called for the closure of Britain's Interrogation Centres, where thousands of Irish nationalists have endured ghoulish torture sessions of up to seven days' duration, and the abolition of plastic bullets, which the RUC have used to kill and main hundreds of nationalists. The report also recommended "an extensive programme of re-education" for the RUC membership.
The 10-member UN committee is made up of experts drawn from the United Nations member states. Human rights group the Committee on the Administration of Justice said it was the first time it has said such sweeping reforms were called for.
CAJ legal officer Paul Mageean said the British government should act on the report "without delay".
While unionist hardliners branded the report "evil" and "nasty", Sinn Fein said it strengthened the logic of the growing demands for RUC disbandment.
The Labour government has widely demanded human rights improvements from other nations, but has ignored calls to practice what it preaches in its own jursidiction. Mageean said the report would put New Labour under pressure to get its own house in order.
Last night, Britain's Secretary of State for Ireland Mo Mowlam played down the report, suggesting amendments to the ‚Northern Ireland' Bill, which became law last night, would better enact the provisions on human rights and equality required under the Good Friday talks agreement.
But Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said the UN report reinforced the calls for the abolition of the reviled policing organisation, whose future has still not been decided upon.
"This UN report, like scores of others by human rights agencies over the past 30 years, has condemned the behaviour of the RUC, as well as the approach of the British government to the use of torture and of plastic bullets," he said. "It is further evidence of the logic of Sinn Fein's demand that the RUC be disbanded."
He said he was sceptical of a newspaper report that the Policing Commission had prepared a draft report which advocated the effective disbanding of the RUC. Mr Adams suspected the story had come from securocrats within the British establishment opposed to change and represented an attempt to erect another obstacle in the peace process.
While waiting on the publication of the Policing Commission's report on the RUC, he called on the British government to immediately publish its overall strategy for demilitarisation which it is committed to producing under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
MEETING
Meanwhile, hundreds attended a public meeting in Crossmaglen in south Armagh last night to urge the disbandment of the RUC to members of the Policing Commission.
Emotions ran high as the recounted their experiences in plain language to the Policing Commission's roadshow, now seen as a virtual South-African style Truth Commission on the RUC.
Imelda McDonnell, from Dromintee, said her family had been harassed by the RUC for 17 years. She told how RUC members, in one raid on her home, had read her diary and displayed her underwear. She said RUC men regularly made "snide and sexual comments to her" and detailed assaults on her while in RUC custody.
"The RUC has brought nothing but pain, anger and heartache to my family," she said, before breaking down.
Catherine Murphy, from Camlough, who is married to a local Sinn Fein representative, told of routine abuses and said the RUC had told her she and her family would be killed.
One RUC man had told her they were taking bets as to what she would name her unborn baby. The prize for the winner would be "to wipe out her happy wee family".
Human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson made her own verbal submission on the RUC death threats and assaults against her, which she said were directly related to her work in defence of nationalists' legal rights. Another lawyer, Gerard Traynor, said people in south Armagh looked to the IRA instead of the RUC, which they feared to approach, even in regard to mundane issues such as traffic problems.
Overall, the demand of the people was clear - a complete end to the RUC, not a repackaged RUC. There was loud applause when one local man warned against cosmetic changes: "Changing the name of the RUC would make no more difference than changing the name of the UVF," he said.
Weekend, 21/ 22 November, 1998
Crucial week for peace efforts
The British Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to visit Belfast this week to inject urgently needed momentum into the stalled peace process.
Irish Premier Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said Mr Blair may meet Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, before an historic address in Dublin to the irish Parliament.
"That would be useful in my view, because it would allow another round of discussions to take place to try to advance what we are trying to do," he told journalists at his party conference in Dublin yesterday.
Blair's address is being promoted as a significant milestone in the development of Anglo-Irish relationships, and there has been vigorous behind-the-scenes efforts to try to secure as much visible progress as possible by then.
Trimble has so far defaulted on the Good Friday Agreement which required the creation of the new political structures by the end of last month.
But Mr Ahern said he was "very confident" that some parts of the Good Friday Agreement could soon be implemented after meeting with Mr Trimble in Dublin on Friday.
Mr Ahern said Trimble's demands for an IRA weapons handover had to be dealt under the Agreement with within two years, but not necessarily resolved in that time.
He said that Republicans could "strictly interpret that they do not have to do anything until five to 12 on the night of 9 April 2000 -- but it won't help any of us if they say that.
" The Dublin government said it expects agreement within two weeks on at least six of the planned new all-Ireland implementation bodies, after a "very good" meeting on Friday between the Taoiseach and Mr Trimble.
Mr Ahern said matters had "moved on significantly and substantially", while Mr Trimble agreed it had been a "very positive" meeting.
At a speaking engagement in Wicklow later, Mr Trimble told the Irish Association that increased North-South co-operation was possible, provided it "is no longer advanced as a strategy for creeping unification".
At the annual conference of the association, he warned against "unrealisable expectations" for the North-South bodies, which had a role "in certain small, discrete areas", of which animal health and management of waterways were two examples.
While unionist opponents of the Good Friday Agreement rallied in Belfast on the same night, Mr Trimble attacked against nationalists who "seek to rewrite history, who see history rolling inexorably in one direction.
" Asked if he was worried by the attendance on Thursday night of rival unionist party leaders Ian Paisley and Robert McCartney at the "Union First" rally in Belfast organised by UUP hardliners, Mr Trimble suggested the rally was effectively organised by Mr McCartney and Dr Paisley.
"It's the old story of who's who," he said. "Who's going to end up on the back of the tiger and who'll end up inside?"
The RUC and all who sail in it
Ned Kelly
When a young Catholic man, Brian Maguire, died in RUC custody in Castlereagh Interrogation Centre on May 1979, the RUC claimed his death was suicide but many still maintain Maguire was murdered. RUC Duty Inspector in charge of supervising interrogations at the time was Ronnie Flanagan, current RUC Chief Constable.
When six unarmed nationalists were shot dead in the Lurgan area by a covert RUC assassination squad in 1982 and the subsequent investigation by John Stalker into an official ‚shoot-to-kill' policy disintegrated, the affair was described as "conspiracy to commit murder compounded by conspiracy to pervert the course of justice". The Detective Chief Inspector in command of these units was Ronnie Flanagan.
Flanagan's RUC career spans a strategy that dates back to the early 1970s. This strategy was initiated by a previous British Labour government, developed by the Tory government and inherited by the current New Labour government.
Flanagan in a television interview on Tuesday night expressed concern about a sophisticated, politically motivated plot to undermine the RUC, defended its occasional "mistakes" and maintained his men were still defenders of the right and the good.
This force has created the conflict and maintained the political domination of Unionism.
Central to the strategy of Ulsterisation, criminalisation and normalisation is the distancing of British responsibility for creating the situation here and the portrayal of the RUC as upholders of the ‚rule of law'. Also involved is a concept that emerged during the rule of Margaret Thatcher and has been consolidated under New Labour. It is the idea of creating stakeholders.
These stakeholders are the RUC. RUC Association chairman, Les Rodgers, at a policing conference in Plymouth on Tuesday, said there could and should be no change in the current policing arrangements until society itself had changed-a stand remarkably similar to the one in the DUP submission given by Ian Paisley Jnr to the Patten Commission last month. At its core is a failure to acknowledge the role of the RUC in creating and maintaining the conflict.
This engagement in the securocrat agenda and attempt to maintain a stranglehold on policing is described by North Belfast SF assembly member Gerry Kelly as "defending the indefensible". Kelly said: "Rodgers is cynically attempting to influence the commission on policing.The RUC did not, as Rodgers said, police impartially over the past 30 years. Rather they consisted of a regime wedded to the unionist political establishment to the detriment of all others."
The RUC are employed on behalf of and paid for not just by Unionists but also by Nationalists. Two recent incidents serve to underline their lack of commitment to justice.
Two weeks ago eight RUC officers attempted to block an inquiry into the beating of Davy Adams in Castlereagh. The eight are still serving officers despite the award of #30,000 in February in damages against the RUC for "illegal behaviour".
After the second incident-the Derryhirk Inn attack where undercover RUC men opened fire outside a bar and threatened customers at Ahgagallon near Lurgan in March 1997 -- twelve writs, including one against Flanagan, have been served. The new legal move followed an RUC investigation into the incident overseen by the Independent Commission for Police Complaints that was criticised because an RUC officer who took part in the attack handled documents connected with the investigation. Plus ca change.
Blair meets party leaders
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is due in Belfast this evening for the start of a round of pre-Christmas talks aimed at restoring momentum to the stalled peace process.
This week's negotiations are being seen as possibly the last chance for movement on the stalemate in the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement before the Christmas break.
Mr Blair is expected to meet all the political leaders tonight and tomorrow morning before travelling to Dublin for his historic address to the Oireachtas, the Irish parliament.
There are hopes that Blair will win unionist support for meaningful North-South structures and the division of Ministerial positions in the North's power-sharing Executive before he addresses the Oireachtas on Thursday.
The creation of the new political institutions has been delayed by unionist demands for a prior IRA weapons handover, a five-year-old precondition which has endangered the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and which Blair is being urged to finally tackle.
But comments on Sunday by the Irish Prime Minister, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, predicting a united Ireland within twenty years, continued to draw angry reaction from unionists yesterday.
Anti-Agreement UUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson accused the Taoiseach of "chasing moonbeams" and claimed the remarks would embarrass Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble.
Other unionist leaders said it showed that the Dublin government saw the Agreement as a step towards Irish unity rather than a final settlement of the Anglo-Irish conflict.
DEMONISATION
Meanwhile, after its meeting with Mr Blair in London yesterday, the Protestant Orange Order launched a public attack on what it claimed was an "orchestrated campaign of demonisation" against it.
The meeting took place after Orangemen brought in reinforcements into the fields around Drumcree church in Portadown, boosting a siege on an isolated nationalist enclave which has lasted for over four months since their Drumcree parade was re-routed away from the area.
As Orange leaders and Mr Blair were discussing the annual conflict over the route of the parade, residents of the nationalist Garvaghy Roa said it was obvious that the Orange Order was engaged in a publicity offensive designed to move the focus of attention away from the intimidation and violence of its members and supporters in Portadown.
"If the Orange Order was indeed interested in creating a climate of trust in Portadown, it would publicly announce the ending of all protests and demonstrations connected to Drumcree," said spokesperson Breandan MacCionnaith "Since November 13, the Orange Order has intensified its protests at Drumcree on a nightly basis, attempting on two occasions to reach the Garvaghy Road.
"This Saturday will see yet another pro-Drumcree demonstration take place from Portadown town centre out to Drumcree. The Grand Lodge of Ireland has also applied for a major demonstration at Drumcree on December 19. These ongoing demonstrations are clearly designed to intimidate the local nationalist population," the coalition said.
Sinn Fein's Dr Dara O'Hagan, a local assembly member, said the Order should realise that the major obstacle towards a resolution of the problems in Portadown was their refusal to engage in positive dialogue with the community on the Garvaghy Road.
"The problems surrounding the march along the Garvaghy road and the ongoing seige of the area are difficult, but if dialogue is approached in an inclusive manner they are not insurmountable," she said.