Neil Hyde 'has named Martin O'Hagan murder gang'

A man previously accused of murdering journalist Martin O'Hagan has agreed to co-operate with police investigating the LVF killing. A lawyer for 32-year-old Neil Hyde told Belfast Crown Court the Lurgan man has signed a contract to become an "assisting offender". He said he had offered the Crown "the very greatest assistance in relation to resolving the notorious killing". Mr O'Hagan, 51, was shot dead in Lurgan in September 2001. The killing of the Sunday World reporter was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by both the Loyalist Volunteer Force and Ulster Defence Association. Lawyer Gordon Kerr QC said Hyde signed the contract under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (SOCPA) in return for a reduced sentence for 48 LVF-linked offences to which he has already pleaded guilty. His address was given as c/o the Witness Protection Unit. ...

Police are questioning four people over the attempted murder of a soldier in Belfast. Security forces said he was lucky to escape with his life after he spotted a bomb underneath the driver's seat inside his car on January 5. The soldier from Britain had been visiting a girlfriend when dissident republicans opposed to the peace process opened the door of his UK-registered Vauxhall Astra and slipped the device beneath the seat. Three men, aged 43, 40 and 30, and a 41-year-old woman were arrested in north Belfast on Friday. Police said they were taken to Antrim Serious Crime Suite where they are being questioned. Officers also searched nine properties in the area. ...

Northern Ireland's senior coroner has asked the Public Prosecution Service to consider if a soldier who killed a Derry teenager should be prosecuted.
John Leckey made the request after an inquest jury found that Daniel Hegarty posed no threat when he was shot dead by the soldier in Creggan in 1972.
He said it was the appropriate course of action given the jury's verdict.
...

It has been reported that a new investigation by the PSNI's Historical Enquiries Team has found the SAS was within its rights to shoot dead eight IRA men during an attack on a County Armagh police station. According to the Belfast Telegraph, the report has concluded the IRA unit opened fire first in the incident at Loughgall RUC station in 1987. A civilian was also killed at the time. It had previously been believed that the SAS had fired first. The shootings at Loughgall RUC station were among the most controversial of the Troubles. Eight members of the IRA's so-called 'East Tyrone brigade' were shot dead by the SAS in a fierce gun battle at Loughgall on 8 May 1987. They were killed as they approached the station with a 200lb bomb, its fuse lit, in the bucket of a hijacked digger. ...

[Grimster]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1349[/ATTACH]By Kevin Myers, Belfast Telegraph.
First things first: 40 years ago, the Parachute Regiment had become state-authorised killers in Northern Ireland.
According to David McKittrick’s

The attorney general has ordered 10 new inquests into the deaths of the people shot dead by paratroopers in Ballymurphy in 1971. The victims' families said the decision by John Larkin was an important step in their ongoing campaign for justice. The Army said it opened fire in response to gunfire from republican paramilitaries. The families have carried out a long-running campaign for an independent inquiry into the killings. Ten people were shot dead during the shootings and another man died from what the families claim was a related incident. ...

The clock clicks by. Irish democracy sleeps, the lullaby of Sinn Fein lies wooing it to a deadly slumber. Electors under 30 have little memory of the Troubles; those under 25 none. Mental partitionism, which became endemic in the Republic after about 1973, means that maybe half of those old enough to remember the Troubles do not actually do so: the memory receptors in their brains were instantly turned off by any mention of the north.

And, suddenly, we have an inverse reality to deal with. Because, though Martin McGuinness was central to so many shocking things in the IRA's long and ruinous war, they are not remembered by enough people to count.
...

Visualise the scenario - President Martin McGuinness is guest of honour at the first formal dinner hosted by chief of staff of the Republic's defence forces, Major General McCann.
In accordance with protocol, General McCann will be obliged to propose a toast to Mr McGuinness, president and commander-in-chief. Acutely conscious of Mr McGuinness's past and recent history, will there be one - or more, or many - of those present who will feel honour-bound to remain seated, or maybe even walk out? ...

The former loyalist paramilitary leader Gusty Spence has died in hospital. The 78-year-old had been ill for some time.
In the 1960s, he founded the modern Ulster Volunteer Force, an organisation which was responsible for hundreds of sectarian murders during the Troubles. He was jailed for life for the murder of a Catholic barman in 1966 and served 18 years in prison. He later became involved in politics and announced the landmark loyalist paramilitary ceasefires in 1994. In 2007, he announced that the UVF and an associated group, the Red Hand Commando, would cease to exist in their previous form. ...

A former Sinn Fein councillor and a teenager have been arraigned before the Crown Court charged over the murder of Constable Stephen Carroll. Brendan McConville, 39, of Aldervale, Tullygally, and John Paul Wootton, 19, of Collindale, Lurgan, deny the murder. Constable Carroll, 48, was shot in the head on 9 March 2009 in Craigavon. Mr Wootton's 38-year-old mother, Sharon Wootton of the same address, denied perverting the course of public justice between March and October 2009. She is accused of giving police information which she knew to be false and by "removing a computer or computers from her home address believing her home address might be searched and the same computer or computers seized by the police". The other two deny possessing an AK47 assault rifle and ammunition allegedly used in the shooting at Linsmore Manor. ...

By Fionola Meredith - Belfast Telegraph. We all know that, to many ordinary people in mainland Britain, Northern Ireland is a place apart. If they think of us at all, they see a small, incomprehensible zone of fiercely contested territory, stuck in a sectarian time-warp, populated largely by flag-waving weirdos, illiterate thugs and sinister reformed gunmen. We may be part of the UK, but to them we are more like a band of unruly, ignorant foreigners and they'd be more than happy to see the back of us, with our squabbles, rows and stand-offs — if they could. Every time that trouble kicks off here, the same message in radio phone-ins and internet forums comes across loud and clear from the mainland: if Northern Ireland crumbled and slid into the Irish Sea, there would be few tears shed for us. ...

A decision to charge Old Bailey bomber Marian Price in connection with the murder of two British soldiers is an abuse of legal process, her lawyer claimed. The 57-year-old has been charged with providing property for the purposes of terrorism in connection with the shootings of sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, outside Massereene Army base in Antrim in March 2009. Price, who was referred to in Belfast Magistrates' Court by her married name McGlinchey, was originally arrested and questioned over the matter in November 2009. Earlier this year the veteran republican, who was jailed along with her sister Dolores in 1973 for their part in the IRA Old Bailey bombing, had her early release licence revoked and was returned to prison. ...

Real IRA leader Michael McKevitt has lost his appeal against a landmark civil court ruling which held him liable for the 1998 Omagh bombing.
In Belfast on Thursday, the appeal court upheld the 2009 ruling against McKevitt and Liam Campbell. The judge directed a civil retrial of the claims against Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly's appeal has been upheld. In 2009, a judge found the four men liable, awarding 12 relatives a total of £1.6m damages. Twenty-nine people and unborn twins died in the bomb. Lawyers for the families had also appealed the compensation awarded. They said it should have been more because of the scale of the outrage. In court on Thursday, the 12 relatives who took the 2009 case, were told that the £1.6m figure awarded to them would not be increased. ...

Canadian general John de Chastelain headed the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning

A full inventory of arms decommissioned by paramilitaries during the peace process will not be made public, the body which oversaw the process has decided. The detailed files on all the guns, munitions and explosives put beyond use by groups such as the IRA, UDA and UVF will instead be held by the US State Department in Washington, said the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD). The move was revealed in the final report of the IICD which was published by the British and Irish governments. The commission said part of its rationale for keeping the information under wraps was to avoid discouraging future acts of decommissioning. The last document produced by the commissioners reflected on its work since it was first set up in 1997. In that period the IICD, led by retired Canadian general John de Chastelain, facilitated the destruction of arsenals belonging to all militant organisations on ceasefire. Although a marginalised band of extremists continue to target the peace process using terrorism, the IICD's job was to facilitate disarmament among those groups which had renounced violence, not persuade those still intent on conflict. ...

The Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin has heard that a gang who killed two senior RUC officers in south Armagh 22 years ago cheered as they drove off in a van. Five eyewitnesses have described how the IRA carried out the ambush near Jonesboro on 20 March 1989. The inquiry is investigating alleged collusion between Gardai and the IRA into the killings of the officers. Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan were shot dead after meeting gardai in Dundalk. Finbarr King, a former soldier in the Irish army, described how he drove along Edenappa Road in south Armagh on the day of the attack and was stopped at a roadblock. Forced to lie face down, he said up to five people got out of a van and opened fire on the car carrying the two RUC officers. ...