EU grant to reconcile Protestants

The Orange Order has received a grant of almost £900,000 from the European Union to help address the legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

Communities at sectarian interfaces and border areas which suffered disproportionately during the Troubles will benefit, the organisation said. The Stepping Towards Reconciliation in Positive Engagement (Stripe) project will be based in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

Drew Nelson, chairman of the Orange Community Network, said: "The Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland believes there is an imbalance of weak community infrastructure, low confidence and low levels of participation within the Protestant community, particularly
...

Six men who were arrested following a dissident republican rally in Londonderry on Monday remain in police custody.

Several hundred people attended the event during which a masked man read out a statement from the Real IRA, threatening to attack police.

The arrested men were taken to Antrim police station for questioning.

The police said they kept a distance from the rally, but a security force helicopter monitored the scene.

The BBC's Ireland correspondent Mark Simpson said a small group of men lined up and marched in paramilitary style uniforms during the event, which was held at Creggan Cemetery in the city.

...

...

The PSNI spent more than £4m on the first so-called supergrass trial here for more than 25 years. Twelve men were acquitted of all charges against them after a judge said the two main prosecution witnesses were liars and "ruthless terrorists". Details of the costs have been revealed in a letter to the justice committee at Stormont. Their trial is expected to be one of the most expensive ever held in Northern Ireland. It relied on the evidence of so-called supergrasses, Robert and Ian Stewart. Nine men involved in the UVF supergrass trial were acquitted of the murder of UDA leader Tommy English. They included the alleged former UVF leader in north Belfast Mark Haddock. Thirteen men had been charged with more than 30 offences including the murder of rival loyalist Mr English, kidnapping, and UVF membership. ...

By Eamonn McCann - Belfast Telegraph
Failings in the police investigation of the murder of Jean McConville prompted the efforts currently under way in the US courts to obtain tapes of interviews with former paramilitaries.
The suggestion is made in a submission this week by the American Civil Liberties Union to the Massachusetts District Court hearing an appeal against a ruling that some of the tapes, currently held by Boston College, should be handed over to the British authorities. The Massachusetts affiliate of the civil liberties union (ACLUM) also alleges that part of the motivation for the action has been to discredit the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams. It is believed that the tapes contain allegations from former members of the Provisional IRA that Adams organised the kidnap and killing of the west Belfast housewife in December 1972. "The investigation into the abduction and death of Jean Mc Conville by the PSNI and its predecessor the RUC was, simply, a non-investigation - at least until the matter became grist for political opponents of Gerry Adams," says the ACLUM. ...

By Liam Clarke - Belfast Telegraph

The story of the Troubles can be seen as a growing understanding between the Irish and British states whose latest fruit was the Queen's visit to the Republic.

In that time Britain moved, in the Irish psyche, from an ancient enemy still to be treated with suspicion to a neighbour with shared interests.

By 1989, when Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Robert Buchanan were murdered at Jonesboro, the process was fairly advanced.

The Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin has heard that the officers died returning from an intelligence exchange with gardai where a joint operation against Thomas 'Slab' Murphy, chief of staff of the IRA, was planned. That showed progress.

Yet the fact that the officers' movements were compromised led to suspicion that some in the gardai may have helped the IRA target them. At the tribunal, three retired officers all denied involvement.
...

Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson has said it would be impossible to investigate all murders from the Troubles. He said an amnesty should be considered to deal with the past. Mr Hutchinson has left his office early but will not formally resign until his successor is in place. He said that any amnesties would be conditional and that victims should be the driving force in making decisions on individual cases. "I think the key here is that the victim would have a say whether or not they might consider amnesty and that would be a conditional amnesty," he said. "We've had amnesty by many other names, when you look at the two-year release in the peace agreement, you look at the inquiries that are ongoing. ...

The man convicted of murdering two soldiers outside a military barracks in Northern Ireland must serve a minimum of 25 years in prison, a judge has ruled. Republican Brian Shivers, 46, was last month found guilty of killing British sappers Patrick Azimkar, 21, and Mark Quinsey, 23, outside the Massereene army base. The victims were ambushed by gunmen from the Real IRA at the gates of the barracks in Antrim on March 7, 2009, as they went to collect delivery pizzas. Two other soldiers and two pizza delivery drivers were injured in the gun attack. DNA on matchsticks found in the partially burnt-out Vauxhall Cavalier getaway car, used in the ambush and abandoned eight miles away, linked Shivers to the murders. ...

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. ...

A court in the United States will be asked to rule later that interviews with former terrorists should not be handed over to NI authorities. Last year, the PSNI launched a legal bid to gain access to interviews with former republicans and loyalists held by Boston College. They are being sought by detectives investigating cases of people murdered and secretly buried by the IRA. At the heart of the case is the 1972 IRA murder of Jean McConville. ...

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. ...

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.
...