[Fegasderty]

Ireland's men of terror scuttle back out of the shadows as Al Qaeda beckons
Sunday Express August 29, 2010 (Pages 12-13)
Focus by James Murray
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/...-Qaeda-beckons

IRISH terrorists have teamed up with Al Qaeda supporters to help them Uhleash attacks in Britain. A dissident republican arms quartermaster allowed scores of shotgun cartridges to be delivered to a Muslim extremist terrorist at an address in Dublin. Gunpowder from the cartridges was needed by the follower of Osama bin Laden to create a bomb, according to a security source.

In return, Al Qaeda invited Real IRA members to join them in training camps in Pakistan to pass on their bomb-making lmowledge. Although there is no formal link between the two organisations, the new co-operation is yete another sign that dissident republicans are expanding their operations with campaigns of violence to derail the Good Friday Agreement and herald a return to the dark days of The Troubles.

Last week it was alleged resurgent republican paramilitaries are planning to attack the Tory party's autumn conference in October, while on Friday it was revealed that the Taliban had made a determined effort to assassinate Prime Minister David Cameron when he visited Afghanistan last June. The Taliban's links with Al Qaeda are well established but the security services are increasingly concerned by the sharing of bomb-making lmowledge.

Today we can disclose that City of London police expect an attack on the capital'S financial heart in the coming months. A senior officer said: "The intelligence coming in from Northern Ireland is to prepare for an attack."
Dissidents in the Province have been steadily increasing their activities against the military and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, deaf to the pleas for peace from Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.

. On August 3 dissident bombers hijacked a taxi in Londonderry. They put a 200lb bomb in the boot and ordered the driver to park outside a police station. A 45-minute warning was phoned to police but, just 23 minutes later, the bomb went off, wrecking shops and causing severe damage to the police station. Amazingly, no one was hurt.

The so-called "army council" of ONH COglaigh na hEirearn, or Warriors of Ireland), claimed responsibility but callously lied when they claimed two of their men had accompanied the taxi driver. who fled his vehicle minutes before the blast.
"He was forced to drive over a mile on his own and told he would be shot if he didn't," said a relative of the driver. "All the time, he could hear the bomb ticking."
At one time Martin McGuinness had total control of the Provos in Derry but now he is seen by many of the new generation of ruthless republicans as a traitor for taking up his senior role with the Northern Ireland Assembly. Former Sinn Fein Assembly member Francie Brolly told the Sunday Express last week: "They would quite easily shoot McGuinness and Gerry Adams ior selling out."

Seamus Murphy, senior press officer for the mainly nationalist SDLP, worriedly paced his Stormont office last week as he spoke of his fears for the Province.
"The dissidents are going to do a big one soon, probably at a police station," he said. "All they are interested in is proving that there is a war on.
"There is a dissident superstructure encompassing the ONH, Continuity IRA and the Real IRA."

Estimates for the size of the grouping vary between 300 and 2,000.
In March last year Sappers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey were shot dead in County Antrim in an aPl?arent Real IRA attack Two days later the Continuity IRA murdered policeman Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, the first officer to be killed in Northern Ireland since 1998. Mr Murphy believes the murders were to demonstrate the capability of the groups and encourage Provisional IRA members to join them.
"The groups needed the bomb-making skills of the Provos but they have decided they do not want political wings because they are vulnerable to infiltration by MI5," said Mr Murphy,

The decision to stay in the shadows and fight what they see as a "pure war" to oust the British means no one may ever know who is pulling the strings.
The Sunday Express can reveal that SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie held a private meeting recently with Northern Ireland Office junior minister Hugo Swire at which she expressed deep concern about MI5's ability to control the activities of the dissidents,

In a tense meeting, Mr Swire rejected her call for intelligence gathering to come under police control. Under pressure from Sinn Fein, the once higWy effective RUC Special Branch has been downgraded to a police division.
Sources say it has become reliant on MI5 passing over information, largely through bugging. However, the MI5 agents lack the ability to penetrate the dissidents, who have set up tight cells and rarely use mobile phones, which can easily be monitored. This means there has been an increasing number of incidents in recent months.
On August 7 a bomb was discovered under the car of a Catholic police woman at Kilkeel in County Down. A few days earlier a bomb was found under a soldier's car in Bangor.

In Lurgan three children suffered cuts in a bomb blast on August 14 and last Saturday a pipe bomb was found at a Belfast police station. Last Thursday another was found in Carrickfergus. The latest wave of terrorism has prompted Irish president Mary McAleese to appeal to the dissidents.

She said: "Your violent campaign will not succeed and it is long past the time to stop. Love is stronger than hate. It is as simple as that." However, the political reality is never as simple as that. Next year the Northern Ireland Assembly elections will see heated campaigns for the 108 Stormont seats and, as the political campaigning starts in earnest, many ghosts from the past have re-emerged. Last week Mr Mc Guinness was on holiday and unable to answer questions on whether suspected IRA killers in the Claudy bombing should be brought to justice.

Irish police also announced they are bringing a prosecution over the murder of Sinn Fein activist Dennis Donaldson, killed in the Republic in 2006 after it was revealed he spent years spying for MI5 while in contact with McGuinness and Adams.
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'Police told me the names of the killers'

DETECTIVES know the identity of four IRA men who murdered three children and six adults in Claudy in 1972 but have made no effort to arrest them, writes James Murray
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Former Sinn Fein Northern Ireland Assembly member Francie Brolly says police officers told him the names when they interviewed him over the bombing five years ago. At his home 10 miles from Claudy, Co Londonderry, Mr Brolly, who was interned in 1973 for two years, said was arrested and held overnight but he says he was being spoken to as a witness, not as a suspect.

He told the Sunday Express:
"Because of my proximity to Claudy and because of my Republican background they thought I might know something about it, but I don't.
"During questioning, they told me everything that happened. There were four men who made bombs 13 miles away and put them in dairy cans. Police even had the boxes from the clocks which were used."

No warning was issued to the police when the three car bombs exploded on July 31, 1972, killing four Catholics and five Protestants and injuring 30. Last week a report by police ombudsman AI Hutchinson concluded that Catholic priest Fr James Chesney, who died aged 46 in 1980, was among the killers.

However, Mr Brolly said that his was not one of the four names given him by police.
A former RUC Special Branch officer said last week he had wanted to arrest Fr Chesney but had been overruled by senior officers.

The ombudsman said the RUC "colluded" with the then Northern Ireland Secretary Willie Whitelaw and the Catholic Church to protect Fr Chesney, who was moved to Co Donegal in the Republic.

The Sunday Express understands one of those involved in the bombing later took his own life. Another is . thought to live in New York. The historical inquiries team, which investigates atrocities, says it hopes to hold a review of the case.