Terrorism – Page 3 – Slugger O'Toole

Gerry Adams’ White House ‘controversy’: “Quite apart from being bumptious, paranoid and absurdly self-pitying…”

Pete Baker on March 19, 2016, 7:51 pm

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In the Irish News Newton Emerson highlights the unintended consequences of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’ intemperate outburst following his recent misunderstanding with security at the White House. From the Irish News GERRY Adams could have been pragmatic and diplomatic about being locked out of President Obama’s St Patrick’s Day reception and simply laughed it off. It is all too believable that the White House has the same hapless jobsworths in its security hut as everywhere else – and that has …

IRA weapons wholly beyond use: a once white lie now a blood stained black

Turgon on March 7, 2016, 8:30 pm

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The latest attempted murder by republican terrorists involved an attempt to kill a prison officer with a booby trap car bomb. This tactic was one of the IRA’s favourites throughout the Troubles (and occasionally adopted by others). Thankfully the victim survived and all decent people wish him well: though as so often one wonders how well he will recover both physically and mentally. Clearly the responsibility for this latest crime is borne solely by those involved in it. However, as …

What will be the followup to new police move on the Birmingham bombings?

Brian Walker on January 30, 2016, 1:22 pm

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(Kieran) Conway, who is a now a solicitor in Dublin specialising in criminal defence,, voluntarily spoke to detectives in connection with his memoir of life inside the IRA “South Side Provisional”. In the book, Conway revealed certain details about the Birmingham pub bombings to which the IRA has never officially admitted. No one has ever been convicted in relation to the atrocity in England’s second city… For decades the IRA never publicly admitted they carried out the atrocity but Conway …

The scheme for gathering information on the Troubles ignores the public interest

Brian Walker on January 26, 2016, 12:42 pm

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News is dribbling out about the proposed cumbersomely- named Independent Commission on Information Retrieval on the Past – despite the fact that the proposals for dealing with the Past have not yet been agreed. Even without a flood of confessions from paramilitaries, this body may yet prove to be the most important in a complicated set -up which includes an Oral history archive. In the Newsletter Sam McBride and his headline writer splutter unnecessarily about Martin McGuinness’s role in making …

Terrorist attacks in Paris

Pete Baker on November 13, 2015, 10:54 pm

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PARIS ATTACKS: At least 40 people are reported to have been killed. There have been shootings at, at least, two bars or restaurants, including a Cambodian restaurant, and there have been explosions reported near the Stade de France where the French national football side were playing Germany.

Why suffer allegations of involvement with the nutting squad? Because you’re worth it.

Brian Walker on October 31, 2015, 11:00 am

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EXPENSIVE INJUSTICE: The whole cat’s cradle of allegation and murder is getting more expensive by the day, The DDPs’ decision to reopen the entire Scappaticci file won’t make it any cheaper. See today’s Times (£) for the latest. Stand by for the inevitable public row.

Man wanted by German Authorities over 1996 PIRA Attack arrested in Kerry

Pete Baker on October 9, 2015, 9:25 pm

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About that bad smell… Here’s one to keep on eye on. The BBC report notes A [46-year-old] man wanted by German authorities over an attack on a British army base in Germany in 1996 has appeared in court in the Republic of Ireland on an extradition warrant. And from the Irish Times report James Anthony Oliver Albert Corry (46) was arrested in Killorglin, Co Kerry, on Friday on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by German authorities. Mr Corry is …

Yes Alasdair, the SDLP oppose republican criminality but is anybody listening?

Brian Walker on August 26, 2015, 11:50 am

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Signs of life in the SDLP are an interesting sidebar in the great IRA structures kerfuffle. Alasdair McDonnell has taken up the challenge to contradict the Guardian’s Henry McDonald’s charge below in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph, which is basically that the SDLP has played mini-me to Sinn Fein for far too long. The SDLP may have stopped passively supporting the Sinn Fein line through those tortuous post-Good Friday Agreement negotiations, and the party is no longer perhaps the Shinners’ advert-adjuncts, but its …

Tánaiste: “This is an insidious threat to Northern Ireland’s future as a healthy, stable democracy, and therefore a threat to the whole of this island.”

Pete Baker on August 25, 2015, 7:00 pm

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Brian’s weariness at another political crisis notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to dismiss reaction to recent events as a “kerfuffle”. There are legitimate concerns, and two men have been murdered. The Irish Justice Minister, Fine Gael’s Frances Fitzgerald, has asked the Garda Commissioner for a “fresh assessment” of Provisional IRA activities to take into account “what the PSNI have been learning about any PIRA structures as a result of [the rigorous investigation being carried out by the PSNI into the …

Villiers: “My understanding is, very much in line with that of the chief constable, that a number of the organisational structures of the Provisional IRA still exist…”

Pete Baker on August 24, 2015, 5:50 pm

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Sinn Féin continue with their policy of denial [of reality… – Ed], although Gerry Kelly has come closest to acknowledging that reality according to this RTÉ report Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, Mr Kelly said based on the political evidence over the past ten years, the IRA has not been active and therefore does not exist in the circumstances that people are talking about. Hmmm… Meanwhile, the governments continue to make excuses. From an Irish Independent report yesterday Earlier this year, in …

In dealing with the past, both the state and its legal critics should stop playing games

Brian Walker on August 4, 2015, 1:55 pm

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“The UK is still in breach of international law for failing properly to investigate unresolved killings, especially and most controversially where state agents might have been involved”. So states Brian Gormally the director fo the legal lobby group the Committee on the Administration of Justice, quoting the UN Committee on human Rights, No doubt Nuala O’Loan agrees. The UK government does not take kindly to lectures from this committee. More potent pressure may come from the “ hooded men” case against the …

“It is rather as if the US and Europe ended up not only accepting the right of ISIS to exist but went on to embrace Islam as their state religion…”

Pete Baker on August 1, 2015, 5:03 pm

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At The Broken Elbow, Ed Moloney responds to the Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’ recent claim that “the IRA was never defeated” and, in the process, provides a useful corrective to the partial, ahistorical, view held by some. From The Broken Elbow post Adams was also responding, according to press reports, to recent remarks by British premier, David Cameron that, “British resolve saw off the IRA’s assaults on our way of life”, i.e that Britain defeated the IRA. So, who is …

When Terror Gets Old: an insight into ex-combatants

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on July 15, 2015, 5:01 pm

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One of the legacies of any conflict are men and women who took part and survived. In the case of Northern Ireland, some of those players are now reaching pension age. Many ex-combatants from the Troubles are publicity shy; only a minority speak out publicly about their experiences. Corinne Purtill is senior correspondent in the UK for the US-based GlobalPost news organisation. This week she has published a series of articles to accompany a 15 minute video that explores what …

Roy Mason, the last to believe in outright IRA defeat

Brian Walker on April 21, 2015, 10:33 am

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Roy Mason who has died aged 91 was Northern Ireland Secretary of State from 1976 to the end of the Labour government in 1979. He was “short in stature and long in self confidence “ as David McKittrick rightly described him. He even designed his own peculiarly vented and lapelled tight fitting light khaki suits. When I last met him a few years ago at the launch of a Northern Ireland stamp, he was eloquent about his collection. He retained heavy police security at …

Lord Carlile: “Peace is in no small way the result of these efforts by PSNI and MI5 personnel.”

Pete Baker on March 26, 2015, 7:33 pm

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On 20th March the Order in Council extending the operations of the UK National Crime Agency to Northern Ireland came into power – despite the challenge that presents to the Speaker of the NI Assembly – bringing us into line with the rest of the UK in the process. On the same date the NI Secretary of State of State, Theresa Villiers, made a written statement to the House of Commons on the report by Lord Carlile, the independent reviewer of national security …

“it looks like they were repeatedly blocked from accessing vital pieces of evidence or pursuing certain suspects…”

Pete Baker on March 7, 2015, 4:54 pm

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The Guardian and Observer’s Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, reports on the campaign for justice by the family of Heidi Hazell, the 26-year-old German wife of a British army sergeant, murdered by the Provisional IRA outside her married quarters in Unna-Massen, a Dortmund suburb, on 7 September 1989. From the Guardian report The following day the IRA claimed responsibility for what was its first and only murder in West Germany of a British soldier’s wife. In a statement the organisation said she had …

Thoughts on the Charlie Hebdo murders

Turgon on January 11, 2015, 6:45 pm

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This blog is purely a personal view (somewhat confessional) but I wondered if I was alone in it: The attacks on Charlie Hebdo were utterly appalling. The idea of terrorists attacking innocent defenceless people making a satirical cartoon is dreadful: a gross perversion of any decent religion or ideology. So why is it then that I am annoyed despite myself, not just about the attack, and I condemn it utterly, but also about the international outcry which has followed? Certainly …

Je Suis Charlie

Pete Baker on January 7, 2015, 5:18 pm

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Via the BBC coverage of the attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in which 12 people were killed, an eloquent cartoon from the New Yorker. Pete Baker

A measured media response to the Charlie Hebdo atrocity

Kris Nixon (Belfast Barman) on January 7, 2015, 4:19 pm

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I utterly condemn the individuals who today attacked and killed innocent civilians at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris today. It is horrific and unprovoked and I would if the opportunity presented, would happily press the “on” button for their electric chairs. Also, I am an atheist. I would like you to keep that in mind please throughout this piece. You may have seen a lot of people calling for a response to the killings, printing the cartoon on the …

New GCHQ head takes on Google over the terrorist threat

Brian Walker on November 4, 2014, 5:20 pm

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In the FT today, (£) Robert Hannigan now the new head of GCHQ whom I knew well as the NIO director of communications, has opened a new chapter in the debate over privacy versus security in the digital world. He accuses the technology giants of being in denial about the internet as a command and control system for terrorists. Taking a bold initiative in a debate which is bogged down over where to draw the line between privacy and security, he …