Britain Reactivates FRU in Northern Ireland

"FRU is the same ultra secret cell of the SAS whose criminal activities in Northern Ireland were under investigation by former Scotland Yard commissioner Sir John Stevens for more than a decade, during which time it emerged that the unit was involved in the murder of civilians in Northern Ireland"

Please read FRU before continuing.

"Another officer killed in N. Ireland; Security chiefs appeal for information" by Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press | March 10, 2009

BELFAST - Gunmen killed an officer in an attack on a Northern Ireland police patrol yesterday, authorities said, just 48 hours after Irish Republican Army dissidents allegedly shot to death two British soldiers. The shootings fanned fears of a return to retaliatory violence after years of fragile peace.

The latest killing occurred as British security chiefs appealed for the public's help to catch the soldiers' killers - a hunt that challenges Catholics to inform on their own.

"We are staring into the abyss," warned a moderate Catholic politician, Dolores Kelly, after police confirmed that another officer was fatally shot in the head while sitting in his patrol car in the religiously divided town of Craigavon, in County Armagh.

No group claimed responsibility, but politicians blamed the Real IRA, the splinter group that claimed responsibility for Saturday's shooting of two soldiers who were picking up pizzas outside an army base.

STINK!

Ever hear of Mr. Aswat or Mr. Khan, readers?

Also see: May Day Memories: British Patsies

May Day Memories: The U.S. Connection

Terror Expert: London Bomber Was Working For MI5

Keep those things in mind as you read!

Together, these were the first killings of British-backed security forces in Northern Ireland since 1997 - the year before rival British Protestant and Irish Catholic politicians tried to leave behind decades of bloodshed by striking a peace deal that called for paramilitary disarmament and a future of Catholic-Protestant cooperation in government.

"There is little point appealing to the people who planned and did this, but all of us have to realize we are on the brink of something absolutely awful," said Kelly, a member of a Catholic-Protestant panel that oversees the police. "All of us have to get together to pull ourselves back from the brink. A tiny handful of people with nothing to say and nothing to offer cannot be allowed to destroy so much."

So far, Protestant paramilitary outlaws have maintained their 1994 cease-fire. Before the latest attack, Protestant politicians appealed for their side's extremists not to attack Catholic civilians in revenge. A Protestant politician on the policing panel, Basil McCrea, said he had no doubt that IRA dissidents also committed last night's attack.

The surge in dissident violence is raising particular pressure on Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that is the major Irish Catholic player in Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration with Protestants.

"We need public support. We will do everything in our power to protect those people who come forward," said Chief Superintendent Derek Williamson, the policeman leading the investigation. He said Real IRA sympathizers were probably harboring the killers somewhere in a Catholic district.

Sinn Fein lawmaker Gerry Kelly, who once led IRA car-bomb attacks in London and the biggest prison escape in British history, said many in the party's grass roots understood they needed to cooperate with police. But they still considered helping police to arrest IRA dissidents a bridge too far.

With HELP from the BRITISH GOVERNMENT, right?

"Within the republican psyche there's an aversion to the whole idea," said Gerry Kelly, who pledged that Sinn Fein leaders were already challenging their own supporters to isolate Real IRA activists - if not finger them to police.

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