That's my paper!
"Real IRA figure loses bomb appeal" Associated Press, April 20, 2013
DUBLIN — The founder of the Real IRA paramilitary group, responsible for the deadliest bombing in Irish history, lost a bid Friday to have his 2003 conviction for ‘‘directing terror’’ overturned.
Lawyers for Michael McKevitt, who in 2003 became the first person in the Republic of Ireland to be convicted of the charge, had argued that the 63-year-old should be freed from prison immediately. They contended that the warrant used to search his home was illegal, and McKevitt was denied the right to a fair trial because he had fired his own lawyers midway through his original trial.
But the three-judge Court of Criminal Appeal in Dublin ruled that McKevitt’s complaint was ‘‘unarguable.’’ It was the third straight failed appeal by McKevitt.
McKevitt was the former quartermaster general of the dominant Provisional branch of the Irish Republican Army. That position meant he had ultimate responsibility for hiding and managing the illegal group’s arsenal of weaponry. When the Provisionals ceased fire in 1997 in support of peace talks, McKevitt led a breakaway movement that remained committed to violence. Irish media soon dubbed it the Real IRA.
The Real IRA opposed Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace settlement of 1998 with a series of car bombings. In August that year the group killed 29 people, mostly women and children, in Omagh when a car bomb detonated amid a crowd of shoppers, workers, and tourists....
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"New IRA faction claims Northern Ireland killing" Associated Press, November 13, 2012
DUBLIN — A new Irish Republican Army faction in Northern Ireland claimed responsibility Monday for its first killing and defended the bloodshed as a necessary act of vengeance.
The group, a merger of factions that brands itself as simply the IRA, said in a statement to the Irish News in Belfast its members shot to death David Black this month because he worked as a guard at Northern Ireland’s top-security Maghaberry prison.
About 40 members of IRA factions are imprisoned there. The inmates have protested for more than a year against a policy of strip-searching them in search of weapons, drugs and cellphones.
Black, 52, was shot as he drove to work on Nov. 1. He had worked as a guard for three decades and expected to retire soon.
He was the first prison officer killed in Northern Ireland since 1993, the year before the dominant anti-British paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA, began an open-ended truce that inspired Northern Ireland’s peace process. The Provisionals renounced violence and disarmed in 2005.
The group that claimed Black’s killing was formed in July by the merger of three splinter groups led by former Provisionals who still pursue violence. The merger represented an effort by breakaway IRA members to mount a more coherent campaign, given that most of their bombings and shootings fail because of faulty equipment or British intelligence tipoffs.
And how would they know?
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I only have one thing to say, readers: Un-Real
"Thousands took part in a Protestant march through the heart of Northern Ireland’s capital Saturday amid a heavy security presence. Police deployed in force to prevent street clashes between marchers and Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, and there were no immediate reports of unrest (AP)."
Related: Protestant militants attack Northern Ireland party offices
Good thing the police are there to restore order:
"47 officers hurt during Belfast riot over parade" Associated Press, September 04, 2012
BELFAST — Northern Ireland police said 47 officers were injured during clashes with Protestant extremists angry over a Belfast parade by Irish republicans from the Catholic side of the community.
Sunday night’s violence came as Irish republicans paraded near British Protestant districts of north Belfast. Such demonstrations, usually by the Protestant side, trigger riots every summer in Northern Ireland.
Police donning flame-retardent suits, helmets, and shields spent nine hours standing their ground against mobs of masked, hooded Protestants.
More than 100 rioters threw bottles, bricks, fireworks, and firebombs at police lines until early Monday. One suspected rioter, a 17-year-old boy, was arrested.
Police fired water cannon to defend themselves, but commander Matt Baggott said his officers demonstrated ‘‘courage and restraint.’’
Most of those hurt suffered cuts and bruises. Four officers were hospitalized with more serious injuries.
"Man convicted of murdering UK troops wins appeal" by Shawn Pogatchnik | Associated Press, January 16, 2013
DUBLIN — Northern Ireland’s senior appellate court overturned the murder convictions Tuesday of the only man to be convicted of the 2009 killing of two British soldiers, the latest legal setback for police and prosecutors seeking to combat Irish Republican Army splinter groups....
The two unarmed victims, ages 21 and 23, were shot repeatedly at close range as they collected pizzas outside the entrance of their army base in the town of Antrim. Six others were wounded in what were the first slayings of British troops in Northern Ireland since the dominant IRA faction, the Provisionals, called an open-ended truce in 1997....
Last year Justice Anthony Hart sentenced Shivers to a minimum of 25 years in prison after accepting forensic evidence linking him to the attackers’ getaway car. The Real IRA faction had sought to burn the car to destroy fingerprint, hair, and other DNA evidence but the fire petered out, and police presented evidence that Shivers’s DNA had been found on a book of matches discarded beside the car.
????
Looks like the same sort of frame up along the lines of a passport falling to the ground after a fireball.
But Lord Chief Justice Declan Morgan said he and his two colleagues ‘‘do not accept that a person who provides assistance after a murder, with full knowledge of what has happened, thereby becomes guilty of murder.’’
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The police investigation into the 2009 attack previously failed to gather sufficient evidence to convict reputed senior Real IRA figure Colin Duffy of murder.
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"Irishwoman at center of IRA tapes fight found dead" by Shawn Pogatchnik | Associated Press, January 25, 2013
DUBLIN — An Irish Republican Army veteran who accused Sinn Fein party chief Gerry Adams of involvement in IRA killings and bombings was found dead in her home, police and politicians said Thursday.
Dolours Price, 61, was a member of the Provisional IRA unit that launched the very first car-bomb attacks on London in 1973. She became one of Irish republicanism’s most trenchant critics of Adams and his conversion to political compromise.
Police said her death Wednesday night at her home in Malahide, north of Dublin, was possibly the result of a drug overdose and foul play was not suspected. But it could have implications as far away as the US Supreme Court.
In interviews Price repeatedly described Adams as her IRA commander in Catholic west Belfast in the early 1970s when the outlawed group was secretly abducting, executing, and burying more than a dozen suspected informers in unmarked graves. Adams rejects the charges.
Since 2011, Northern Ireland’s police have been fighting a legal battle with Boston College to secure audiotaped interviews with Price detailing her IRA career to see whether they contain evidence relating to unsolved crimes, particularly the 1972 kidnapping and murder of a Belfast widow, Jean McConville. Price allegedly admitted being the IRA member who drove McConville across the border to an execution squad.
Boston College commissioned the collection of such interviews with veterans of Northern Ireland’s paramilitary warfare on condition their contents be kept secret until each interviewee’s death.
In October, the Supreme Court blocked the handover of the Price tapes pending resolution of a string of other connected lawsuits and legal challenges in lower US courts. Her death could trigger a new wave of legal petitions on both sides....
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Also see: Aborting This Post About Ireland
Ireland's Dirty Laundry
That looks more real and worse to me.
UPDATE: "Protests over flag again turn violent
Also see: Aborting This Post About Ireland
Ireland's Dirty Laundry
That looks more real and worse to me.
UPDATE: "Protests over flag again turn violent
BELFAST — Northern Ireland police used water cannons to fend off brick-hurling protesters in Belfast on Saturday as violent demonstrations over flying the British flag stretched into a third day. More than 1,000 demonstrators marched on the Belfast City Hall earlier Saturday afternoon (AP)."
