Tag Archives: IRA

Gerry Adams questioned about ’72 IRA murder

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has been arrested for questioning about the 1972 abduction and murder of Jean McConville, a widow wrongly suspected of informing against the Irish Republican Army.

Adams2Feb14_Swf

Adams was implicated by two IRA veterans who gave taped interviews to researchers for a Boston College oral history project on the four-decade Northern Ireland conflict known as the Troubles. The tapes were made available to Northern Ireland/British police in a complicated court battle. Here’s some perspective from a B.U. trustee.

Adams made himself available to the authorities, but denies any role in the killing. Here’s his statement on the Sinn Féin website.

Obviously, this story is developing. We will have to see if Adams is charged, and what impact this might have on upcoming elections and the ongoing peace process in Northern Ireland. No doubt many on the island of Ireland would like to see Adams removed from politics and the public stage. But he has his supporters, as well, and has demonstrated an amazing talent for survival over the decades.

Report: Garda-IRA collusion in murder of two RUC officers

Most daily news stories in Ireland don’t make headlines in the U.S., so it’s usually a blockbuster or controversy when it does, such as the abortion debate over the summer.

News broke Dec. 3 that the Republic of Ireland government apologized to the families of two Northern Ireland policemen ambushed and gunned down by the IRA in 1989.

The story is still developing and needs more context. Here are links to U.S. and Irish coverage.

Garda collusion found in IRA murders of RUC officers, The Irish Times

Judge: Irish police colluded in IRA murder, Associated Press via The Washington Post

Smithwick inquiry finds Irish police may have colluded in two IRA murders, Irish Central

Read the full report here via the Irish Government News Service.

Thatcher, no friend of Ireland, dead at 87

Irish republicans are unlikely to shed any tears today about the death of Margaret Thatcher. It will be interesting to see what statements are issued by Gerry Adams and others.

The BBC quickly posted this overview of her relationship with Ireland.

In Irish affairs Margaret Thatcher was a tough and uncompromising believer in the Union, and instinctively loyal to the security forces she saw as society’s bulwark against a slide into the anarchy of terrorism.

She was hated by republicans and despised them in return, and her blunt-speaking style won her few friends on either side of the border, even if many had a sneaking admiration for her status on the world stage.

We’ll update this post with more links through the day.

UPDATE 1:

Adams, quoted in the Irish Independent:

“Margaret Thatcher did great hurt to the Irish and British people during her time as British prime minister. Working class communities were devastated in Britain because of her policies…”

UPDATE 2:

The Irish Examiner reports “measured praise” for Maggie from Irish leaders.

Here’s a good overview from Bloomberg:

Thatcher’s uncompromising treatment of the hunger strikers led only to an increase in terrorism and the ascension of the IRA as a potent political force. … Thatcher’s unyielding position was that public sympathy for the hunger strikers quickly morphed into political support for Republicanism. Bobby Sands, one of the strikers, was elected to the British House of Commons for Fermanagh-South Tyrone while imprisoned.

Another first in cross-border relations

It was not the same attention-grabber as the July handshake between Martin McGuinness and the Queen, or Herself visiting the Republic in May 2011 and laying a wreath at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance.

But Enda Kenny has become the Republic’s first taoiseach to attend Remembrance Sunday commemorations in Northern Ireland. As the Guardian reported, he did so at an event in Enniskillen, where 25 years ago 11 Protestant civilians where killed in an IRA bomb. Eamon Gilmore, Kenny’s deputy, attended an event in Belfast.

Gilmore said people of all traditions on the island of Ireland would be “remembering together” in a “decade of commemorations” that include the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Rising, the end of the first world war in 1918 and the foundation of the two states in Ireland in 1921.

Their presence is seen as another gesture of reconciliation between the two political traditions on the island, as well as official recognition in Dublin of the thousands of Irish men who served in the British armed forces, particularly during the two world wars.

Court battle over Troubles stories

The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to settle a legal dispute over the release of the tape recorded interviews of people involved in violence during The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The case involves the governments of the United States and United Kingdom, as well as Boston University, and the perpetrators and surviving family of a 1972 IRA killing.

Here’s a quick summary of the details from the Boston Globe. Here’s a video report from the PBS NewsHour.

There is some irony here. The case has been working its way through the courts at the same time Ireland’s Bureau of Military History has made available online more than 1,700 witness statements from the revolutionary period 1913-1921, as we detailed two posts below.

Were there any legal attempts to have those statements released to prosecute events that had happened decades earlier? Is there a secondary issue of considering these matters as crimes or as war-related?

I certainly understand the surviving family members desire for justice. And as a journalist I have frequently argued for the release of any material that sheds light on public events. But I also understand the BU researchers’ desire to keep their word to the people who came forward to give statements, just as I would want to protect a source. I also have some sympathy for the witnesses who shared their stories in the belief their remarks were being kept secret until after their deaths.

It’s an interesting and thorny case.

Omagh remembered

The Omagh Community Youth Choir was playing a series of concerts in New Orleans this weekend.

The group includes Catholic and Protestant teens from the town rocked in 1998 by the deadliest day of violence during “The Troubles.” It was formed in “a defiant act of peacemaking,” NOLA.com reports here. “Glee” with a mission.

I visited Omagh and other parts of Northern Ireland in 2001, three years after the blast and just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in America. I was traveling on a journalism fellowship from the German Marshall Fund of the United States, which promotes better relations between Europe and America. Here’s the story I published in the Mobile Register, where I was working at the time.

It was heartening then to see how much progress had been made to reduce violence in the north of Ireland. Re-reading the piece today is a reminder of how much more progress has been made over the past 11 years.

I’m still shaking my head about Martin McGuinness and the Queen shaking hands. Count me among those who are glad they were able to do so.