Northern News

Arsonists torch nationalist home

A West Belfast man whose Springfield Road home was the target of an arson attack by loyalists on Saturday night last said the attack was a deliberate attempt to kill him and his four-year-old son.

The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, was due to move into his new home on Saturday but those plans have been put on hold after it was extensively damaged in the arson attack.

"I have no doubt that this was a sectarian attack and I believe they did it to coincide with the fact I was due to move in to the house with my son," he said. "There is no other reason why this would happen."

The man said he is distraught with the thought of what could have happened.

"I was working on my new home for three months and they waited until I was due to move in. I have to put the safety of my child first so I won't be moving into that house now."

Two loyalist youths were seen running off in the direction of Springfield Parade, which leads to the loyalist West Circular Road area.

West Belfast Sinn Féin Assembly member Fra McCann said the family is lucky that no one was killed or seriously injured.

"The Springfield Road area has been quiet in recent months and I hope this act of wanton sectarianism was a one off attack and not the start of a renewed loyalist campaign," he said.

McCann called on anyone with influence within loyalist communities to work to eradicate sectarian attacks on nationalists.

Bradley targeted by petrol bombers

Sinn Féin's Mitchel McLaughlin said the petrol bomb attack on the family home in Derry of Policing Board vice chairman Denis Bradley was "the work of mindless idiots".

Minor scorch damage was caused when three petrol bombs hit the front of Bradley's home at Templemore Park in Rosemount at around 8.50pm on Thursday night 12 February.

Bradley was not at home but his wife and 15-year-old son were in the house and were said to be very shocked.

In September 2003, Bradley received a death threat form a micro republican grouping and in the last 18 months his home has been the target of hoax bombs, bullets in the post and protests.

Commenting on the attack, McLaughlin said the perpetrators of such attacks have nothing to offer society or the peace process.

McBride family urges Australians to boycott Spellar

Supporters of the family of Peter McBride are organising protests to coincide with the visit to Australia of NIO minister John Spellar over his decision to keep convicted killers James Fisher and Mark Wright in the British Army.

Spellar's appointment last year as minister with a portfolio for human rights and criminal justice was heavily criticised after it emerged he sat on the British Army panel that decided to allow the killers, members of the Scots Guards regiment, to remain in the British Army despite their conviction for Peter McBride's murder.

The Pat Finucane Centre has written on behalf of Peter's mother, Jean McBride, to Labour MPs and leading trade union officials in Australia to lobby support for a boycott of Spellar.

"Jean McBride has asked us to urgently appeal to Australian public opinion not to make Spellar welcome," said the lettter. "She has asked us to call for a boycott of his visit and is requesting that the issue of Peter McBride should be raised at every level within parliment and the media."

The British soldiers were convicted in 1995 of murdering 18-year-old McBride in 1992 but were released from prison three years later and allowed to rejoin their regiment.

Last June, Jean McBride took her fight to have the two soldiers thrown out of the British Army to the Court of Appeal in Belfast. The Court ruled the two Scots Guards should have not been allowed to return to their regiment but stopped short of ordering the British Army to dismiss them.

British Army Louth incursion slammed

Sinn Féin TD for Louth, Arthur Morgan, has expressed serious concern at the incursion by British soldiers, accompanied by PSNI members, into the Omeath area on Wednesday evening, 11 February

"I was contacted by a constituent who was stopped right on the border by British forces, while travelling south along the Flagstaff road. Further into County Louth he met more, heavily armed British soldiers," said Morgan. "Prior to this, local people had noticed a serious amount of helicopter activity in the area."

"Courageously, local people, armed only with flashlights, searched the surrounding countryside in an effort to flush out these foreign gunmen.

"To make this incident all the more sinister, it cannot be dismissed as a simple map-reading error, as the Brits were accompanied by a car load of RUC/PSNI, which travelled along the Flagstaff road, down past Davey's pub and turned left towards Newry."

People in the village of Omeath say that around 20 PSNI and British Army personnel spent about an hour in the village.

The territorial incursion has sparked a diplomatic row, with Dublin's Department of Foreign Affairs making an official complaint to British-Irish secretariat asking for a full report into the incident. Morgan had immediately raised the incursion with the 26-County Minister for Foreign Affairs, Brian Cowen, who expressed considerable concern and annoyance, and promised to raise this serious matter with the British government.

The Gardaí have confirmed they are investigating the incursion, while the PSNI and British Army have admitted having patrols in the area on the same evening but have denied crossing into the South.

Families urge more car crime arrests

The campaign group Families Bereaved Through Car Crime (FBTCC) has called on the PSNI to do more to tackle those involved in car theft and death driving.

The West Belfast group, dedicated to campaigning against death drivers and car thieves, made the call after it was announced by the PSNI that their 'Auto Crime Unit' carried out a series of raids across West Belfast and Lisburn on Saturday night and into the early hours of Sunday 15 February. Thirteen people were arrested and seven cars recovered in the PSNI operation, which lasted six hours.

Spokesperson for the group Geordie Murtagh said that while FBTCC welcomed the fact that an attempt has been made to deal with the issue, "we would like to ask the PSNI about the other 364 days of the year and we hope similar operations will be carried out in the future.

"It will be interesting to see how many of those arrested will be allowed to return to the streets by the PSNI and the courts. Often these sorts of things only have a short term effect and many of the culprits are back on the streets in no time."

Support for family of Irishman found dead in British jail

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Prison issues Gerry Kelly has added his voice to those supporting the demands for a review into the circumstances surrounding the death of Donegal man John Boyle, who was found hanged in Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1994.

A post mortem revealed that he had multiple wounds on his body. He had been moved to an isolation unit after he protested against the strip searching of two of his visitors. At the inquest into John Boyle's death the coroner returned an open verdict.

Despite this, the Metropolitan Police concluded that there had been no impropriety in John Boyle's death. It has now emerged that in the period since 1994 the Prison Service has been forced to pay out over £2 million in compensation to prisoners for assaults and mock hangings carried out by prison staff at Wormwood Scrubs.

"The Boyle family are now demanding that the circumstances surrounding the death of John Boyle be re-examined," said Kelly. "Given the information already in the public domain, this is the very least that this family should be granted at this time and I would urge that this review would take place speedily and that the full findings be made available to the Boyle family."

Schoolchildren involved in sectarian clashes in Ballynahinch

Sinn Féin Councillor Francie Branniff has called on schoolchildren engaging in sectarian street violence in Ballynahinch in County Down to stop before the trouble gets out of hand.

Branniff was speaking after he received a number of complaints from residents of Hillcrest Drive and Windmill Street, close to a bus stop in the town centre, where the clashes are taking place.

Said Branniff: "Over the past number of days there have been clashes between rival groups of schoolchildren however last Friday a number of older loyalists got involved and we in Sinn Féin are worried that this could result in an escalation of the trouble. These incidents, together with disturbances on Wednesday and Thursday night, can be prevented if the politicians and community leaders from across the spectrum, got together to explore methods of how best to defuse the situation."

Branniff acknowledged the efforts already made by teachers to try and calm the situation. He said Sinn Féin activists had been in touch with community leaders to arrange a meeting with school principals, youth workers, clergy and nationalist and unionist politicians to try and find ways to prevent the problem from escalating further.

Questions raised after charges dropped

Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh & South Tyrone Michelle Gildernew has demanded that the PSNI and the DPP reveal the circumstances behind the malicious prosecution and detention of a young Fermanagh teacher. Gildernew's comments came after the case against Emmett Lavelle was finally thrown out in the High Court on Monday.

The young man was arrested and charged along with other family members after a raid on the family home in Donagh. He consistently denied all of the charges. Despite this, and at a time when the courts were granting bail to well known unionist paramilitaries without question, Emmett Lavelle was detained for eight months in Maghaberry.

" The dropping of the case today in the High Court, while welcome, poses many questions for the DPP, the PSNI and those who support their brand of policing," said Gildernew. "Who was responsible for ordering this young man's arrest and who was responsible for charging him with very serious matters while clearly having no basis in law for doing so? The decision of the judiciary to hold this innocent man in custody for eight months amounted to little more then a form of internment.

"People within the nationalist and the republican community cannot be expected to have confidence in either the PSNI or the Criminal Justice system if this is still the experience in 2004. We need to achieve an acceptable and accountable policing service working within a system of criminal justice that is impartial and unbiased. We clearly still have work to do to achieve these goals."

£70,000 wasted on unionist junket by Parades Commission

Nationalists in Portadown have criticised the £70,000 spent by the Parades Commission on a conflict resolution trip to South Africa for people connected with the marching issue at Drumcree even though no nationalist representatives were present.

The trip, involving senior members of Portadown District Lodge and Protestant clergy, was branded a one-sided waste of taxpayers' money as it went ahead, last weekend, despite the absence of nationalist representatives.

Most notable absentees were the Catholic clergy and the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, who turned down the offer to take part in the trip as those travelling were going as individuals, not representing any organisation.

Residents' spokesperson Breandán Mac Cionnaith told An Phoblacht: "If you go back to the original invite from the Parades Commission, it stated that the South African process was not engagement in their definition of engagement.

"If this was not and never going to be an engagement, what was the purpose of going to South Africa? The Parades Commission say there were nationalist representatives on the trip, but there were seven people from the nationalist side in Portadown who were invited but did not go, so who are these nationalists that did go? We don't know them and they didn't represent the Garvaghy Road community."

MacCionnaith added that it would be interesting to know how many people on the trip were members of the Orange Order.