Derry woman accuses RUC

Sinn Féin councillor Peter Anderson has described as sinister an incident in which the RUC dropped three rounds of ammunition in the garden of a Derry woman's home. Janet O'Hara says she is now ``terrified'' and wants the RUC to explain their actions.

The incident happened on Sunday 11 June at 4.30pm, when the RUC called to the woman's Creggan home.

According to O'Hara the RUC had called to her home on two or three previous occasions looking for someone who did not live there. On the last occasion, only the woman's 13-year-old daughter was in and as an RUC questioned the child she noticed another RUC member ``drop something in the garden'.

O'Hara immediately brought the ammunition to a local priest who in turn handed the rounds in to the RUC and says her daughter was ``terrified'' the RUC might have returned to raid the house and say they found the ammunition.

In his statement, Peter Anderson said the RUC were involved in, ``a campaign of harassment''.

No action taken against RIR bigots

Sixty members of the RIR who posed beneath a loyalist flag are not to be disciplined.

The British Ministry of Defence ruled last week that all 60 soldiers, including the officer who supervised the photo, would not be punished. The ruling flies in the face of the bigoted regiment's own standing orders that declare unaceptable the display ``of offensive material including, posters, graffiti, flags, bunting and emblems''.

The controversy arose earlier this year when local West Belfast publication, the Andersonstown News, printed a photo of 60 RIR members from Drumadd RIR base in Armagh City posing under an Orange banner from Drumcree.

Labour MP Kevin McNamara is now vowing to table more parliamentary questions over the display. ``I am totally dissatisfied with the answers given in this matter,'' he said. ``The behaviour of the soldiers was contemptible and demonstrates the regiment is tainted with sectarianism. The actions of the major in encouraging such antics gives the green light to sectarianism.''

In a separate case, also involving the RIR, Sinn Féin Assembly member for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Michelle Gildernew, has slammed the RUC over its failure to act after a loyalist death list was recovered from a wallet belonging to a member of the RIR.

In March of this year the wallet, containing a list of over 20 names and car details of nationalists from the South Tyrone and North Armagh areas, was handed in to the Sinn Féin office in Dungannon.

Sinn Féin revealed that the wallet belonged to a local member of the RIR. At the time, Gildernew travelled to Dublin to hand over the list to the Dublin authorities as she had no confidence the British would investigate the matter properly, a fear that has proved correct.

Gildernew told An Phoblacht that she received a letter from the RUC, dated 31 May, saying they would not ``pursue an investigation into the matter''.