N. Ireland police re-arm after killings

BELFAST (AFP) – Police in parts of Northern Ireland have begun wearing flak jackets and carrying rifles for the first time in years following three high-profile killings, they said Sunday.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has returned to arming some of its officers after the fatal shootings of two British soldiers and a police officer within 48 hours of each other in early March.
"Regional commanders will decide where it is appropriate to advise patrols to carry Heckler and Koch rifles," a police spokeswoman said.
One member of a PSNI mobile patrol unit on the Foyle Bridge in Londonderry, an area northwest of the province near the border with the Republic of Ireland, said the practice had become common there.
"All patrols carrying out checkpoints like these in the city of Londonderry have at least one officer armed with a rifle and we are wearing flak jackets," he told AFP on condition of anonymity.
He added: "After the killings in Masserene (army barracks) and in Lurgan, we were told to start carrying these weapons."
The PSNI spokeswoman confirmed officers have to undergo "specialist training" to use the rifles, explaining: "No officers passing out (qualifying) in the past two years would have been trained in the use of those weapons."
Police are being re-armed only in certain areas, including Lurgan where constable Stephen Carroll was shot dead on March 9.
After the killings, Northern Ireland assembly member Ian Paisley, the son of former first minister Ian Paisley, expressed concern about a shortage of flak jackets for police officers.
"At this time of increased terrorist criminal threat it is vital that our officers feel safe and secure as they serve the community," he said.
Civil strife between the largely Catholic and Protestant communities in the British-ruled province raged for three decades before 1998 peace accords led to power-sharing.
The recent murders were claimed by dissident republicans who reject the peace process and want a united Ireland.
On Saturday, violent clashes also kicked off between rival fans attending a Northern Ireland-Poland football match in Belfast. Four men have been charged with disorderly behaviour in connection with the disturbances. There is a lot of history on the rival "fans" that many don't know about. They are more like gangs then fans. Enough said for now.
(my post on yahoo)

N.Ireland teen charged with killing policeman

DUBLIN – Authorities charged an Irish Catholic teenager Monday with killing a policeman — one of two deadly gun attacks by IRA dissidents this month that rocked Northern Ireland's peace process.
The 17-year-old male suspect was arrested the day after the March 9 death of Constable Stephen Carroll, 48, an attack claimed by a splinter group called the Continuity IRA. The suspect was not further identified pending a court appearance Tuesday in a Belfast suburb.
In a statement the Police Service of Northern Ireland said the teenager faces counts of murder, possession of a firearm, collecting information likely to be of use to terrorists, and membership in the outlawed Continuity IRA.
Nobody has been charged in connection with the other attack, a March 7 ambush outside a British Army base that killed two soldiers as they collected pizzas from delivery men. A rival splinter gang, the Real IRA, admitted responsibility for that attack, which also wounded two other soldiers and both pizza couriers.
The killings were the first of British security forces since 1998, the year that leaders of the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority achieved a peace accord designed to end the three-decade conflict over Northern Ireland.
Both sides of Northern Ireland's unity government, including former IRA commanders from the Catholic-backed Sinn Fein party, demanded that the public tell police about the IRA dissidents sheltering in Catholic areas.
However, Monday's charges come against the backdrop of rising complaints over the police's exceptionally long detentions without charge of suspected IRA dissidents. The detentions come under terms of a 2006 anti-terror law never before used in Northern Ireland.
Two Craigavon men, ages 31 and 27, who were arrested March 16 on suspicion of involvement in the attack on Carroll were released without charge earlier Monday.
But eight others — largely being questioned about their alleged roles in planning or committing the army base shooting — continued to be held.
Northern Ireland's human rights watchdog Monica McWilliams visited the interrogation center Monday and protested afterward that police were abusing their newfound powers to hold terror suspects for up to 28 days without charge. She specifically protested that the 17-year-old, the youngest suspect, had been held for too long.
Six of the eight suspected IRA dissidents still in police custody are pursuing a lawsuit challenging the police's right to hold them under terms of the Terrorism Act of 2006, which introduced the 28-day rule. A Belfast High Court judge is expected to make an initial ruling on their case Tuesday.

N.Ireland riots after police arrest 3 over killings

LURGAN, Northern Ireland – Irish nationalist gangs hurled gas bombs at police Saturday after three alleged IRA dissidents were arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers in an attack designed to trigger wider violence in Northern Ireland.
Police operating in armored cars and flame-retardant suits said none of their officers was injured during the rising mob violence in the Irish Catholic end of Lurgan, a religiously divided town southwest of Belfast. Rioters also blocked the main Belfast-to-Dublin railway line that runs alongside the hardline Kilwilkie neighborhood of the town.
The unrest followed Saturday's arrest of Colin Duffy, 41, the best-known Irish republican in Lurgan. Police arrested two other suspected Irish Republican Army dissidents aged 32 and 21 in the overwhelmingly Catholic village of Bellaghy — all on suspicion of shooting to death two soldiers last weekend.
Police advised motorists to stay away from the Catholic north side of Lurgan to avoid having their cars seized and burned as road barricades. An Associated Press reporter driving through the area at dusk Saturday night had to make a rapid escape to avoid youths — some wearing masks or with scarf-covered faces — hurling rocks and bricks in an apparent attempt to stop his vehicle.
Police long considered Duffy the IRA godfather of Lurgan and twice charged him with murders in the town in the run-up to the IRA's 1997 cease-fire — which breakaway factions are now trying to destroy.
Duffy was convicted of killing a former soldier in Lurgan in 1993, but was freed on appeal three years later after the key witness against him was identified as a member of an outlawed Protestant gang.
He was back behind bars within a year after police identified him as the gunman who committed the IRA's last two killings before its cease-fire: two Protestant policemen shot point-blank through the backs of their heads while on foot patrol in Lurgan in June 1997.
The prosecutors' case against Duffy collapsed after their key witness suffered a nervous breakdown and withdrew her testimony. Two years later, Protestant extremists assassinated Duffy's lawyer, Rosemary Nelson, with an under-car booby trap bomb in a case still being investigated today because of allegations that police were involved.
Saturday's arrest of Duffy appeared likely to pose a political challenge for Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that is the leading Irish nationalist voice in Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration — and is trying to convince Protestants of its newfound support for British law and order.
The leading Sinn Fein member of the coalition, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, earlier this week denounced IRA dissidents as "traitors" and pledged to support the police's hunt for the gunmen. But previously, Sinn Fein has defended Duffy as an innocent man and a victim of British conspiracies.
Sinn Fein declined to comment on the arrests. McGuinness was traveling Saturday in the United States and could not be reached for comment.
Saturday's arrests came a week after the Real IRA splinter group fired more than 60 bullets at several unarmed, off-duty soldiers outside an army base as they collected pizzas, the first of two deadly gun attacks against British security forces.
Two soldiers, aged 21 and 23, died and four other people were seriously wounded, including both pizza delivery men — whom the Real IRA described as legitimate targets because they were "collaborating" with the enemy. Police said the attack involved two masked men armed with assault rifles and a getaway driver.
The IRA dissidents next struck Monday when Constable Stephen Carroll, 48, was shot fatally through the back of the head as he sat in his police car in Craigavon, the town beside Lurgan. A different splinter group, the Continuity IRA, admitted responsibility for that killing.
Police arrested two people — a 17-year-old boy and a 37-year-old man — on Tuesday, and a third man in his mid-20s on Friday, on suspicion of involvement in killing the policeman. All were still being interrogated Saturday.
The dissidents insist they have no intention of stopping attacks on British security forces and the civilians who work with them — the policy that the IRA pursued during its own 1970-97 attempt to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom. Most IRA members agreed to renounce violence and disarm in 2005.

Reply:

Who isn't fighting right now? I can't think of any countries (well the French but hey you know) that aren't at war, fighting, thinking about fighting, threats of war ect. I have to ask is part of this tied into the economy? I think so....but some things have been going on for years and years. It's as if each one is in a way saying "hey look they aren't putting up with this why should we?"So many questions have answers and so many don't. Two biggest issues.... money and power. What's new!!!!