Northern Ireland (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

Post 174 being Part 1.

On the 29th he was finally sentenced:

A loyalist "supergrass" who admitted the murders of five people among hundreds of offences has had a 35-year jail term reduced to six-and-a-half years for helping the police.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-42857474

Local comment has been critical, enhanced as he is likely to be released in weeks; The Good Friday Agreement provisions apply to his crimes, as they did for many others, he is just the latest beneficiary.

[davidbfpo]

Posts 169-171 refer to previous, recent posts.

Now:

One of the British state’s most important agents inside the IRA, “Stakeknife”, has been arrested by detectives investigating 18 murders during the Northern Ireland Troubles.Republican and security sources in Belfast confirmed on Tuesday that a 72-year-old man detained by police officers working for Operation Kenova is Freddie Scappaticci.

Accused of being the IRA’s chief spycatcher, the Belfast man stands accused of being a double agent who was working for the security forces while overseeing the murder of informers within the republican movement.

Link:https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...on/ar-BBItYyq?

(Added later)

The Irish journalist Ed Moloney, now in NYC and a SME on the IRA, has a blogsite and has commented upon the arrest.
Link:https://thebrokenelbow.com/2018/01/3...s-that-follow/

[davidbfpo]

A wider commentary on Brexit and Northern Ireland has this stunning passage, with my emphasis:

As its 20th anniversary looms within weeks, after all, the agreement is not functioning, with neither the Northern Ireland assembly and executive nor the North-South Ministerial Council in being.
Indeed, what remains is the Police Service of Northern Ireland. Ironically, this is because policing was so difficult an issue in the talks leading to the agreement—going as it did, as with the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, to the heart of the contest over the state—that it was passed to an impartial independent commission to solve. Informed by the region’s human-rights lobby born of the ‘troubles’, the consequent Patten report led to the old, overwhelmingly Protestant and ‘securitised’ Royal Ulster Constabulary being transformed into a police service founded on human-rights principles and committed to neighbourhood policing. Far from adequate, it is however the one institution—despite the still hugely controversial nature of Northern Ireland’s decades of lead—still standing.

Link:https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/bre...day-agreement?

[davidbfpo]

A rare public comment by a former PIRA volunteer on the success of British intelligence infiltration; he ends with:

They didn’t come out and say that they were penetrated. Yes, the IRA volunteers knew there was penetration, as that was par for the course, but I don’t believe the volunteers on the ground knew the extent of the penetration, and to a large extent the leadership concealed the level of penetration from them.

Link:https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/cr...ltar-1-8402927

[davidbfpo]

An excellent article on the history of informants after the Haggerty case and trial recently (see previous posts).
Link:https://www.theguardian.com/news/201...get-away-with?

[davidbfpo]

There have been 158 "security-related" deaths in Northern Ireland since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, according to independent research. The majority of the deaths were murders carried out by republican and loyalist paramilitaries, who mostly targeted victims within their own communities....up until April of this year, republican paramilitaries were responsible for 74 deaths while loyalist paramilitaries were responsible for 71....There have been 68 Catholic civilians killed - 38 have been the victims of republican organisations operating within those same communities. "There's a further 22 who have been killed by loyalists and then two where attribution is not possible....But, in total, 41 loyalist paramilitaries have been killed. Every single one of them has been killed by other loyalist paramilitaries.

Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-43862294?

[davidbfpo]

Transparency of sorts after a legal action:

Police have agreed to release a secret special branch report on agent-handling during the Troubles that allegedly protected paramilitary informants from arrest. The 1980 report, drawn up by the senior MI5 officer Sir Patrick Walker, is believed to have established agent-handling practices that have since been widely criticised as prioritising intelligence-gathering over other concerns.
The Walker report was commissioned to improve intelligence penetration of paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland when IRA activity was high.

Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...rt-informants?