Tag: dolours price

Scale of the IRA’s collusion with the British state was shocking

It is too simplistic to paint collusion as something that took place between the state and loyalist paramilitaries. There is, in fact, a 40-year history of republicans toiling for the security services

In the lore of the IRA, there was traditionally no one more loathsome than the informer. This was thought to be the rare and despicable individual who would betray his comrades.

Some former members of the IRA now wonder if there were more informers inside the Provos than actual committed members.

Certainly, that appears to be true of the loyalists. The Stevens Inquiry reported that nearly every loyalist it spoke to was an agent.

Darragh McIntyre’s BBC Panorama programme last week suggested different levels of collusion between the security forces and paramilitaries.

The most common type seems to have been the protection of agents who had killed and were likely to kill again.

On occasions, RUC Special Branch knew of planned attacks, tried to intercept them, and failed.

According to the De Silva report, they often knew of plans to murder other paramilitaries and did little to prevent these.

Invented by Teads
Furthermore, De Silva found that both the Army and Special Branch were suggesting targets to agents inside paramilitary groups, specifically to the loyalist killer Brian Nelson, since the focus of De Silva’s report was the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane.

The UDA regarded Finucane as an intelligence officer for the Provisional IRA, who was engaged in money laundering.

Some in Special Branch encouraged them to target him.

No similar review of documentation has examined collusion between the state and members of the IRA – but it happened.

The De Silva report, for instance, describes efforts to protect two senior republicans.

One of them is given only a codename – ‘T/02’. The other was Gerry Adams.

When Brian Nelson revealed a plan to bomb Adams by placing a limpet mine on his black taxi during the 1987 Genral Election campaign, the Army did not trust Special Branch with the information and set up its own operation to protect him.

Later, soldiers recovered the mine.

When the UDA returned to discussing how they might kill Adams, some in Special Branch appear to have suggested that Pat Finucane would be a better target.

De Silva found that state agencies justified suggesting targets to Nelson on the grounds that these attacks would absorb the energies of the loyalists and be easier to intercept. Ultimately, lives would be saved.

But they also found that Special Branch wasn’t all that keen to warn a target if he was a ‘thorn in the side’.

And they saw Finucane as one of those, having twice before failed to alert him to threats against him.

Another factor in the planning of the murder of Pat Finucane is that Nelson feared that if yet another attack went wrong, he would be exposed as an agent.

So, he kept the planning of the attack on Finucane secret from his handlers.

The Army itself had considered the other danger; that if Nelson was too successful in hitting senior IRA members, he would quickly be exposed.

Further, the Army would be in serious trouble if one of its agents was to kill Adams, an elected MP.

The earliest suggestion of an operation being allowed to proceed to cover for an agent was the bombing attack on London by Gerry Kelly, the Price sisters and others in March 1973.

Dolours Price, one of the bomb team, said in later years that the mission had been compromised and that someone close to the planning of it in Belfast had betrayed it.

Even so, Kelly and the Price sisters and the rest of the team were not arrested until after planting their bombs.

By 1972, the IRA was realising that it was going to have to kill an awful lot of people in the Catholic community to stop intelligence leaking out about them and that’s when it hit on the idea of ‘disappearing’ suspects, rather than dumping their bodies in back alleys.

Three times they had just dumped the body and then said nothing.

That’s what they did with John Kavanagh, Martin Owens and Sam Boyd. Those killings have never been explained.

On the same day that they detained Kevin McKee and Seamus Wright to ‘disappear’ them, Provos went into the club where William Bonner was drinking and lined everyone against the wall then picked him out and shot him in the head.

Some of the informers inside the IRA continued with their republican activities. Some were, indeed committed republicans, who felt they had been compromised by the Army, or police, but still tried to protect IRA operations; in effect, deceiving both sides and trying to maintain their credibility.

A recent article in An Phoblacht, written to discredit one of the biggest-known informers, Sean O’Callaghan, acknowledged that the IRA itself sometimes knew men were informers and preferred not to harm them.

At the end of the Provo campaign, we began to get some idea not just of the degree to which the IRA had been penetrated, but to what level.

The biggest shock was that Freddie Scappaticci, who was on the IRA security team, tasked with catching informers, was working for the British.

The Police Ombudsman is now investigating several killings of alleged informers by the IRA ‘nutting squad’.

What other word than collusion better describes a state agent accusing people of informing, extracting confessions from them by torture and then killing them?

This raises the appalling prospect that many of those executed as informers were killed to protect real informers operating at a higher level.

Claims have been made by a former British Army agent that Martin McGuinness was himself an informer with the codename ‘J118’, though he has emphatically denied this and clearly his former comrades believe him, or he would have had to flee for his life.

But former Provos critical of the peace process routinely rehearse such claims against McGuinness and Adams and close relations on social media.

We do know that the head of administration in Sinn Fein, Denis Donaldson, was a police informer throughout most of the peace process.

He appears to be an example of an agent working for both sides, for he was implicated in gathering intelligence inside Stormont on members of the security forces and the Prison Service, many of whom had to move home after the scale of his spying was unearthed.

At the end of the Troubles, IRA members were afraid to go out on operations, because they didn’t trust those they were sent out with not to be informers, or spies.

This massive infiltration of the paramilitaries, combined with a failure to arrest and convict many players, including agents, derived from a type of policing and security response which prioritised intelligence over evidence.

Indeed, evidence was squandered, or destroyed, presumably to protect intelligence channels.

De Silva, who exposed more of this than anyone else, concluded, ‘that the intelligence-led security response to the Troubles did play a significant role in constraining all terrorist organisations, to the extent that they were forced to realise their aims were not achievable by violent means.

If that is so, It is a story that should be told.

With many thanks to: Malachi O’Doherty,  Belfast Telegraph for the origional story.

 

Kelly’s role highlighted in PIRA’s ‘great escape’

STATE PAPERS Belfast and Dublin

THE mass escape of 38 PIRA prisoners from the Maze Prison, near Belfast on September 25 1983 in which a prison warder was stabbed to death, is detailed in previously confidential files. Like many files in this year’s releases, that relating to the prison escape is partially closed to 2069.

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The official report claims that Gerry Kelly (Old Baily bomber), one of the PIRA escapees and now a Shame Fein MLA, shot a prison guard in the head. Confidential reports prepared for the Secretary of State Jim Priors shed new light on the event and the role of a British military guard at the prison. In a report on the events of that dramatic Sunday, penned the following day, W J Kerr, director of prison operations in the North of Ireland, described how at 16.45 hours he was informed of ‘an incident at the Maze’. He immediately proceeded to the prison where he ‘was informed that H7 Block had been taken over by armed prisoners who had hijacked the kitchen lorry and had proceeded to the main gate.’ There follows a diary of the events on that Sunday. The day began normally with prisoners unlocked for breakfast and exercise. At 11.15 Fr Rooney, the Catholic chaplain, celebrated Mass in the H Block with 54 prisoners in attendence. Dinner was served at 12.15 hours after which all prisoners were returned to their cells. Suddenly at 14.45 hours prisoners in H Block 7 overpowered staff on duty and took control of the block. Various weapons were used including guns.

The prisoners commandeered the prison meals delivery van and 38 prisoners forced the prison officer driver to drive the van from the block through segment gates one and eight to the prison main gate. The escapees then overpowered the staff on duty at the gate and, although eventually the alam was raised, they managed to get out of the prison proper. The prisoners at this point disappeared and fled in different directions.’ Among the prisoners in H7 were Gerry Kelly, aged 30, (the present Shame Fein MLA for North Belfast) and Brendan ‘Bic’ McFarlane who had been a spokesman for the hunger strikers during the 1981 Hunger Strike. Kelly had been convicted at Winchester in 1973, along with Marian Price/Mc Glincy and Dolours Price (The Price Sisters) and Hugh Feeney, for setting off car bombs in London. In all he had made four previous escape attempts. McFarlane (then 31), described in the file as ‘a PIRA leader deeply involved in the organisation’ was sentenced to five life terms for the 1975 bombing of the Bayardo Bar on the Shankill Road in which five people died. The sequence of events at the prison began when prisoner Mead overpowered a senior officer while ‘Prisoner Storey entered the principal officer’s office carrying a gun and pointed it at the senior officer’s head.’ Storey then took charge, “forcing the officer to answer the telephone in a normal manner”. Meanwhile, other officers were being overpowered and tied up throughout the H Block. “Officer Leak was in the toilet when he heard two shots. He left [to see] Prisoner 58  [Gerry Kelly] pointing a pistol into the control room. “Kelly turned the gun on Leak and forced him into the officers’ tea room. Leak was tied up and hooded. Kerr added at this point: “This would establish that prisoner Kelly shot officer Adams who was on duty in the control. It is not clear if the control grille was locked before Mr Adams was shot.” As the IRA inmates gradually seized control of the wings they approached the inner gates where ‘Bic’ McFarlane told the prison guard that he had been “sent to clean the sentry box”. The officer was then overpowered  by armed prisoners. Meanwhile, officer McLaughlin was on duty as kitchen van driver and at 15.25 hours had passed through the lock gates of H Block to deliver afternoon tea. “As officer McLaughlin started to unload the meal from the van, prisoner Storey put a gun to his head and forced him into the medical inspection room.

“Whilst there he was threatened by prisoner [Gerry] Kelly who told him to do as he was told or he would be ‘blown away’.” McLaughlin was then forced to drive the van from the block to the main gate through the inner gates. According to the report the van proceeded through the first gate unchallenged to a parking lot where most of the uniformed prisoners ddisembarked. At the main gates they seized the controls and got outside. However, Kerr stressed, the staff in the Tally Lodge “resisted strongly and in the ensuing affray one officer was stabbed and died shortly afterwards. “By this time the alarm had been raised and two officers sitting in their cars outside the gate drove into the area, blocking the exit.” In the resulting melee 10 escapees were captured including a man called Murray who was wounded by an army sentry in a watch-tower. At the time of the report on 26 September, 21 inmates remained “unlawfully at large”. In his conclusion, Kerr highlighted a number of aspects of the PIRA escape which gave him concern. In particular, the fact that the inmates were in possession of firearms suggested that they and their supporters outside were able to breach the security measures at the Maze. He was particularly alarmed at the ease with which prisoners were able to gain access to the secure entrance into the blocks and the main gates. He also questioned how the escaping prisoners were allowed to drive a hijacked vehicle through two inner gates without being challenged and why five officers in H Block 7 were permitted to be off their posts at the same time. Claims by the DUP leader, Ian Paisley that the military guard had failed to open fire prompted a memo to the secretary of state from an NIO official, P W J Buxton on September 28 1983 on the reaction of the soldiers who formed a 150-strong prison guard. He reported that in the watchtower on the main gate had shot an escaper whom he had just seen shot a prison officer. The position of a soldier shooting escapers was quite clear, Buxton noted; ‘the Yellow Card’ applied. Thus, unless the escaper is presenting a direct threat to life, or has just killed or injured someone and there was no other way of arresting, he is not authorised to shoot.

With many thanks to: Eamon Phoenix, The Irish News.

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SHAME FEIN PRESIDENT GERRY ADAMS DENIES KILLINGS ROLE

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SHAME FEIN leader Gerry Adams has revealed he was in North Louth when farmer Tom Oliver was abducted and murdered by the Provisional IRA. However, Mr Adams rejected as a “reprehensible accusation” a claim that he had been the sole member of the ‘Court of Appeal’ that decided Mr Oliver’s fate.

The 37-year-old victim, from Riverstown on the Cooley Peninsula, was found shot dead in Belleeks, Co Armagh, in July 1991. Before his murder, the father-of-seven had been tortured by the IRA who wrongly claimed he was a Garda informer. At one time, a relative of Mr Oliver told reporters it appeared that the killers had “thumped him senceless til he’d no idea where he was or what he was saying”. Speaking to RTE‘s Prime Time, Mr Adams admitted that he had been “In the Cooleys” when the farmer was taken and killed. He said he had been on holidays with his family and had had no involvment in the events that led to Mr Oliver’s death. Mr Adams said the killing was “to be condemned” but he criticised presenter Mariam O’Callaghan for suggesting he had played any role. The Louth TD also rejected claims by former Provisional IRA members Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes that he had a role in the 1972 murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville. Mr Adams said his accusers, both now dead, were “telling lies” because they “thought I had sold out. They thought I was a traitor”.

With many thanks to : Valerie Robinson (Southern Correspondent), Irish News.

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Hot Pursuit

I accuse you of murder! And I will not rest until I bring you to justice! But, anyway, you’re free to leave. No big deal.

—–

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors will walk into an appellate court in Boston and tell a panel of judges that they are seeking evidence in an exceptionally serious crime, the murder of a widowed mother of ten who was taken from her home in Belfast and shot in the back of the head by members of the Provisional IRA. Because they are aiding police officials in the United Kingdom with such an important investigation, they will sound a note of urgency: The matter before the courts must be brought to a conclusion, because murderers must be brought to justice.

They will be full of shit.

There was a murder, and it was awful. A widowed mother was killed, and ten children were left with no parents. But is there amurder investigation underway? Is the Police Service of Northern Ireland working to bring killers to justice?

I’ve said before that you should start thinking about this claim from the moment in 1972 when McConville was taken from her home to be killed. What then? Nothing much. The police have acknowledged that they didn’t try to solve her murder until the 1990s, and even then they didn’t try especially hard, and then finally they admitted that they probably weren’t going to make a case in such an old murder that would survive in a courtroom. Now it’s 2012, and there’s somehow a serious criminal investigation underway.

But this time, let’s start the story somewhere else: February 21, 2010. That’s the date a newspaper in Northern Ireland printed a story alleging that former IRA member Dolours Price — as the paper soberly put it, a “TERRORIST IN A MINI-SKIRT” — had admitted that she drove McConville to her death. Not only that, added the Sunday Life, but she was known to have told the story to researchers at “Boston University,” which is a solid fifty percent correct. (The story isn’t online at the newspaper’s website, but you can see page scans here.)

And so the Police Service of Northern Ireland, alerted to the confession of an accomplice to murder, came roaring to life and began their desperate quest to win justice in the case of Jean McConville. Game on — justice was awake and on the hunt. The first set of interviews Boston College will potentially give up to the government when the legal appeals are over are the interviews conducted with Dolours Price. Her newspaper confession is bringing the day of legal reckoning ever closer. The newly tireless detectives have almost got their target.

Jean McConville was abducted and murdered in 1972Jean McConville

There are just a few problems with that picture, and start with the fact that the Sunday Life story ran more than a year before anyone got around to asking for subpoenas of the Boston College material. Think about this: A newspaper said on February 21, 2010, that a particular person had driven a murder victim to her death, and that there was more information available in a university archive. The first subpoenas arrived at the university archive in May, 2011. You can almost taste the urgency.

Better yet: In August, 2010 — several months after the Sunday Life story named her as an accomplice in Jean McConville’s murder — Dolours Price was in a courtroom in Northern Ireland, facing criminal charges. Here’s the story on the BBC website. Having confessed to her role in the McConville murder in a published interview, causing the police in Northern Ireland to lock onto her with their laser focus and their passion for justice, Price found herself in the hands of the criminal justice system in the very place where she was known for her role in an infamous political killing. They had her, in the flesh, the IRA terrorist who named Gerry Adams as her commander in a murder she had directly facilitated.

So go read the BBC story. What happened when the woman who drove Jean McConville to her death appeared in a courtroom in Northern Ireland? This: “Convicted Old Bailey bomber Dolours Price has been acquitted of a charge of shoplifting at Newry Magistrates Court.” The end. Terrorist in a mini-skirt!

Months after the Sunday Life story identified Price’s role in McConville’s death, nobody in the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland cared or tried to do anything about it. She went and stood in a courtroom, and no one mentioned the whole “murder of a widowed mother of ten at Gerry Adams’ command” thing. They yawned at her shoplifting charge and sent her home. Because they were so aggressively pursuing it, you see.

In its amicus brief in the legal appeal, the ACLU of Massachusetts charged that the DOJ was facilitating a political investigation, a course that could lead the United States government into ever-more-horrible involvement in appalling political repression overseas. When a foreign government asks for help gathering evidence against political organizations like the IRA, the U.S. government should think carefully about what they’re being asked to do, and the courts should take a close look at the decisions the Justice Department makes.

Here, again, is the government’s most recent brief in the Belfast Project appeal. Look at pg. 57, and let’s go ahead and add emphasis to make this easy:

Finally, nowhere in ACLUM’s argument is there a recognition that a request by a foreign sovereign under a treaty regarding a sensitive and confidential criminal matter is any different than a civil request by a private party in a mundane business matter. ACLUM’s argument, if taken to its logical conclusion, would subject even the most sensitive and urgent law enforcement requests to litigation and delay by persons with a deeply felt, but tangential interest in such a criminal investigation. Under ACLUM’s reading of §3512, criminal defendants in foreign countries, and others who disagree with the foreign policies of the United States, could tie sensitive and urgent international criminal investigations in legal knots.

There is no “sensitive and urgent” criminal investigation. The police in Northern Ireland have had forty years to investigate Jean McConville’s murder, and they have not. They had several months between the publication of a story saying that Dolours Price had driven McConville to her death and the moment when she stood in a courtroom and was available for an easy arrest. They had a year to get around to asking for subpoenas of the Boston College interviews.

Someone needs to apply some skepticism to the government’s framing of these subpoenas. Let’s hope the First Circuit manages the task.

RE-POSTED ON BEHALF OF My Photo  

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Explosive Troubles interviews set to surface?

Brendan Hughes
Brendan Hughes was one of the former IRA men who took part in the project
 
In the bowels of the Burns library at Boston College, some of the most interesting secrets of the peace process, and the violence that preceded it, are held in secure storage.
 

Among the documents are the details of what happened during the decommissioning process.

The British and Irish governments agreed that Boston College, with its enduring interest in Northern Ireland, would be a suitable and safe long-term repository for the controversial papers.

Also held there are a series of candid, confessional interviews with former loyalist and republican paramilitaries, in which they chronicle their involvement in the Troubles, and name names.

The ‘Belfast Project’, was designed to become an oral history of the Troubles, directed by the writer and journalist Ed Moloney, with the interviews carried out by two researchers.

Loyalists were recorded by Wilson McArthur, republicans by the former IRA prisoner Dr Anthony McIntyre, who has since become a writer and academic.

The deal was this: The former terrorists would tell their stories in secret, on the understanding that the recordings and transcripts would only be made public after their deaths.

Their testimonies, according to Boston College, would serve as a historic tool from which the mistakes of the past could be better understood.

Two of those interviewed, David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, and the former IRA Commander Brendan Hughes have since died.

Their stories formed the backbone of a book by the project director, Ed Moloney, and of a television documentary.

In those Hughes made some frank admissions.

He said that he had organised ‘Bloody Friday’, the day on which the IRA detonated over 19 car bombs in Belfast in the space of an hour.

Nine people were killed, 130 were injured. Images of police officers shovelling the mutilated bodies of the victims into bags are some of the most enduring of the Troubles.

Hughes also spoke of his once close friend, the Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams.

Hughes named him as overall commander of the IRA’s Belfast brigade.

He also claimed that Mr Adams had controlled his own squad within the IRA, known by the organisation as “the unknowns”.

This, according to Hughes, was the group responsible for the ‘Disappeared’, those who were kidnapped, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA.

Gerry Adams
Gerry Adams has said he has nothing to fear over the tapes

Mr Adams has strenuously denied the claims, and has pointed out that he and Brendan Hughes came to differ on the route Sinn Fein was taking.

In the latter years of his life Hughes had become an ardent critic of his former friend.

However, another former IRA member later gave an interview to a newspaper journalist, in which she admitted that she had also taken part in the ‘Belfast Project’.

Dolours Price had been one of the IRA gang that blew up the Old Bailey in 1973.

In that interview, she allegedly claimed to have been the person who drove one of the Disappeared to her death in 1972.

Jean McConville was a west Belfast-based mother of 10, who had been accused by the IRA of passing information to the British.

Her remains were found buried on a beach in the Irish Republic, 30 years after she went missing.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland says that it has re-opened the inquiry into Mrs McConville’s murder, and on that basis is seeking the transcripts of the interview Dolours Price apparently gave to Anthony McIntyre and Boston College.

Initial court decisions in the United States have accepted the PSNI’s interest as legitimate, and the tapes of the Price interview and seven others deemed pertinent to an investigation into the disappeared are now in the hands of the US federal court.

On Wednesday, Dr McIntyre and Ed Moloney will make their final arguments to three appeal judges in a bid to have those interviews withheld from the police.

They say that it breaches the agreement struck with the interviewees, that it is a violation of their right to protect their sources, and that any hand-over of the material will place them in danger of attack by republicans.

Boston College is also appealing the decision to hand over the tapes, but separately.

The college says that it has no grounds to protect the anonymity of Dolours Price, given that she effectively ‘outed’ herself in the newspaper interview.

In June, Boston College will however try to stop the handover of seven other IRA interviews, querying their value to any investigation into the disappeared.

All of this has led to a bitter dispute between the researchers on the project, and the college, both of whom accuse the other of bad faith.

Boston College says that it agreed to protect the interviewees as far as the law would allow, and that Dolours Price exhausted their ability to do so by her admissions.

Ed Moloney and Anthony McIntyre feel that Boston College folded without a fight, and that they have been let down by their former employers.

For his part Mr Adams insists he has nothing to fear from any disclosure, and denies all of the accusations levelled at him.

WITH MANY THANKS TO : Andy Martin BBC News.

 

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How a noble exercise became a political act

How a noble exercise became a political act

A federal appeals judge will decide next week whether to overrule a court decision to approve the release of IRA statements made to a Jesuit university in the city

IT HAS BEEN A YEAR since the subpoena from the US attorney’s office arrived on the august campus of Boston College, an annus horribilis for the Jesuit university founded by Irish immigrants a century and a half ago.

Boston College has spent considerable time and resources building a reputation for being not just an academic observer but also an active facilitator of the Northern Ireland peace process. It has hosted, at its own expense, scores of politicians, civil servants, journalists and others from Northern Ireland and the Republic over the years. Its Dublin office, overlooking St Stephen’s Green, frequently welcomed visitors from the North. And among US universities its Irish studies programme was considered the most plugged-in and influential.

It was in that spirit, and with the belief that the Belfast Agreement of 1998 had ushered in a new era of reconciliation and reflection, that Boston College embarked on an ambitious effort to collect the oral histories of paramilitaries on both sides of the divide. Those former paramilitaries recorded their stories with the understanding that they wouldn’t be made public until after they died.

But that subpoena, delivered by US prosecutors acting on behalf of British authorities, has put everything at risk, including Boston College’s well-earned reputation for being a force for good in the peace process. What began as an academic exercise with noble intentions has degenerated into the sort of fingerpointing and recrimination that dogged the North for so long.

US prosecutors want any and all information contained in the oral histories about the 1972 disappearance and murder of Jean McConville, a Belfast widow whose 10 children were scattered after the IRA accused her of informing. At least two of the 26 former IRA members interviewed for the project accused the Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams of giving the order to kill McConville, a charge Adams categorically denies. A judge has ruled that seven other interviews contain information germane to a PSNI investigation into McConville’s murder and should be turned over.

On Wednesday, a federal appeals court in Boston will hear arguments from the researchers Boston College hired to gather the oral histories.

It is, according to lawyers, the last, best chance to preserve the confidentiality that the former paramilitaries who told their stories believed they had. But it is a legal effort separate and apart from Boston College.

When the US government first demanded access to just two of the oral histories, the university and its researchers, the journalist and author Ed Moloney and the former IRA prisoner turned academic and writer Anthony McIntyre, were unified in their opposition to what they called a cynical government fishing expedition. The idea that an American university was being used as an intelligence or evidence gathering arm of a foreign government was widely considered outrageous.

But there were cracks in that unified front from the beginning. Boston College officials were keen to address the matter quietly, and were miffed when Moloney, the longtime Belfast-based journalist now living in New York, helped the New York Times break the news about the subpoena.

There was an even more fundamental disagreement. Moloney and McIntyre saw the demand for the records as a crass political act, one meant to embarrass if not prosecute Adams after his election to the Dáil. They believed the legal fight against it should be just as political, especially given the role the US played in brokering the Belfast Agreement. Boston College’s lawyers took a different tack, and when they agreed to let a federal judge review some of the records in private, the break between the two sides was irreparable. Moloney and McIntyre accused Boston College of folding without a fight, of abandoning them and those they interviewed without using its considerable resources to stand up to the US justice department and, by extension, the British government.

College officials say they had no choice, given that the initial demand was for the accounts of Brendan Hughes and Dolours Price. Hughes had died in 2008, and so with him did the pledge of confidentiality.

Price, meanwhile, had given an interview to the Irish News in Belfast, saying she had made her allegations against Adams known to Boston College, in effect outing herself.

Even before the college agreed to let US district judge William Young examine the archive in private to determine what should be turned over to authorities, Moloney and McIntyre had concluded the college’s interests were not theirs and mounted their own defence, stressing the danger they said McIntyre and his family, those interviewed and the peace process itself would face if the oral histories were made public.

Slowly but surely, Moloney and McIntyre have attracted a stable of prominent supporters. Earlier this year, McIntyre’s wife, Carrie, an American citizen, spent time in Washington DC, New York and Boston, pleading with politicians and Irish-American groups for backing. The lobbying paid off, nowhere more prominently than with Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee. Kerry has asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to block the subpoena on the grounds that turning over the records to UK authorities undermines US foreign policy.

Last week, the New York senator Charles Schumer joined the chorus, saying the records grab contravenes “the spirit of the Good Friday Accords . . . Many have taken enormous risks in the name of moving Northern Ireland away from war and towards peace, and requests like this can have the effect of undermining that effort,” Schumer said in a letter to Clinton and the US attorney general, Eric Holder.

Kerry and Schumer say the treaty between the US and UK that authorities have cited in demanding information relevant to a criminal investigation “is not intended to reopen issues addressed in the Belfast Agreement, or to impede any further efforts to resolve conflicts in Northern Ireland”.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has also filed a brief in support of Moloney and McIntyre. Harvey Silverglate, a well-known civil-liberties lawyer who first raised the prospect of the civil liberties union getting involved, is critical of the college. “Boston College’s haphazard and half-hearted defence of the fundamental importance of academic freedom has embarrassed the institution, threatens to harm academics everywhere and, not so incidentally, endangers the lives of people brave enough to reveal, for posterity, important historical truths.”

Silverglate suggests the problem in crafting a unified front is philosophical. He says no one at the college was willing to risk legal sanction, including jail, to defy government intrusion.

Journalists, he said, consider doing such things a badge of honour.

Moloney, in fact, stared down police in Northern Ireland when threatened with jail if he didn’t turn over his notes about a murder more than a decade ago. He refused, and the police eventually backed down.

Jack Dunn, a Boston College spokesman, declined to respond to Silverglate’s charges. He said the college had handed over the material of Hughes and Price because it had no legal recourse but that it was still fighting an order to turn over seven other IRA interviews.

It is unclear whether all this new-found support for Moloney and McIntyre will convince the appeals court to overrule the decision by a district judge to approve the release of the records to the British government.

But it’s their only shot.

WITH MANY THANKS TO : The Irish Times.com, KEVIN CULLEN in Boston.

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FREE THE IRISH MARIAN PRICE

A Chairde there are 4,225 people petitioning for Marian Price at the following CAUSES on Facebook, which have been censored and  the active administrators all removed, censored or blocked by British intelligence and their agents in Ireland. We will carry on with this petition here on CARE2.

British intelligence in Ireland whose activities in mentored, state sponsored loyalist assassination and murder is rarely documented but now they have gone rogue. Besides being involved in drug rackets all over Ireland, they are engaged in politically shaping all political parties and their agendas on all of the island.

While Labour has been bought and paid for by the unions who are already compromised, Fine Gael, bought and paid for by the culchies and Fianna Fail bought and paid for by everybody, their latest projected replacement PSF are paid and run by British intelligence. 

The British Intelligence-Industrial-War complex in Ireland, have a vested interest in prolonging the last 40 years of troubles with the internment of traditional Irish republicans like Marian Price and other Irish republicans released under the Weston Park part of the peace agreement as provocation.

 The Process has now been broken in no uncertain terms by the Tories with the secret collaboration of Provisional Sinn Fein, who have a vested interest in silencing all alternative peace formulae other than their own monopoly, bringing Ireland back into the British Commonwealth to conclude the process. 

 The Political internment of Marian Price without trial is a critical part and provocative part of this. Pseudo republican groups, along with modern media techniques, such as astroturfing, drug-wars, smear, dis-information, provocateurs, division, are all Kitson tools, which are part of British intelligence techniques and their media war on all matters genuinely Irish in Ireland currently. 

 The activities of British Intelligence Gone Rogue, are not confined to Ireland, even their own Baroness Thatcher would accept their control of the British media is the real issue hidden by the prosecution of Murdoch, with their Tribunal window dressing. 

The following are just some of the CAUSES on Facebook censored as a result of the work of their agents.

STOP THE RAPE OF MARIAN PRICE

Members 1,711

BRITISH MEDIA CENSORSHIP OF IRELAND & MARIAN PRICE

Members 315

BBC DEMOCRACY LIVE MARIAN PRICE DEBATE IS SECTARIAN BIGOTRY(Cause)

Members 270

BRITISH CENSORED CAUSE TO STOP TORTURE OF MARIAN PRICE 1,549 MEMBERS RISES AGAIN

Members 570

Join 4,000+ Petitions on International Women’s Day FREE INTERNED MARIAN PRICE ! 

Members 166

FREE PRICE in British Occupied Ireland(Cause)

Members 458

FREE INTERNED INNOCENT IRISH ANGEL IN BRITISH OCCUPIED IRELAND

Members 635

A QUESTION OF HONOUR ?..your..ahem..majesty ?

In 1981, the wishes of hunger strikers, including IRA prisoner Bobby Sands MP, were respected and doctors supervised political death-fasts in Occupied Ireland by political prisoners demanding their international rights as Irish POWs refused by Margaret Thatcher. However Marian Price and her sister Dolours Price who were on hunger strike for 200 days were force fed 400 times while their comrades Michael Gaughan and Frank Stagg died, which Marian described as follows:
“Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can’t struggle,” says Price.

“You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can’t move. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer – orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You’re in control of nothing. You’re terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won’t be able to let them know because you can’t speak or move. You’re frightened you’ll choke to death. “Most modern doctors conclude that forcible feeding is a form of torture. The intention, however by the British to cover situations in which prisoners are repeatedly tortured and have attempted to die by hunger-strike to avoid the continuation of their torture. Just as doctors are sometimes advised not to revive Irish political prisoners simply to allow their torture to continue, they are advised not to force-feed prisoners so that they can be maltreated and interrogated. The European Convention on Human Rights prohibits “degrading” treatment in Article 3. The patient’s right to refuse treatment should be respected.

In 1980 Marian Price received the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and was freed on humanitarian grounds after suffering from anorexia nervosa in 1981, as a direct result of being force fed by the British. Marian Price a vocal opponent of the Bad Friday Agreement has said: “It is not, certainly not, what I went to prison for.” On 15 May 2011, the un-elected Secretary of State for Occupied Ireland Owen Paterson smashed the Peace agreement and broke the Royal Prerogative by revoking her release from prison.

Her detention has been described as ‘de facto internment’ by Provisional Sinn Fein. Marian was imprisoned in solitary confinement in the all male prison of Maghaberry for what the British have termed operational reason but what was subsequently leaked, that in fact the British intended to force feed Marian again in the hospital wing of the prison, where she was politically interned in solitary confinement for 300 days of what the UN have called torture.
Marian’s lawyer, Peter Corrigan has told a court: “As part of that application we had written to the NIO seeking a copy of the actual pardon that was conferred on the defendant in 1981. To this date the NIO still have not served that important document on us, and it is central to us making an abuse of process application.”

The defence case is that terms of the pardon covered all of the offences for which Price was convicted in 1974, Mr Corrigan added. Her lawyers are seeking to establish there was no power for the pardon to be revoked. The judge emphasized that any documents required for a defence should be provided by the British who are accused of abuse of process as usual in Occupied Ireland. Meanwhile Marian’s other comrades continue to be tortured daily under the pretence of strip searching in the British gaol.

Twice, a judge with the precise same intelligence reports as the English Secretary of State ordered she be released on bail immediately as she was no threat to the public. The 58 year old Marian has publicly stated her days as a militant activist are long gone but she cannot condemn young people who fight to remove the British criminals from Occupied Ireland. However each and every time the Queen’s unelected Englishman has overruled the judge and ordered Marian Price be interned without trial. His excuse was that he was revoking her parole but Marian was not on parole because she received a royal pardon or the “Royal Prerogative of Mercy” when she was freed in 1980. She was then at death’s door from a hunger strike. She was force-fed more than 400 times on a hunger strike.

This unelected English autocrat in Occupied Ireland now says that the much publicized pardon which was common knowledge “cannot be located,” that it either has been lost or shredded. Marian’s lawyer Peter Corrigan told a public meeting that it is the only time in the history of Royal Prerogatives of Mercy that a pardon has been mislaid. Monsignor Raymond Murray a respected veteran human rights campaigner and spiritual chaplain, said, “You can draw your own conclusions.” Marian has been in solitary confinement for more than 300 days. The UN Spokesperson on Torture has said solitary confinement for more than 15 days is torture. Marian is locked in her cell 21 hours a day with a camera. She has no privacy because prison staff constantly go in and out of her cell. Male prison guards shine a light in her face at night so she can’t sleep.

Marian says she feels like she is “in a zoo.” Her husband, Jerry McGlinchey, says that he is “very, very worried” about her health. She has never recovered from her previous force-feeding, she suffers from such severe arthritis that she can’t open her hand. He believes her health will get worse while she is in solitary confinement. The Irish civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey has told a meeting in Belfast, “From the government’s point of view it is a clear message that no dissent will be tolerated. You challenge the status quo at your peril.”
This internment without trial coupled with British sponsored or mentored murder of Human rights lawyers in occupied Ireland, along with blanket censorship, political paramilitary policing, prisoner torture has made post process Occupied Ireland a brutal military state for Irish people in their own land.

Marian Price may be a political prisoner of conscience in a British hell hole in Occupied Ireland for the rest of her life without the help of people who care. She is not the only one there are many more political prisoners of conscience in Ireland who were brave enough to speak out against British brutality and occupation.
This unelected English tyrant in Ireland, Owen Paterson can be e-mailed at patersono@parliament.uk to tell him to free Marian Price immediately. You may also join the other 4,225 petitioning on CAUSES Facebook to Organise, Agitate, Educate by going to a Bernadette McAliskey VIDEO AND OTHER IMPORTANT LINKS – http://bit.ly/MarianPriceLinks

PLEASE FOLLOW THIS LINK AND SHOW YOUR SUPPORT ” SIGN THIS PETITION BELOW THANKYOU ” ….

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/free-the-irish-marian-price/ 

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