INLA: Six arrested in paramilitary operation released without any charges

volunteers-of-the-irish-national-liberation-army-or-inla-gather-for-a-military-parade-in-belfast-1302597806.jpg

Six men arrested as part of a police investigation into republican paramilitary group (its a pity they don’t put the same effort into loyalist paramilitary activity, Pitt Park for example) the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) have been released without any charges.

They were arrested in the Glen Road area of west Belfast on Tuesday night.

The men, aged 28, 36, 39, 42, 47 and 54, were released on bail on Thursday pending further enquiries, police said.

In making the arrests, officers used stun grenades and the Police Ombudsman has been informed.

http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/08/six-arrested-as-police-use-stun.html?m=1

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-62591516

Six arrested as police use stun grenades at home in west Belfast.

http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/08/six-arrested-as-police-use-stun.html

‘Cash seized in Omagh raid linked to INLA paramilitaries ‘.

http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/07/cash-seized-in-omagh-raid-linked-to.html

Irish National Liberation Army

Take a look at this post… ‘THATCHER’S statue paint-bombed in the second attack – how long will it take before they realise its not wanted in GB or anywhere else. ‘.

http://seachranaidhe-irishandproud.blogspot.com/2022/06/thatchers-statue-paint-bombed-in-second.html

Unconditional release for Derry man arrested under terrorism legislation | Madden & Finucane Solicitors

https://madden-finucane.com/2021/06/03/unconditional-release-for-derry-man-arrested-under-terrorism-legislation/

Sinister picture of republican ‘gunman’ near Derry’s Bogside bonfires

Photographs have emerged purporting to show an armed republican on the streets of Derry last week.

Follow this link to find out more: https://photos.app.goo.gl/fYEXgs1PBgtJrhN6 a masked man with what appears to be a rifle on the streets of Co Derry

Captured by French politics PhD student Hadrien Holstein, the grainy pictures show a masked man posing with what appears to be a rifle close to the controversial Bogside bonfire.
Scrawled on a gable wall behind the shadowy figure was the one-word slogan ‘INLA’. The pictures were taken late on Thursday night, as the bonfire was under construction. Mr Holstein (26), a doctoral student at the University of Paris-Nanterre, has been researching Irish Republicinism for the past five years, and has published several academic papers on the subject. Speaking to the Belfast Telegraph last night, the student said the gunman had emerged from the shadows close to the bonfire and had issued a chilling threat to the security forces.

Follow this link to find out more: https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3311928125553605&id=100002093504519&set=a.439170419496071&source=48

“I was covering for my own work the bonfire on the Bogside. “I decided to spend some moments during the night at the bonfire,” the student said. “And at one moment, someone made me a sign, called me to come over – and there was the gunman.” The PhD student asked the gunman if he could take a photograph. “He said OK, and made a short statement,” he said. “He said he was from the Republican Movement, Derry Brigade. “I asked for a precious group, but he didn’t reply. “He said he was looking for RUC child abusers, and said all Crown Forces are legitimate targets. “Then he turned away and went back to where he had come from.” 

Members of the INLA (Irish National Liberation Army) with credit to An Sionnach Fionn for the original photograph

The incident took place around midnight on Thursday, according to Mr Holstein’s account of the incident. The student said he had not spoken to police about the incident, and nor did he plan to. “My PhD is mainly about the republicans,” he said. “If I contact the police, you know, it is the end of my work, my PhD. “Nobody would speak to me again, so I decided not to do it.” Asked if he was frightened by what he saw, the student said: “At the beginning, yes, because it was the first time I saw a gun. “But in the end I was more stressed than frightened. “When I understand it was OK in a way, that I could be safe and just taking a picture, I was more stressed.” He accepted that the terrorists may have been using him as a channel to send a message to the outside world. I think they knew I was a Frenchman,” the PhD student said. “I’m not 100% sure but I suppose they were expecting that I contact the media to make coverage, it was accepted I’d make publicity. “I’m French, I’m not part of the community, so they saw me as an external person.”

Last night, Foyle DUP MLA Gary Middleton said the emergence of the terrorist image was “disturbing”. “It’s clearly very sinister,” the MLA told the Belfast Telegraph. “We know over the weekend, and with the burning of images of the Queen and poppy wreaths, it has caused a lot of upset and hurt right across the community. “And the appearance of what appears to be a gunman will no doubt strike fear into that particular community.” He said the incident had echoes of the scenes leading up to the murder in the city of journalist Lyra McKee a year ago. “It’s worrying, given the fact a young journalist lost their life on the city’s streets due to a gunman. 

That image represents a huge step backwards in terms of community relations and the development of the peaceful society that we all want.” Mr Middleton called on those involved to “get off the backs” of the community because “it’s clear that they are not wanted”, and said that anyone with any information on the gunman should contact the PSNI/RUC as soon as possible. This year Derry bonfires have come in for heavy criticism from senior Sinn Féin figures, with deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill describing them as “displays of hate”. The PSNI/RUC said last night they had no reports of the Bogside gunman incident.

With many thanks to the: Belfast Telegraph and David Young for the original story 

Marty McElkearney – TPQ

https://www.thepensivequill.com/2019/12/marty-mcelkearney.html?m=1

INLA killer’s funeral told he helped find Disappeared vitim

https://www-belfastlive-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.belfastlive.co.uk/news/belfast-news/shots-fired-west-belfast-display-16305180.amp?amp_js_v=a2&amp_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQCCAE%3D

‘Key role’ in recovery

Mr Seamus Ruddy, who was one of the disappeared secretly buried by the INLA in France 2017

of murdered Ruddy’s remains

FORMER INLA prisoner Martin McElkerney “played a key role in the recovery of the remains of Disappeared victim Seamus Ruddy, mourners have been told. Several thousand people lined the streets of West Belfast’s Divis area yesterday as the coffin, draped in a Starry Plough Flag and flanked by a colour party of masked men, made its way to St Peter’s Cathedral.

Following Requiem Mass the cortège walked the three miles to Milltown Cemetery, where a much smaller gathering heard tributes. Among those to address the crowd was Strabane Republican Willie Gallagher, who said McElkerney “held senior positions” in the Republican Socialist Movement throughout his life.

Willie Gallagher, Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP),He said he had been willing to take on any any task and “despite medical difficulties at the time, stepped forward and helped bring closure to the Ruddy family – ending a sad chapter for us all”.

He said he had been willing to take on any task and ” despite medical difficulties at the time, stepped forward and helped bring closure to the Ruddy family – ending a sad chapter for us all”. The remains of Seamus Ruddy (32), from Newry, we’re found at Pont-de-l’Arche, near Rouen in northern France in May 2017.

He had been abducted in Paris in 1985 where he had been living with his partner and was murdered and secretly buried. It is believed he was murdered amid a dispute with INLA members about an arms dump. The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains eventually recovered Mr Ruddy’s remains following information provided by the INLA. McElkerney died in hospital last Friday following a shooting incident in Milltown Cemetery.

He was sentenced to three life terms for his part in an INLA bombing that killed Kevin Valliday (11), Stephen Bennett (14) and Lance Bombardier Kevin Waller (20) at the Divis Flats complex in West Belfast in 1982 and was released from prison in 2000 under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.

Fr Gary Donegan told mourners that McElkerney “became aware that the choices he made in life had significant and lasting consequences for others, including his family”.

Criticism of ‘show of strength’ as thousands attend

Fr Gary Donegan, who is a friend of the family, said the ” loss of many friends in the conflict had a profound influence on Martin’s decision to get directly involved in what is euphemistically referred to as ‘the Troubles’.

“Those were sad and difficult times, and are hardly recognisable 21 years after the Good Friday Agreement which saw Martin released from Long Kesh after a decade and a half of incarceration. “Martin became aware that the choices he made in life had significant and lasting consequences for others, including his family.

“Following Martin’s death his organs were donated so that others might have life.” Among the mourners we’re representives from various Republican political groups. One of 13 children, Martin McElkerney’s family are well known in West Belfast, with Fr Donegan,

Fr Gary Donegan, pictured here in Ardoyne

pictured, paying tribute to his mother Eileen. “To witness the love of Eileen for her son Martin, and then to realise that God’s love is much greater, how can we not be in awe of God’s mercy in this sacred place that is St Peter’s,” he said. Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly, who is a brother-in-law of the deceased, attended the funeral and was joined by party colleague Carál Ní Chuilín.

MLA Carál Ní Chuilín attended the funeral along with Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly

After Requiem Mass the coffin, draped in a Starry Plough flag with a baret and gloves on top and flanked by an INLA colour party – some of whom wore masks – made its way the three miles from Albert Street to Milltown Cemetery. It stopped several times, including outside Costello House, the Falls Road headquarters of the IRSP, with whom McElkerney played a senior role right up until his death.

Police Land Rovers filmed the procession from a distance and a spotter plane, rarely used in the North of Ireland, circled overhead throughout the funeral. As the cortège reached Milltown a lone Piper played music before members of the IRSP gathered for a short oration at the INLA plot. By this stage the number of mourners had reduced to several hundred.

McElkerney was sentenced to three life terms for his part in an INLA bomb that killed Kevin Valliday (11), Stephen Bennett (14) and Lance Bombardier Kevin Waller (20) at the Divis Flats complex in West Belfast in 1982. During the hunger strike years of the 1980’s. Willie Gallagher (pictured above) of the IRSP addressed mourners and criticised media coverage of his friend’s death, saying that far from being isolated he was surrounded by family and friends.

He also said there was not enough support for those struggling in a society transitioning out of conflict. Superintendent Lorraine Dobson on Thursday night said police had “a proportionate operation in place today which included the use of evidence gathering equipment”. “All evidence will now be reviewed by specialist officers and any offences detected will be investigated”.

On Monday a masked man fired a volly of shots in the air from an automatic rifle as McElkerney’s body was returned to his home in the Divis area of Belfast. A guard of honour was also formed in the street outside his home. Unionists have called for investigations into both the shooting and the funeral display, saying it appeared to be a “sinister show of strength”.

Ulster Unionist Party MLA Doug Beattie said: “You have to wonder if there is something else going on here and is this group sending a message that they are still here and still able to bring large numbers of people onto the streets.

“If this organisation is on ceasefire why are young men in the colour party? “There is clearly recruitment going on and that is very worrying. “I’ve written to both the Secretary of State (who won’t be in a job for very much longer) 😄😄😊 and the Chief Constable to ask for another updated security assessment of where these groups are in terms of activity.”

With many thanks to: The Irish News and Allison Morris (Security Correspondent) for the original story

Follow these links to find out more: https://seachranaidhe1.blog/2019/05/24/disappeared-victim-seamus-ruddys-funeral-takes-place/

(2) -: https://www.psni.police.uk/my-area/all-districts/belfast-city/

(3) -: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=697436330713188&id=1146451845485869

‘Any Taig Will Do’. Courts Call Bullshit On Paramilitary Crime Task Force.

Tarlach MacDhónaill is scathing of a PSNI scam in West Belfast.

RUC/PSNI Detective Superintendent Bobby Singleton.

Detective Superintendent Bobby Singleton was once literally a ‘Bobby’, patrolling the Lower Falls area of West Belfast and getting to know, no doubt, all the main names of the ‘underground’ world in that district.

In all likelihood then, the well-groomed PSNI golden boy knew full well, that none of those arrested in his old stomping ground on September 30th, (one of whom was charged with possession of a large amount of Cocaine) had any connection to the Irish National Liberation Army.

Yet Bobby Singleton now leads the PSNI’s ‘Paramilitary Crime Task Force’ which has been granted £25 Million over the period of five years as part of the Fresh Start Agreement, such figures demand results or at least the perception of results.

In a bizarre sequence of events on Tuesday last, charges against three Belfast men of ‘Conspiracy to rob a Boojum burrito bar’ were shot out of the sky by a Judge at first hearing due to the absence of that most basic Judicial requirement called evidence. One of the three was then remanded on a separate charge of possessing Cocaine with intent to supply. £140 000 worth of Cocaine.

The Irish Republican Socialist Party then released a statement in which they stated their belief that the PSNI had concocted a ‘sham charge’ against all three men and in so doing had dragged “two unconnected individuals into the dock, alongside a person separately charged with possession of Cocaine”, all in an attempt to create the impression of a collective conspiracy to supply Class A drugs in West Belfast.

In a PSNI press statement released on the morning of the arrests, Singleton had claimed that his force had been involved in an operation ‘focused on the criminal activities of the Belfast INLA.’ It succeeded in creating banner headlines and no doubt gave large sections of the public the general impression that the Belfast INLA was somehow and somewhere involved in the supply of Class A drugs.

Such an allegation would have had an obvious negative impact on the IRSP in West Belfast. Some weeks earlier their activists had made the front page of the local Andersonstown News for smashing a Cocaine supply operation in the same Divis area in which the latest Drug find in question had occurred.

Within that article, concerned parents of several local youths (victims of a predatory West Belfast drugs ring) claimed to have turned to the IRSP for help as they had (in their own words) ‘absolutely no faith’ in the PSNI.

The IRSP clearly believe now that Bobby Singleton has attempted to smear Republican Socialism in the Divis area by wrongly implicating the INLA in the very activity that the party were claiming to successfully oppose in the absence of local support for the PSNI – Drug dealing.

Their theory holds (at the very least) as much credence as the conspiracy charges which Singleton unsuccessfully tried to put before Judge Fiona Bagnall during his now doomed operation. The pressure which his ‘Paramilitary Crime Task Force’ no doubt comes under to be seen ‘balance the books’ following months of high-profile actions against Loyalist paramilitaries, gives further weight to IRSP suggestions that in the absence of genuine Republican ‘Paramilitary Crime’, Bobby Singleton has instead taken an ‘Any Taig will do’ attitude towards the latest wave of arrests and raids on their members houses and offices. Indeed, what better Taigs to raise headlines with than suspected supporters of the INLA?

It was highly unusual, indeed unheard of for any Judge to summarily dismiss allegations of the PSNI in a remand hearing allegedly involving Anti-Good Friday Republican ‘Paramilitaries’. It may indeed be the first case of its kind since 1998.

Yet the PSNI, until now, have relied upon both a compliant judiciary and a compliant press to create and promote narratives that they wish to be accepted in the public eye, the IRSP’s rebuffing of Bobby Singleton’s grandiose claims is unlikely to attract any mainstream press interest whatsoever and the IRSP will no doubt suffer negative public perceptions as a result.

Bobby Singleton is aware of this uneven power dynamic. He (and MI5 who command the Police service of which he is a part) is also aware of the growing support which a rejuvenated IRSP are gaining in communities such as Divis and the Lower Falls, the product of a wave of local, national and international political activities which the party has recently undertaken in what can be described as a ‘Peace Process’ of their own liking.

This is not the first time that the ‘Paramilitary Crime Task Force’ has used such broad stroke tactics against the Republican Socialist Movement. During the past year in both Derry and Belfast, targets of seemingly Bona Fide Policing operations have been arrested and had their homes searched simultaneously to members of the IRSP, with following far stretched press releases enough to brand the operations in questions “Investigations into the Criminal activities of the INLA”.

A modus operandi is being firmly established as are twin aims, the undermining of a political movement which the state has hated since its inception and (Just as importantly for Bobby Singleton) the public perception of a crack down on Irish Republicans, as opposed to ‘just Loyalists’.

Had the individual arrested for possession of Class A drugs been charged and remanded alone, it would have been viewed publicly as just another drug arrest in West Belfast. Yet a few more Catholics in the back of police cars, along with the right type of press briefings, were all that were needed to make this a political publicity coup for the ‘Paramilitary Crime Task Force’.

All the usual pieces of the Jigsaw were in place for Bobby Singleton in this instance. Wth the headline already floated by the Press, all that was required was the rubber stamping of a Judge and the appearance of an INLA criminal clampdown would be complete. In most cases the PSNI can rely on such rubber stamps without question.

Unfortunately for Bobby Singleton, it appears that a feisty female Belfast Judge had other ideas and put the requirement for evidence before the prominence of one department’s financial and political agenda.

Bullshit was called on the political antics of the Paramilitary Crime Task Force, and now inevitable questions around abuses of power, abuse of public funds, possible sectarianism and blatant lies told to the West Belfast community, will increasingly come to the fore.

➽Tarlach MacDhónaill is an activist with the North Belfast IRSP.

With many thanks to the: Anthony McIntyre and The Pensive Quill for the original posting.

 

 

IRSP accuse Thatcher of ordering INLA men’s murder

INLA member Noel Little

THE IRSP has claimed that two members were killed as part of a wider campaign against the party which was backed by the British government.

The party spoke out after it emerged that Tory MP and Advocate General for Northern Ireland, Jeremy Wright QC is due to rule on whether there should be a new inquest into the death of INLA member Noel Little (45).

Ronnie Bunting was a Protestant Irish Republican and Socialist

He was shot dead with fellow INLA man Ronnie Bunting (32) at a house in Downfine Gardens in the Andersonstown area of west Belfast in October 1980.

The double murder has been veiled in mystery amid claims that members of the SAS may have been involved, although the UDA later claimed responsibility.

The two men, who were also key members of the IRSP, were shot dead less than a year after Tory MP Airy Neave was killed when an INLA booby-trap bomb exploded under his car at the House of Commons in London.

After Mr Neave’s death several high profile figures linked to the IRSP and National H-Block Committee were shot dead or injured.

A senior figure in the Conservative Party, Mr Neave was a close ally of then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Mr Wright will now make the inquest decision after a certificate transferring the case from the north’s attorney general John Larkin QC was issued by secretary of state Karen Bradley.

Earlier this week a Northern Ireland Office spokeswoman said: “The secretary of state is satisfied there is material held by the UK government relevant to the decision whether to open a fresh inquest, which is national security sensitive.”

The spokesman added that: “The advocate general is an independent law officer in the same way as the attorney general for Northern Ireland: he will make a decision independent of government.”

IRSP spokesman member Willie Gallagher said he believes the decision to target the party could have come directly from Margaret Thatcher.

“The overall combination of events and circumstances in that period led the IRSP to the conclusion that British soldiers acting under direct political orders, and assisted by willing stooges within the UDA and the RUC, conducted what was a campaign of murder against our party,” he said.

With many thanks to: The Irish News for the origional story.