Posted on 06/28/2002 8:33:22 PM PDT by kellynla
BELFAST -- RUC Special Branch officers and British military intelligence used the UDA as an assassination squad to murder people suspected of republican activity, according to a BBC documentary on collusion. "License to Murder," a two-part program said to be based on 10 years of research by a BBC team of reporters, at least partially lifted the lid on one of the darkest corners of the violence of the last 35 years in Northern Ireland. It has resulted in growing pressure for a full public inquiry into the story of how the British state allegedly corrupted its own laws and used its own "security services" to murder dozens of its own citizens. The program has been seen by many nationalists as proof that either the British cabinet of the day, led by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, knew of the existence of collusion, or it was deceived by senior civil servants and security advisers. It also highlighted the alleged connivance of the British civilian undercover intelligence-gathering agency, MI5, which is now tipped to take over surveillance work in Northern Ireland, if the Special Branch is disbanded or merged with the police Criminal Investigation Department. Among the claims the program makes are: • one Special Branch officer encouraged UDA hit-man Ken Barrett to murder Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane; • a British Army double agent, Brian Nelson, infiltrated the UDA, provided a photograph so the killers could identify their target, and drove them past his house prior to the shooting so they could find their way there; • a police officer ensured the killers would get a clean getaway after the shooting, in February 1989; • British military intelligence updated Nelson's files so he could target republicans more efficiently; • Nelson photocopied the updated files and sent them around Northern Ireland to 36 different units of the UDA and UVF; • the FRU set an office on fire to destroy evidence collated by the subsequent inquiry into collusion being carried out under Sir John Stevens; • British military intelligence allowed the murders of innocent civilians to go ahead to prevent their agent being unmasked; • the RUC Special Branch threatened and intimidated fellow police officers who wanted to arrest Finucane's killers; • the police inquiry into Finucane's murder was kept in the dark about police double agents who had warned about the planned murder; • loyalists had so many confidential police and British documents on suspected republicans that they could post them up on gable walls throughout the city. The program did not, however, make any mention of claims that Nelson helped import a loyalist arms consignment into Northern Ireland which has subsequently been used to murder dozens of Catholics. Neither did it concentrate on the chain of command between police and British soldiers on the ground in Northern Ireland and the British political establishment. During the program, which featured the reenactment of three of the murders, Barrett was filmed secretly admitting, "Finucane would be alive today if the peelers hadn't interfered." Barrett had boasted to the program makers of having been responsible for 10 murders. He had been initially unwilling to murder Finucane, saying that the killing of solicitors, even Catholic ones, was "taboo." Barrett is heard recalling that loyalists arrested would be primed with Finucane's name by the RUC: "young fellows, you know. . . . They'd have come out [of Castlereagh interrogation center] and said to us, they said about Finucane. [The RUC] must have said it because kids wouldn't come out and say, 'They said about Finucane,' because why would they mention Finucane? Finucane wouldn't have been a name in their head." "Solicitors were kind of way taboo, you know what I mean? Like we used a lot of Roman Catholic solicitors ourselves. They were kind of like taboo at the time like. You didn't touch like. Do you understand me, because they came in and seen us and all like." Barrett also recalls his meeting with the Special Branch officer who encouraged him to target Pat Finucane: "He says, 'He'll have to go. He'll have to go. He's a thorn in everybody's side. He'll have to go.' . . . He was determined on pursuing that like." By copying his targeting files to murder gangs all over Northern Ireland, "Panorama" claimed, "Nelson had bequeathed a deadly legacy. The officer ultimately responsible for this was Col. Gordon Kerr" (the head of the undercover Force Research Unit). He had recruited Nelson; he was commanding officer of the unit that ran him. He never hid his contempt for the Stevens Inquiry." BBC reporter John Ware tracked down Kerr to his home in Beijing, where he is currently military attaché to the British embassy. Kerr, now promoted to a brigadier and decorated by Queen Elizabeth, however, shut down on Ware when he discovered why he was in China. Barrett's evidence undermines claims by Kerr, who had said that Nelson thought the intended victim was one of Finucane's clients, the late former hunger striker and Sinn Fein councilor Pat McGeown. The BBC program says that his claim "cannot be true" because although Nelson had 36 photographs of McGeown, the only one he had of McGeown with Finucane was the one he handed over to Barrett to be used in the murder. The program linked Nelson to 80 attacks. This included a murder attempt on the current lord mayor of Belfast, Alex Maskey. Out of the 80 attacks, 29 people were killed. Evidence that the British political establishment had been briefed on, for example, Finucane came before his murder, when the Home Office minister, Douglas Hogg, told the House of Commons three weeks before the murder that some solicitors were overly sympathetic to their republican clients. Hogg had just returned from a visit to Northern Ireland and had been briefed by senior RUC officers. It's understood some of them were furious when he made his Commons speech, believing it revealed their true views on the solicitor.
The IRA is such fine folk that the Brits ought entrust a nation thereunto, right??
Hmmmmm. It is not yet clear what, if any, murderous conspiracy was lofted by the Brits but as for your 'Not one Catholic would be alive today': Ha.
A lot of Irish Catholics pray differently, including many in or from the North ... such as yours truly by the way. Even more from the South are wholly disgusted by the IRA.
Meanwhile, your enthofascist histeria is of a piece with Al-Queda (not to mention Fidel, FARC, Qadaffi & et cetera). To note that Europe will be a better place if ever the IRA forswears terrorism is hardly to endorse other terror, if and where it may be evident. But yet you do endorse YOUR terrorists, don't you?
TTFG,
Well, well ... such measured wisdom.
Sorry to disappoint you that not all who hail from or have lived in Northern Ireland share your polemical views and vehemence. Indeed, one wonders if 'kellynla' denotes a Kelly who is actually in Los Angeles -- but never mind.
Likewise, I have no need to move BACK to Northern Ireland much less collect more books from the library.
Were I to even wish to sustain attempts at dialogue with a ranting harridan -- which I do & will not -- I would ask you to clarify why you support terrorists (such as the IRA and their 'hermanos en armas' that are the Communist Party of Cuba, FARC, Qudaffi & all). But, appreciating as I do your adolescent febrility, this is my last post to you on this thread, I shall not.
Rather, as an Irish Catholic who has lived & worked in Northern Ireland, I am here to memorialize that you are quite wrong in your moonlit brayings.
You and your ilk of enthnofascists are a bane on the modern world. Go seek solace from your comrades in Al-Queda.
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