PIRA

The Docklands bomb

On 9th February 1996 Slab Murphy’s South Armagh IRA gang bombed the Docklands. The bomb consisted of a fertiliser mix , accelerated by Semtex, supplied by Libya.

Readers of this blog will know of the history of British involvement with Gadafy and the current Parliamentary inquiries.

Victims and survivors of Semtex bombs still await reparation from Libya. Over 150 took legal action in April 2006 and were blocked by the unholy alliance of Bush,  Blair and Gadafy. Over 1,000 others have a moral claim to reparation.

The big issue is ‘from whence will the money come?’

The British Government says that we must await a stable Libyan government. There has been chaos in Libya since 2011. Given that there are currently three rival governments, stability seems a long way off.

Frozen in UK bank accounts is £9.4 billion , most of it the property of Gadafy, his family and  his henchmen. This would provide reparation  to thousands of victims all over the United Kingdom but presently, the government will not legislate to release it.

A campaign has been under way since the middle of 2015 to secure release.

McCue and Co , solicitors in London, have led this campaign and they and a number of other people have given evidence in support , to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. Further activity is planned for 2016.

Imagine my shock  to find that Diane Dodds MEP, told the European Parliament; “we must see a relative and sustainable peace in Libya in order to further our goal of negotiating a fair financial settlement for those innocent victims”. So the DUP’s MEP agrees with the British Government.

In fact in January 2016, and under her watch, the EU renewed its legislation for the freezing of funds and neither she nor any other unionist politician seemed to notice.

Jeffrey Donaldson is DUP Chief Whip. In the DUP 2015 election manifesto, the DUP  said ” the DUP is not beholden to any national party”. At that point they were in a fever of expectation that they would hold the balance of power. In November 2015 David Cameron appointed Donaldson Britain’s Trade Envoy to Egypt. Jeffrey gushed in the press about his appointment.

In  correspondence with me about Diane Dodds’ statement, where he was abusive and ill tempered, he said that he was elected to represent “ALL innocent victims”. So I thought that I would take a look at both the DUP’s 2015 election manifesto and its grandly entitled “Northern Ireland Plan”. Neither document mentions the securing of compensation or reparations for victims. If he were so elected, it seems to have happened by osmosis.

Jeffrey then referred to me as one of ‘the select few’. I’m not easily offended and I’m a big boy, well bigger that Jeffrey anyway; but I wonder if that is his view of victims and survivors generally, when they take legal action against a dictator?

Stung at my criticism of Diane,  the Egyptian Trade Envoy said;”I will be asking your legal team to reflect on the damage such unwarranted exchanges does [sic] to our combined efforts” An interesting idea. I wonder how often he approaches other lawyers about their clients? Perhaps it’s a DUP thing to try to intimidate victims and survivors. Any views, Arlene?

The fact is that neither he nor any other unionist has made a scrap of difference to the campaign for reparations for me or for the people hideously maimed.

Meanwhile , let’s think about someone more important.  Zaoui Berezag. He was injured in the Docklands bomb. In September 2015 his wife said “My Zaoui is blind , paralysed, brain damaged and has no leg’. He is very disabled and now he is in nappies.” Many other survivors of Libyan Semtex bombs are similarly afflicted.

James McArdle was convicted of conspiracy to cause the Docklands bombing and in June 1998 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

On 25 July 2000 the Queen granted McArdle  the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and he was released.

Zaoui remains imprisoned by his injuries and in dire financial straits.

Meanwhile Jeffrey , Her Britannic Majesty’s Trade Envoy, is spending this week in Egypt, where President Sisi has killed 2,500 political opponents and represses gays.

 

 

Why Blair should not fear the NI Affairs Committee

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee announced in July of 2105 that it was minded to enquire into the failure of HMG to secure compensation from Libya for the supply of Semtex to Sinn Fein/IRA.

Allegations have frequently been made that Tony Blair was instrumental in brokering a deal with USA and Libya and failing to secure the rights of UK citizens , when other nationalities were compensated.

The taking of evidence began in September. The weight of evidence so far points to discrimination towards UK citizens.

In October 2015 the chairman of the Committee , Laurence Robertson, wrote to Blair ,inviting him to submit written evidence. Blair replied on 11th December 2015 admitting, as far as he was aware, that he never raised the case of Semtex victims with Gadafy. You might find that in itself surprising, Dear Reader but worse is to come.

He said that the needs of the victims were being addressed through existing structures. For those of us used to Blair whoppers this was a mega whopper.

He followed this up by saying that we were precluded from legal action in the USA. Another lie.

On 11 December Blair appeared before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

On 6th January 2016 Robertson wrote again to Blair and invited him to give oral evidence. In an undated letter from the Office of Tony Blair, he replied saying “these continued attempts to implicate me in deliberately trying to stop IRA victims receiving compensation are, as I have made very clear, without foundation”

The Committee must now decide what to do.

Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice is the authoritative work on Parliament. Let’s take a look…

“when a select committee has the power to send for persons, that power is unqualified, except to the extent that it conflicts with the privileges of the Crown and of Members of the House of Lords, or with the rights of Commons”

[see Erskine May Parliamentary Practice 24th ED  p820]

So what if the person does not attend by invitation?

The witness is formally summoned to attend as a witness by order signed by the Chairman. On the face of the summons, unlike such issued by courts on occasions. there is no penal provision.

If he neglects to appear , he will be dealt with as in other cases of disobedience.

[ibid p820]

I know that now Dear Reader , those not well disposed to Tony will have visions of Blair in chains. Not so fast!

There is no power of arrest and imprisonment.The power of committal for contempt has not been used in modern times. It was last used in 1880.

There is power, held by the House of Commons, not the committee, to punish in other ways for contempt. Nobody has been fined since 1666.  The House has not punished a non member since 1978 and the tide of opinion is against sanctions.

So if he  does not appear , members of the Committee may gnash their teeth , rend their garments,  even wear sackcloth and ashes but Tone ain’t comin!

So much for the Mother of Parliaments.

 

Moussa Koussa, an odd man out

MK, as I shall call him, born in 1947, was one of the most powerful figures in Gadafy’s regime. Educated in the USA, he was head of the Libyan Intelligence Agency from 1994 to 2009. He then became foreign minister. He defected in March 2011 as the Arab Spring engulfed Libya. Arriving into  Farnborough by private jet , he was guarded by British Intelligence until he was permitted by the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, to leave for Qatar.

There has been much press speculation that he was a MI6 agent.Papers released by the CIA in relation to the Senate Inquiry into Mrs Clinton point to him  being  their asset.

Despite calls for him to be questioned about the killing of WPC Fletcher and the supply of Semtex to Sinn Fein/IRA he was spoken to only by the Scottish police, presumably in relation to the Lockerbie massacre.

The then Foreign Secretary , William Hague,  told the House of Commons that officials would encourage MK to cooperate fully with all requests for interviews with investigating authorities. This was said with a straight face.

Both the USA and the EC lifted both monetary and travel sanctions against him.

Well done thy good and faithful servant!

So, there it is then. MK saw the light, defected, recanted and now lives in comfortable retirement.

Enter Andrew MacKinlay at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee.He said in evidence that MK was a known terrorist , named to him by Leyden , the British Ambassador as having been “up to his neck in Lockerbie”. MacKinley went on ” There were far too many people and agencies who would have been embarrassed in either a British or an International court… it is a reasonable assumption that his fingerprints would have been all over the supply of Semtex and other weaponry to the IRA.”  He went on to say that MK probably authorised supply to the IRA.

The really embarrassing thing for the “Peace Process” would be that MK knows precisely what Sinn Fein/IRA got. Comparing it to what was “decommissioned” would not be in the interests of the Peaceniks.

You might wonder Dear Reader , when the Director of Public Prosecutions is so exercised about the alleged murders by British forces  in Belfast and Derry , that he might be a little concerned about Andrew MacKinlay’s allegations. Unless I have missed something , he has been utterly silent.

So too, the silence of Chief Constable George, the man who invariably follows where the evidential trail leads.

The answer may lie in what MacKinlay says. Neither Barra nor George fancies facing up to the opening of Pandora’s Box. Or they have been told to do nothing by their political masters.

Happy Christmas Moussa!

My life in a banana republic: December

Jambo Jambo!

My lodgings in the Biblical Lands of Belfast are cold. My friend , Dingle, says that I will be ‘foundered’. I have not encountered this word before.

To warm up I walked into the City. There are villages springing up. One is by the Great Hall of the City Fathers, just where there are many flegs on a Saturday. Many countries have sent aid in the form of kitchens. The citizens are so hungry that they come from many miles and spend days on the M1 to eat at these kitchens.

Another village is to be found near the Great White Church, outside of which a man in black begs for alms , just like in Morocco. This other village is called Lidl Land and has comestibles from many poor countries. Really poor people buy things here.

Belfast is a kaleidoscope!

Tomorrow a Christian Pastor is to be put on trial for Insulting Islam. It is perplexing that 3,000 people have been murdered and nobody has been put on trial by the Great Prosecutor [who is really small in person] but he chooses to put a 75 year old man on a Show Trial. Perhaps the Grand Mufti asked him to do so. [There is great corruption in this place]. Tomorrow there will be a Great Gathering at the place of Trial and his Brothers and Sisters will pray and sing hymns. If he were in a place where ISIS rules he would already be hanging off the great gates of the Royal Courts of Justice, where Dec lives.

Also, it is interesting that the Great Province will have a new Ruler! My friend Dingle [who has inside information] says that the new Ruler will be a woman. Women , like in Africa, are not valued here. Nobody cares for their health when with child. In my cousin’s country such a Ruler is called Ntfombi, which means ‘Great She Elephant’. This not disrespectful but a great accolade.

Soon my classes will finish for this term. However Marxists are occupying University buildings because they object to the University burning coal.

Perhaps if I burned coal I would not be Foundered!

Jambo Jambo.

The past

 

My attention turns towards Christmas Past. Who can avoid such stuff?

Thousands contemplate the empty place at the table , the gift not bought.

“the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” comes to all our doors.

Christmas is especially burdensome for those who have lost relatives or friends at the hands of terrorists. Much worse again if the crime was committed by the State.

As time moves on ,those OxBridge boys and girls in Whitehall look for ever more cunning ways to disengage GB  from the disaster which is Northern Ireland.

The Army is perplexed as  to why its squaddies might be prosecuted. I’d be happier if an officer or two was in the frame but what do you think is the likelihood of that?

Here, George Hamilton, the somewhat sturdy leader of the Constabulary calls the murders of my parents, in June 1990, a ” legacy issue”. Extraordinary for a policeman. More and more as he manoeuvres at the behest of his paymasters [those OxBridge ones again]  he wants nothing more to do with old crimes.

Only in the fantasy world of Northern Ireland would the most senior police officer suggest such a course.He is pretending that this all came as a terrible shock when he became Chief Constable. What a jolly jape!

Nothing to do with me Guv!

But there is worse.

In November 2015 Pablo de Grieff , the UN rapporteur on transitional justice , published a preliminary report on us.

He says that there are four pillars in a transitional justice policy;  truth , justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence.

On all of these the Northern Ireland vehicle is running on empty.

During his ten day visit he met [apparently] with a wide range of people. It didn’t take him long to spot our segregated education system as being a major problem.

Nor did the Spooks pass him by. Here is what he said about that:

“Although everyone must acknowledge the significance of national security concerns, it must also be acknowledged that particularly in the days we are living in , it is easy to use ‘national security’ as a blanket term.”

For those who have been bereaved, the sting is in the tail.

He says: “the issue of reparations for victims will need to be tacked in a serious and systematic way.  Here it may be important to bear in mind the many international experiences that have established reparations programmes on the basis of broad acknowledgement of responsibility distinct from acknowledgements of criminal guilt.”

In this jurisdiction no organisation has remotely come near  this standard.

It is facile and useless to expect the Northern Ireland Executive might so do. Might our Westminster MPs? Might the Victims’ Commissioner?

Nine point four billion pounds

This is the value of frozen assets held in the UK and related to Gadafy, his family, his government officials and various Libyan institutions.

It does not reflect the additional  amount of money Gadafy gave Sinn Fein/IRA or the value of the arms, ammunition and Semtex he gave them.

Hundreds of people were killed as a result of this terrorism. No-one in Libya  and none of the SF/IRA leaders ,such as Martin McGuinness have been prosecuted for this.

Not one of the UK victims has been compensated , while citizens of USA, France and Germany have been paid long ago.

The lesson that Britain sends is that terrorism pays. In fact Blair kissed Gadafy in a tent and the FCO forgave Libya.

Relatives of the Tunisian atrocity should take note. Your government will not help you and that’s official.

The past isn’t over

“The reason the past cannot be dealt with is that it isn’t over”. A pithy statement by Eamonn McCann.

Let’s imagine in what civilised country the murders of two pensioners in 1990 by a terrorist organisation would be variously regarded by the Chief Constable as “a legacy issue” or by the pro-GFA press as  ‘the past”.

Just a note of caution here. Every government seeks, by whatever means , to shape events and opinions. History tells us that the British target journalists. See Kim Philby, working for the Observer and the Economist. Frederick Forsyth , also a spook. How many of our ‘respected’ journalists are working for the state, being fed information and shaping stories to suit their masters? How many have skeletons which have been dangled before them by the spooks? Each time you read an article in the local press or on TV , ask yourself, who wrote it and why.

I digress. Crimes such as the murder of my parents in 1990 would be relentlessly pursued  by the Israelis.

Well, twenty five years and more on the past isn’t over, no matter what the state tells Dr Maguire , the Police Ombudsman.

No matter what the OFMDFM told the Victims’ Commissioner, when they appointed her.

I will be returning to that august body in my next blog.

The Thugs who lived on the Hill

“One day, we built a house on the hilltop high

Bob and I

Storey  and me , a spoof that Sinners could fill

And were had a laugh to be called

The players  who lived on the Hill

Now , we’re subtracting a thing or two

A paramilitary wing or two

So now we’ll no longer be called the thugs who lived on the hill”

My apologies to Hammerstein and Kern, who were never in the IRA, not even Ira Gershwin.

The Peaceniks, have they gone away?

Apart from the Rev Good, I have not heard one supporter of the “Peace Process” speak out about recent events.

Where are those crowds who cheered the GFA?

Where are the people who lectured me on cynicism and espoused the GFA as a legacy for our children?

Where are all those dull academics whose support propelled them to greatness?

Where are those barristers who strode from the Bar Library to the City Hall to be seen? Judges now…

Where are the hundreds of place persons who are coining it with multiple posts in Quangos?

Have they no opinion on PIRA, which maintains a structure, an army council, guns and £400 million?

Or are they just hoping it will all blow over by the time they return from their exotic holidays?

Backing the wrong side in a revolution has always been a bloody business.

Humpty Dumpty sat on the fence

Humpty Dumpty told Alice that if he ever fell off the wall, the King would send all his horses and all his men to pick him up.

Our own policing Humpty Dumpty can look forward to the Queen sending him a knighthood, providing he stays on the fence.

Last night Sharon O’Neill asked him a very obvious question; “Who is the leader of PIRA?”

His answer was that membership is a criminal offence and he wasn’t going to do or say anything or speculate on anything which could undermine any future court proceedings.

So there you are Dear Reader, the Chief Con is on the case “following the evidence”. Can’t you see him with his magnifying glass and cape , accompanied by Joe 90, examining the footpaths of West Belfast?

Of course he could have arrested a sizeable proportion of PIRA high command the other week when he met them in a hall in West Belfast, a hall being guarded by a PIRA run security company. He shook hands with a man who has murdered many innocent people. The butchers boy from the Bogside.

To imagine for a moment. George causes a file to be sent to Barra-Boy. It contains evidence against senior members of PIRA, it being a proscribed organisation. Barra, because of his past would have to pass it to the team which bought you such block busters as Cahill and McCartney.

This is just a little fantasy for two reasons.

  1. A number of the northern command and the Belfast brigade PIRA are state agents. Therefore George and MI5 know exactly what is going on in PIRA and keep the Secretary of State informed.
  2. I have been asking since 1990 why no senior member of PIRA was questioned about the murders of my parents.

No senior member of PIRA has ever been convicted.

As Northern Ireland descends into chaos and farce with this , Nama, Red Sky and other imbecilic acts, will the unionist parties have the courage to act?

Don’t hold your breath. As they often say in Ahoghill; “Deus ex machina”.