“the first time that the judge could direct that such hearings be heard ‘otherwise than in public”’”

Although the seven people arrested in Ireland in connection with an alleged plot to kill Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, had their detention in custody extended earlier this week, RTÉ reports that two of them have now been released from custody.  Meanwhile, an American woman, Colleen R. LaRose, whose possible movements in Ireland in September last year are being investigated, has been “indicted in plot to recruit violent jihadist fighters and to commit murder overseas”.  The Irish Times notes that the case has seen the first use of “section 29 21 of the 2009 Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act”.

The exclusion of the media from the hearings was the first time a new law allowing for the hearing to be in private was invoked in a high-profile case. An application that the hearing into the prolonging of the detention be heard in private was made by An Garda Síochána and the judge granted this application. It was made under section [29 21] of the 2009 Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act, which provides for the extension of the length of time of detention to allow for further investigation.

This section of the Act, passed amidst controversy last year, provided for the first time that the judge could direct that such hearings be heard “otherwise than in public”. It also provides for the exclusion of all except “officers of the court, persons directly concerned in the proceedings, bona fide representatives of the press and such other persons as the court may permit to remain”. The judge can also direct that particular evidence be given in the absence of “every person, including the person to whom the application relates and any legal representative”, if the judge considers the nature of the evidence could prejudice the investigation.

Pete Baker @ 09:19 PM | Comments (1)

Tohill kidnapper remanded in custody at Belfast Crown Court

Presumably when the BBC report that Henry Joseph [Harry] Fitzsimmons has been remanded in custody at the Belfast Crown Court after being “arrested in Aughnacloy on Thursday”, what they mean is that he’s been transferred from the custody of the Irish authorities.  Right?  He was being held on remand on a European Arrest Warrant.  And, before going on the run in May 2006, he had already pleaded guilty to attempting to kidnap dissenting republican Bobby Tohill on 20th February 2004.  Fitzsimmons is now due to be sentenced next month.  Two of the four men who went on the run at the time were re-arrested and sentenced in February 2007 - Gerard McCrory received seven years in prison and Thomas Tolan was given a six-and-a-half-year term.  Police have still not released a likeness or even a basic description of the fourth wanted man, Liam Rainey, from New Barnsley Crescent, Belfast.

Pete Baker @ 06:31 PM | Comments (1)

Seven arrested in Ireland in investigation into a conspiracy to murder cartoonist Lars Viks

The BBC pick up on an RTÉ report that “Gardaí have arrested five people in Waterford and two others in Cork in connection with an investigation into a conspiracy to murder a Swedish cartoonist”, Lars Vilks.  According to the BBC report all seven arrested are Muslims, while RTÉ adds - “Those in custody are originally from Morocco and Yemen, but it is understood they all have refugee status and are legally in the country.”  From the RTÉ report

A garda spokesman said the operation was part of an investigation into a conspiracy to murder an individual in another jurisdiction. Members of the Garda National Support Services and the Special Detective Unit were also involved in this morning’s operation. Gardaí say they are working closely with police forces in a number of other European countries and in the US. The seven people arrested this morning range in age from their mid-20s to their late-40s.

Update from today’s Irish Times

Detectives in Ireland have been working on the case since late last year with their counterparts in the US and Europe, including Sweden. Those arrested yesterday are from Algeria, Croatia, Palestine, Libya and the US. They are aged in their mid-20s to late-40s. The Irish Times understands the suspects were taken into custody on the basis of information supplied to the Garda by the FBI that came to light after surveillance of the suspects’ communications, including e-mails.

Pete Baker @ 03:27 PM | Comments (9)

“When I say I aspire for Timor-Leste to be like Singapore or Dubai…”

The President of East Timor Timor-Leste, José Ramos-Horta, has been forthright in his views of his own country’s justice truth and reconciliation process - and revelatory about past attempts at international collaboration between paramilitary groups.  In Dublin on an official state visit to Ireland, he’s been offering some lessons for those keen to export The Process™ abroad.  From the Irish Times report

“It is not like academics or some western donors or the UN who think that if you finance a few workshops and write a report you have contributed to peace,” the Nobel peace laureate told The Irish Times . “I have seen so much money wasted by donors on peace workshop after peace workshop. It is much more than that. It is meeting with families and with the victims day in, day out; it is finding jobs for them; providing them with training, with funding to create jobs; creating hopes and a future for them. “Peace-building is not based on workshops or UN evaluation missions who descend on our country every three months to do an evaluation. These are wasteful exercises.”

Pete Baker @ 01:14 PM | Comments (5)

“and there’s not a parliament to publish the report…”

According to a BBC report, Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Shaun Woodward, speaking in Londonderry, said that he hopes to be in a position to publish Lord Saville’s [pointless] report into Bloody Sunday “within days of receiving it.”  Except that, as the BBC previously reported, he told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster on Wednesday that “he would only take about two weeks to consider the mammoth document but added that nobody knew when Prime Minister Gordon Brown would call the election.”

He told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of MPs the election raised security concerns about possible leaks and added people’s lives could be endangered if highly sensitive personal details were released. “Where it is the case that the report is delivered and there’s not a parliament to publish the report, it then sits in electronic and in physical form in a warehouse for what might be weeks so I am genuinely concerned,” he said. “But I am also concerned, not just about legitimate leaks but those leaks which actually of course are not based on the report at all but are wild speculation dressed up as leaks.” He said such speculation would cause anxiety but “it will be impossible to give any response” at that time.

Pete Baker @ 10:44 AM | Comments (13)

“Venezuelan government’s co-operation in the illicit collaboration” between Eta and Farc”

With a number of convicted, and suspected, former ETA terrorists washing up on these shores there’s a notable report of interest from the Irish Times.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez denied the allegations. Typically, he blamed an “international Yankee plot”, describing it as “a sad remnant of Spain’s colonial past”. It is not the first time Mr Chavez has had strong words for Spain. His repeated interruptions of Mr Zapatero at the Ibero-American summit in Chile two years ago caused King Juan Carlos to shout: “Why don’t you shut up?”

Words of a more conciliatory tone came from Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan foreign minister. In a telephone call with his Spanish counterpart Miguel Angel Moratinos, he promised he would investigate the allegations and keep Mr Moratinos informed.

Pete Baker @ 10:59 PM | Comments (10)

Non-jury trials “an essential option to ensure fair trials”

According to the current Criminal Justice Minister Paul Goggins, MP, the provision for non-jury trials, which was renewed in June 2009, will be subject to “a comprehensive review [], including a full public consultation, before it next falls to be renewed in July 2011.”  By which time it may fall to the NI Assembly to decide whether to renew that [or similar] legislation.  Do the parties here have an agreed position?

Pete Baker @ 03:12 PM | Comments (25)

McFarlane takes Ireland to European Court of Human Rights

The Irish Times informs us that “Ireland makes a rare appearance before the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg today to face allegations of violating the rights of Maze escapee Brendan McFarlane.”  The complaint followed the collapse of the trial of the prominent Provisional IRA member on charges relating to the kidnapping of businessman Don Tidey in 1983.  From the Irish Times report

In this case, Mr McFarlane is asking the court for a ruling that the State deprived him of a fair trial in not charging him with offences related to the 1983 kidnapping until 1998, and to further delay in that this trial did not eventually take place until 2008.

He is making a separate complaint that his judicial review proceedings challenging the delay, which began in November 1999, were not concluded until March 2006, and that there were further delays while he litigated residual issues before the courts between November 2006 and March 2008.

Concerns about The Process™ are unlikely to be considered a valid defence…

Pete Baker @ 11:41 AM | Comments (3)

“My understanding at the time was that they wanted him out of circulation”

Via Newshound, in the Sunday Times Ed Moloney added more detail to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams’ less than transparent accounting of his brother Liam’s movements.  This time pre-1987.  From the transcribed article.

In the tangled and disconcerting story of Liam Adams, one feature provides an uncomfortable parallel between his alleged paedophilia and the scandal of Catholic clerical abuse, as highlighted in last November’s Murphy report. That was the practice of moving alleged abusers around Ireland to avoid the demands for action once their activities became known.

Liam Adams made at least six moves within and outside Ireland from the time that he ceased allegedly abusing his daughter Áine until the scandal broke. It is these moves, with Gerry Adams’s perceived reluctance to take decisive action against his brother, that led some to conclude that there had been a cover-up.

The New York episode, which has not come to light until now, shows powerful figures in the Provisional movement wanted Liam out of Ireland after his marriage collapsed. So in 1984 arrangements were made for him to be smuggled to America, given a false identity, and looked after until it was safe for him to return. He stayed in New York for eight months, presumably until the reason for his exile ceased to be a problem.

Pete Baker @ 03:10 PM | Comments (48)

“Should we eschew any cause or proposal…”?

Interesting point raised by former South African Minister Kader Asmal in the Irish Times report on his inaugural lecture at Trinity College’s Centre for Post-Conflict Justice.

“The question that must be answered is whether the most important political consideration is the need to maintain the unity of the power-sharing executive? Should we eschew any cause or proposal, even the proposal for a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland . . . that may lead to inter-communal differences in the executive?”

Is that “the most important political consideration”?  Certainly seems to be… And not just by the political parties/governments.  The other question for the “Centre for Post-Conflict Justice” is, is it already too late?

Pete Baker @ 10:46 AM | Comments (8)

“Our society has a tragic history of violence.”

Mark asked “Why?” Kieran Doherty, aged 31, was reportedly bound, stripped and shot on the outskirts of Londonderry on Wednesday.  Because they can would seem to be the simple answer.  After all, that’s all the reasoning others previously required.  And they can all still, apparently, “look back on their IRA involvement with pride.”  The BBC has some additional background

In November 2009 Mr Doherty gave an interview to the Derry Journal newspaper in which he claimed he had been approached by the security service MI5 while trying to set up a cigarette manufacturing company. According to the paper, he was repeatedly turned down for a licence by Revenue and Customs and was then approached by an MI5 agent. “I think the whole thing is a set up in order to try and recruit informers,” he told the newspaper. In January this year, Mr Doherty again contacted the same newspaper after the PSNI searched his home. The search came after 500,000 euros worth of cannabis was found in a house in County Donegal. Mr Doherty told the newspaper that he had no involvement with the drugs and that the house belonged to a Republican prisoner whom he had met in Portlaoise prison. It is understood that Mr Doherty was jailed on a robbery charge.

On UTV Live the Sunday Tribune’s Northern Editor, Suzanne Breen, stated that she had met Kieran Doherty in 2003 when he was “O/C Real IRA prisoners” in Portlaoise Prison and that it was her understanding that he had remained an “active republican” on his release.  Suzanne Breen also identified the “Republican prisoner” who owned the house in Donegal as Seamus McGreevy - who recently committed suicide while fighting extradition to Lithuania on attempted arms smuggling charges as the result of a sting operation involving MI5, the garda, and Lithuanian police.

Pete Baker @ 09:26 PM | Comments (34)

Bill of Rights consultation extended to 31st March

Northern Ireland Secretary of State, Shaun Woodward, has announced the extension of the public consultation on government proposals for a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland by four weeks until 31st March 2010.

Shaun Woodward MP said: “The Government believes that a Bill of Rights which has the support of the people of Northern Ireland could play an important role in underpinning the peace, prosperity and political progress of Northern Ireland, and we are committed to taking this work forward.  The launch of the consultation marked another milestone on that path. Since then, I have received a number of requests to extend the consultation deadline by organisations that are keen to participate.”

Well, we know what one of those organisations thinks of those proposals…

Pete Baker @ 12:26 PM | Comments (18)

“But they did not commit to publishing that report..”

The DUP/Sinn Féin “working group” on parades is due to report back to the Northern Ireland First and deputy First Ministers “By [Tuesday] 23 February”.  But, as BBC NI political editor Mark Devenport noted on Thursday, there is every indication that the working group’s report will not be made public.

The FM and DFM expressed optimism that their parades working group would hit the Tuesday deadline for a report on new structures to deal with contentious marches. But they did not commit to publishing that report, indicating only that it would be forwarded to the legal draftsmen and that the public would see any legislation they might produce.

Pete Baker @ 01:14 PM | Comments (6)

“All can look back on their IRA involvement with pride.”

Historian, and crossbench life peer, Paul Bew writing at the Guardian’s CommentisFree

The problem in part lies with the brilliance of the Sinn Féin leadership. It has been superb at emoting and creating widely accepted personality cults of its dual leadership within its own community. No embarrassing revelation can dent the emotional investment which has now been built up. But superb as this exercise has been it has its counterpart in the equally dramatic failure to make any progress towards Irish unity. The very strengths of the current leadership are also its equally profound weakness when it comes now to the need to engage the unionist community.

Read the whole thing.

Pete Baker @ 03:02 PM | Comments (51)

“blatant attempt to mislead”

Still fighting extradition proceedings on charges of glorifying terrorism in Spain, lawyers for convicted ETA killer José Ignacio (Iñaki) de Juana Chaos have been back in court in Belfast.  This time they were losing a legal battle for a licence for de Juana Chaos to work as a taxi driver for the West Belfast Taxi Association.  From the BBC report

His barrister told the court Mr de Juana Chaos, 54, should be treated as an exception to the rule where ex-prisoners can only apply for taxi licences three years after completing their sentence. “The offending behaviour purely related to the political theatre,” he said. “The people subjected to the violence were members of the police force in Spain.” Mr de Juana Chaos was released from prison in August 2008.

His lawyer said he has now removed himself from the political conflict and wants to drive specified routes for the West Belfast Taxi Association, where his wife works. “The reason why my client came here… having committed very serious offences, is to benefit, even if only indirectly, from the way in which this society is prepared to give people who have committed awful offences a chance and a new start,” the lawyer said. He added that 15 ex-prisoners with convictions for “politically inspired violence” already work for the association.

Pete Baker @ 07:04 PM | Comments (34)

“the Commission does not accept this as a genuine effort to increase human rights protections”

Having apparently failed to notice the publication of the NIO consultation paper on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland in their annual report to government - despite issuing a statement at the time - the NI Human Rights Commission, operating cost £1,766,407, has published its considered response to the consultation.  From the NIHRC statement

The NIO consultation paper is an inadequate response to what should be in a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. The Commission believes the consultation:
•Demonstrates a lack of understanding of the purpose and functions of a Bill of Rights
•Fails to take appropriate account of international human rights standards
•Appears to be suggesting the lowering of existing human rights standards in Northern Ireland
•Fails to satisfy the minimum common law consultation requirements, and
•Misrepresents the advice given by the Commission

Pete Baker @ 01:44 PM | Comments (18)

“In the event of the failure of mediation, recourse to independent adjudications and procedures”

With Sinn Féin and the DUP now trading statements and counter-statements on the future of parades ahead of any “agreed outcomes” of that working group there are couple of pieces of information worth bringing ‘above the fold’.  From a BBC report we learn

Meanwhile, it has emerged that two advisers have been appointed to the group. They are Presbyterian minister Mervyn Gibson, a prominent Orangeman, and Sean ‘Spike’ Murray a prominent republican. Both men sat on the Ashdown Review team on parades, whose final report has yet to be published.

And, according to a Guardian report

Leading Sinn Féin members encountered hostility to any concessions to unionists on Orange and loyalist parades at a meeting of Catholic residents groups in County Derry last week. The depth of anger has forced Sinn Féin to harden its position on contentious parades.

Pete Baker @ 07:40 PM | Comments (15)

NIHRC’s “greatest achievement during the past year…”?

According to the NIO press release, NI Minister of State Paul Goggins “has praised the tireless work of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (NIHRC) as he laid their tenth Annual Report and Accounts before Parliament.”  The Commission [total operating costs for 2009 £1,766,407] also has its own press release. Interestingly, the Commission’s report [pdf file] commits it to “work with government to secure implementation of the Commission’s advice on a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland.” That’s despite the government having effectively already rejected that “advice” - in the words of the Chief Commissioner, Monica McWilliams, presenting that advice was the Commission’s “greatest achievement during the past year”.  And in the foreword, Monica McWilliams [2009 salary £72,021], declares that “Our legal team was granted leave to intervene in two important human rights cases at the House of Lords which helped to build our reputation as third party intervenors.”  Which is odd.  Because here’s what the Law Lords had to say about the NIHRC’s intervention in one of those cases

[Lord Hoffman] “An intervention is however of no assistance if it merely repeats points which the appellant or respondent has already made. An intervener will have had sight of their printed cases and, if it has nothing to add, should not add anything. It is not the role of an intervener to be an additional counsel for one of the parties. This is particularly important in the case of an oral intervention.  I am bound to say that in this appeal the oral submissions on behalf of the NIHRC only repeated in rather more emphatic terms the points which had already been quite adequately argued by counsel for the appellant.”

Pete Baker @ 01:10 PM | Comments (42)

Time for the Robin Hood Tax?

I’d say so, wouldn’t you?

It is supported by an impressive bunch of trades unions, charities and voluntary sector bodies. You can spread the word. On Twitter, on Facebook where you can ‘share’ their fan-page. You an even put a poster in your window (pdf) or ponce around in a green Robin Hood mask (pdf) as well, if that’s your style.

But whatever you do, sign up to the campaign.

Paul Evans @ 08:39 AM | Comments (26)

“He was subsequently executed and buried in an unmarked grave”

The Provisional IRA’s “P O’Neill” has been briefing selected members of the press again.  Or as Brian Rowan puts it in the Belfast Telegraph, “the man I met yesterday no longer functions as P O’Neill, but he still speaks with all the authority of the republican leadership”.  They’ve suddenly remembered they ‘disappeared’ somebody else.  Joe Lynskey, described as a “senior IRA intelligence officer” in the Irish News which reported “it is believed that Mr Lynskey had a relationship with a married woman, also from Beechmount, while her husband was in prison.” As Brian Rown notes.

In a detailed briefing the source revealed: In 1972 the IRA executed and buried Joe Lynskey; He was an IRA volunteer in Belfast at that time; Lynskey was summoned to a meeting outside Belfast by the then leadership; He wasn’t aware that he was under (IRA) investigation at that stage; He was arrested by the IRA; He was court-martialled for breaches of IRA standing orders; He was subsequently executed and buried in an unmarked grave.

Their memory was obviously jogged by those reports in the Irish News, making this another case of attempted damage limitation.  And it adds yet yet another name to the list of the Independent Commission on the Location of Victims Remains. From yesterday’s Irish News.

The Irish News previously revealed how a Monaghan man who was a member of a small IRA unit guarding Mr Lynskey in the days leading up to his death had given details about the murder. He claimed Mr Lynskey was held in an IRA safe-house between Castleblayney and Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan, some time in August 1972. The victim was in the house for more than a week waiting for senior IRA members to arrive from north of the border to carry out an internal “court martial” which sealed his fate. Details of Mr Lynskey’s disappearance are expected to be included in a soon-to-be published book Beyond the Grave by journalist Ed Moloney. The book contains transcripts of interviews given to Boston University by IRA man Brendan ‘The Dark’ Hughes prior to his death from a lengthy illness in 2008. Mr Lynskey never married or had children and while his parents searched tirelessly for their son prior to their deaths, he was never officially reported missing.

Pete Baker @ 11:31 AM | Comments (45)

FM and DFM “will promote and support the agreed outcomes of the working group.”

Some of the key elements in the “indigenous” “home-grown” “made in Ulster” deal [pdf file] relating to parading are as follows.  The First and deputy First Ministers “have agreed to set up a co-chaired working group comprising six members, appointed by them, with experience of dealing with parading issues which will bring forward agreed outcomes which they believe are capable of achieving cross community support for the new and improved framework. This work will begin immediately and will be completed within three weeks.”

3. We recognise that support from all sides of the community has the potential to create a new improved framework for the management and regulation of public assemblies including parades and related protests. We believe that such a framework should reflect the key principles of:
· Local people providing local solutions;
· Respect for the rights of those who parade, and respect for the rights of those who live in areas through which they seek to parade. This includes the right for everyone to be free from sectarian harassment;
· Recognising that at times there are competing rights;
· Transparency, openness and fairness;
· Independent decision making.

Pete Baker @ 04:44 PM | Comments (15)

A Bill of Rights will institutionalise sectarianism as a constitutional norm…

Retired teacher, now novelist Michael Gillespie has some thoughts on a recent insert from the Belfast Telegraph on Human Rights… Below the fold he makes clear definitions between freedoms and rights… A stand alone Bill of Rights, he argues, will serve no other purpose than reinforce sectarian divisions… He proposes instead a federal written constitution for the whole of the United Kingdom…

Mick Fealty @ 09:30 AM | Comments (12)

“part of the political fabric”

The US Secretary of State is heading to London.  Not to save The Process™ here, but to attend two conferences.  Tomorrow it’s Yemen. And on Thursday, Afghanistan, where a familiar strategy is being discussed - as an short Irish Times report noted on Saturday

On a 24-hour visit to Pakistan, [US defence secretary Robert] Gates emphasised that US strategy consisted of turning the tide in the Afghan war so as to convince Taliban leaders to sit down and negotiate. “We and our many allies are increasing our capabilities in Afghanistan to try and change the momentum and bring the Taliban, those elements of the Taliban that are willing to reconcile, into the government,” he said.

Seeking to counter Pakistani perceptions that the Taliban would replace the government of Hamid Karzai, the Afghanistan president, Mr Gates told Pakistani journalists the US recognised that the Taliban were “part of the political fabric of Afghanistan at this point”. “The question is whether the Taliban at some point of this process are ready to help build a 21st-century Afghanistan or whether they just want to kill people,” he added.

Pete Baker @ 07:42 PM | Comments (1)

“In the end I realised it was all about PR and protecting his own image.”

The issue of Gerry Adams’ claimed desire to preserve Áine Tyrell’s anonymity was raised in Mark’s post, and in the Sunday Tribune interview [added link] Áine Tyrell challenges other parts of the Sinn Féin president’s version of events.

The same applies to the youth projects where Liam worked, Áine says. She frequently brought this up with the Sinn Féin president during two years of meetings from late 2003 until late 2005. “I’d heard Liam was working in youth projects in west Belfast but not which ones. I repeatedly raised this with Gerry. I said I was concerned that Liam was seeking jobs working with children. Gerry told me that was Liam’s way of trying to make up to the community for what he’d done to me.”

Pete Baker @ 02:42 PM | Comments (44)

“I believe they didn’t want to reopen the can of worms.”

As Mark said, the Sunday Tribune‘s interview with Áine Tyrell will be online later is online here.  But here’s a snippet of information that affects the last few years of the timeline.

Áine ended the meetings with [Gerry] Adams [late 2003 until late 2005] by posting a letter through his door saying they were “pointless and I felt let down”. In January 2006, she says she went to the PSNI and had the case re-opened. She is enraged that the PSNI did not seek a face-to-face meeting with her until eight months later. “I believe they didn’t want to reopen the can of worms.”  She later contacted the North’s human rights commissioner, Monica McWilliams, about this delay and also lodged a complaint with police ombudsman Al Hutchison. “As a result of that I was told two officers had received minor reprimands.”

Pete Baker @ 01:33 PM | Comments (10)