PSNI and Gardaí co-operating on murder investigation

In response to the attempted headline-grabbing proposal from Ian Paisley Jnr, on filling in the gaps left by not fully implementing Schengen, the Republic of Ireland’s Justice Minister Brian Lenihan stated that those gaps were “not a barrier to effective cooperation between the PSNI and the gardai.” That co-operation will be tested in the murder investigation currently underway after a 21-year-old man was reportedly lured across the border from Cullyhanna in south Armagh to a farm at Oram in County Monaghan where a gang of up to 15 men beat him to death with iron bars in an outhouse. RTÉ reports that the murder investigation is also looking at fuel-laundering, and the BBC reports that the victim’s family are blaming members of the Provisional IRA. The UTV report ends on this note

Gardaí in Monaghan have said that they are keeping an open mind regarding paramilitary involvement.

Adds The NI Regional Development minister, Sinn Féin’s Conor Murphy, is quoted in this report – “I do not believe that there is any republican involvement in this murder.”From the BBC report

The Cullyhanna man’s family say he was recently involved in a dispute with individual members of the IRA.

A short time later he was told to leave the country.

“Our son courageously and correctly refused to leave,” read a statement from the Quinn family.

“We believe that he was abducted by the Provisional movement and brutally beaten to death.”

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