Frank Hegarty

Martin McGuinness: “but it bears all kinds of sinister connotations…”

Pete Baker on October 3, 2011, 10:41 pm

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There was a bizarre interruption in the Irish Times interview with the Sinn Fein candidate in the Irish Presidential race, Martin McGuinness, MP, MLA. From the Irish Times report TEN MINUTES into our interview, Martin McGuinness is beginning to set out how he’s been around a long time, when a shadow falls across the table. We turn around and a large, hirsute man looms above, shaking a camán and warning, “You’d better not ask any hard questions.” A smile as …

Martin McGuinness: “the past is a very, very dark place for everybody.”

Pete Baker on September 29, 2011, 6:17 pm

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In response to a challenge to appear in front of the Smithwick Tribunal, Sinn Féin’s candidate in the Irish Presidential election, Martin McGuinness, MP, MLA, has said that he has “no problem at all attending the tribunal”. But he added that he has “no direct knowledge of the circumstances surrounding” the murder of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan. Earlier today, Martin McGuinness said he could not recall the incident Peter Murtagh wrote about in today’s Irish Times, threatened Frank Hegarty’s family with recounting his …

If McGuinness is right then an awful lot of people are lying about the past…

Mick Fealty on September 29, 2011, 1:45 pm

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Brian Feeney makes a strong point in yesterday’s Irish News in which he contrasts the ‘good’ IRA (the one that spawned the mainstream political parties of the Republic), and the ‘bad’, the one operated solely by their political rivals, Sinn Fein. If there is a difference in the treatment given each, then it is surely dependent on more than just an inchoate animus within the southern media towards us rough neck Nordies. Three alternative factors immediately come to mind: The ‘Free …

Contradiction in McGuinness advice to informers between 1986 and 2011?

Mick Fealty on September 26, 2011, 9:17 am

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There was a wall of ‘criticism’ (simmering outrage might be a better description) in the southern papers… In the midst of it all buried within a suite of articles on the torture and killing of IRA informer Frank Hegarty there’s an interesting snippet worthy of further consideration. Upsetting detail aside there’s an apparent contradiction in Martin McGuinness’ own account of what happened: ‘I said to that member that if Frank Hegarty was guilty of being a British agent, then my …