Top SF members also in IRA, says report
As the British government revealed plans to impose tough financial sanctions on Sinn Féin and the loyalist Progressive Unionists, a dossier on terrorist violence in Northern Ireland alleged there was the crossover between politics and paramilitarism.
The International Monitoring Commission (IMC) findings found alarming levels of attacks in the North, with murders approaching one a month.
It also backed an assessment by police chiefs that the IRA was behind the kidnapping of dissident republican, Bobby Tohill, that triggered a political crisis in Belfast in February.
In a report that will enrage republicans, the commission alleged: “Some members, including some senior members of Sinn Féin are also members, including, in some cases, senior members of PIRA.”
The four-member IMC gave its report to the Irish and British Governments last week, and after studying its contents, Northern Secretary Paul Murphy plans to impose sanctions on the political parties aligned to paramilitary organisations.
The penalties, yet to be finalised, will be taken from the e180,667 paid annually to Sinn Féin and the e40,650 given to the smaller PUP.
The IMC report also threatened to hold paramilitary chiefs publicly to account in future reports.
Although it hit out at all areas of paramilitary crime and racketeering, it was savage in its condemnation of the brutal killings and beatings.
Since January 2003, 12 people have been murdered, with loyalists responsible for three-quarters of the killings.
But even though violent deaths and terror strikes on security forces have fallen sharply, had devolution still been operating in Northern Ireland, the commission warned it would possibly have called for both parties to be ejected from the Stormont administration.
The commission was set up last year to monitor terrorist ceasefires and whether all sides were honouring commitments under the Good Friday Agreement.
The body’s first report was rushed forward in February, following the abduction of Tohill from a Belfast city centre bar by four men dressed in white forensic suits and wearing balaclavas.
The operation was planned and undertaken by the IRA, concludes the report.
Northern Ireland’s top police officer, Hugh Orde, provoked a political uproar when he blamed the IRA for the operation.
With the IMC report expected to re-ignite tensions, talks between the political parties, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Prime Minister Tony Blair, that were scheduled for London next week, have been postponed.
The announcement came ahead of the IMC backing up Mr Orde’s verdict, despite IRA denials.
