Diplomat forced to flee North after UDA death threats

AN Irish diplomat has been forced to flee the North because of death threats from anti-Catholic extremists, the Government said yesterday.

Áine de Baróid from Cork was a member of a diplomatic team building Irish Government links with members of outlawed groups in the North, particularly loyalist paramilitary gangs based in the most impoverished Protestant districts of Belfast.

She fled Belfast in August after receiving death threats from members of the Ulster Defence Association, the largest paramilitary group in the North with an estimated 3,000 members.

De Baróid was involved in developing contacts between the UDA and President Mary McAleese. Ms McAleese and her husband, Martin, have publicly befriended a senior UDA commander, Jackie McDonald, a closeness resented and rejected by other members of the UDA.

“By all accounts, Ms de Baróid has worked hard within communities in Northern Ireland to the goal of reconciliation. Her commitment to the latter is something that should be applauded, but unfortunately it has been used by some as reason to threaten her life,” said Desmond Rea,the Protestant chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which oversees the Six Counties’ police force.

“Her work, and the work of Dr McAleese, had been going so well, and that is what makes me so sad,” said the Fr Aidan Troy, a Catholic priest in Belfast who met the diplomat last year.

Sinn Féin said the episode demonstrated that the UDA posed a much greater threat than the IRA, which last year disarmed and formally ended its campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force.

A prominent Sinn Féin official in Belfast, Alex Maskey, credited Ms de Baróid with “much good work within working-class unionist areas, and the threat to her life is disgraceful”.