Hoax bomb won't deter Police Board chief

The chairman of a new community policing board in Northern Ireland tonight vowed to continue his work despite a hoax bomb attack on his Co Tyrone home.

Police said the device left at the home of Thomas McBride, the Strabane District Policing Partnership head, had been clearly designed to intimidate.

Mr McBride, an SDLP councillor, claimed the incident was the latest in a campaign of threats against members of the new bodies which were set up across Northern Ireland to monitor police performance.

Nationalist members of the boards have been urged to step up their personal security because of heightening fears for their safety.

An emergency meeting of the Cookstown board, also in Co Tyrone, last week was told that police intelligence indicated “mainstream republicans” aligned to the Provisional IRA intended to intimidate all SDLP representatives and independents regarded as Catholic.

That alert came just days after an independent Catholic member, Cathal O’Dolan, quit the Fermanagh board when he was threatened by dissident republicans opposed to the Sinn Fein leadership, and the Good Friday Agreement.

Northern Ireland Office officials are to have talks with DPP members this week about stepping up their own security.

However, Mr McBride said the latest incident, which saw a suspicious box placed near his front door, would not deter him in his work as chairman of the Strabane board.

“It is clear there is a concerted effort to intimidate and threaten those involved in moving policing forward on the DPPs,” he said.

“It is also telling that after six months of the DPPs being established there are those who feel so threatened by the good work being progressed that they will go to terrible lengths to stop it.

“Those who took decisions to go on to the local DPPs did not do so lightly, and knowing the good work that is being carried out will not be intimidated or threatened or prevented from continuing that work.”

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein leaders were today challenged to declare that members of the boards were not under threat from the Provisional IRA.

Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness has rejected claims that mainstream republicans were behind threats against board members, but SDLP Policing spokesman Alex Attwood insisted this was not enough.

“It is now urgent for the leadership of Sinn Fein and that of the IRA to confirm publicly that there is no threat, that there will be no threat, and that members of DPPs are to be free from harassment and intimidation,” he said.

“It is not good enough for Martin McGuinness to claim at the weekend that the IRA is not behind the threat to certain DPP members.

“The Sinn Fein leadership and that of the IRA must make it crystal clear and certain, and do so publicly at a leadership level, that DPP members are free to go about their work.”

Mr McGuinness said he did not believe the threats existed, and claimed “securocrats” – faceless security sources – were to blame.

He said: “Here we have a glimmer of hope, a prospect of progress, and here the securocrats are coming to spook the unionists again.

“Anybody who knows our contribution to this process knows that there is no prospect whatsoever of the republicans who support us engaging in any activity which sees the intimidation of any citizens in the north.

“Everything that we have been about is to bring a change to all of that, to end the intimidation that has been used on many occasions against ourselves, and to bring about political progress.”