Police board death threats won't work, dissidents told

Dissident republicans will not succeed in wrecking Northern Ireland’s new community policing boards through a campaign of death threats, Chief Constable Hugh Orde vowed today.

Mr Orde urged Sinn Féin to speak out against the attacks amid claims the Provisional IRA was involved in the vendetta waged against Catholics who sit on the bodies.

A District Policing Partnership member in Fermanagh has already quit after being warned his life was in danger while a hoax bomb was planted at the home of the Strabane chairman in Co Tyrone.

The Chief Constable confirmed rogue republican terrorists plotting to destroy the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement were behind the campaign.

But he pledged: “The point the dissidents need to realise is this won’t work.

“Violence doesn’t work, it never has worked in Northern Ireland and that’s why we are where we are today because we have beaten it to a large extent.

“These people (DPP members) are brave people, they have made brave decisions and they’re not going to be intimidated out of this.”

The threat against representatives on the 26 boards which hold local police commanders to account intensified after it emerged police believe the IRA was planning to intimidate all nationalist representatives in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.

Even though Sinn Féin has boycotted the bodies because it believes policing reforms have not yet gone far enough Martin McGuinness has rejected the allegations.

But Mr Orde today called for all sides to voice total opposition to the targeting.

He said: “Anyone that wants to engage in a democratic process should condemn it.

“That includes every single political party and it includes Sinn Féin.”

Despite believing the IRA was behind an intimidation campaign, Mr Orde confirmed the main threat was posed by the dissidents.

Independent Fermanagh DPP member Cathal O’Dolan stood down last week after being told he would be executed.

Bullets have also been sent to the homes of Denis Bradley, Deputy Chairman of the Central Policing Board in Belfast and a Catholic representative in Derry in a bid to force them out of the new body.

Mr Orde said: “My big concern is the dissidents, not the provisionals.”

Meanwhile, he also hit out at loyalists behind a death threat to a Catholic priest in Newtownabbey, Co Antrim.

Father Dan Whyte was warned to step up his personal security after police received anonymous intelligence that his life was in danger.

The clergyman was also faced by 200 loyalist protesters who hurled abuse and blew horns as he conducted a prayer service at a cemetery in his parish yesterday.

Loyalists claimed the picket was against the use of a public address system in Carnmoney Cemetery, where vandals have targeted Catholic graves.

Even though he blamed loyalist paramilitaries for the threat, the Chief Constable could not confirm which organisation was responsible.

But in an attack against both the warning and the graveyard protest he said: “Mindless blatant sectarianism is how you would sum it up.

“We spoke to Father Whyte when we received anonymous information threatening his life. That’s clearly linked to the mindless demonstration at which worshippers were intimidated.

“It was people from the loyalist side who are determined to demonstrate clear blatant sectarianism to disrupt all that has been going on that is positive in policing in the community.”