Orde: Paramilitaries under pressure over ceasefire breaches

A tough new assessment of alleged IRA ceasefire breaches could pile intense pressure on paramilitaries to halt the violence, Northern Ireland’s chief constable claimed today.

With heavy financial punishment for Sinn Féin believed to be recommended in the dossier handed to the British and Irish governments, Hugh Orde insisted the study could be a force for good.

Republicans have reacted furiously to the Independent Monitoring Commission’s report into the state of terrorist ceasefires, vowing to resist any sanctions contained in the document due to be published by London and Dublin tomorrow.

But Mr Orde said: “If it puts people under pressure and says we found you out, you have got to stop, you have got to go away, that’s a good thing for policing.

“It enables us to go forward.”

The four-member IMC panel, drawn from intelligence, political and legal experts in Britain, Ireland and the United States, brought forward its first report due to the alleged IRA kidnapping of dissident republican Bobby Tohill.

Mr Orde sparked the political crisis when he immediately blamed the Provisionals for dragging Tohill from a Belfast city centre bar in February.

Even though the chief constable stressed the IRA was not about to go back to war, he refused to move from his original verdict on the abduction.

As he attended an international policing conference in Belfast Mr Orde said: “I am on record very early on who I thought was responsible and I stand by that assertion.”

As well as examining the IRA, the IMC document will pass judgment on the cease-fires of the main loyalist paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland.

According to report it has found enough evidence of breaches among both the Provisionals and the Ulster Volunteer Force to warrant sanctions against their political representatives.

With the Stormont power-sharing administration still suspended, due to claims of an IRA spying operation inside the government, the threat of dismissing either Sinn Féin or the Progressive Unionist Party from the Assembly is not possible.

But it is believed that IMC report includes recommendations for monetary punishment to be imposed on both parties.