IRA still active - IMC report

The IRA remains heavily involved in criminality and is still training new members in how to use guns and handle bombs, according to an independent report released today.

In its fifth study of loyalist and republican terror groups for the British and Irish governments, the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) welcomed Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams’s appeal to the Provisionals to abandon the armed struggle for a democratic alternative.

And the IMC said Mr Adams will have shown leadership of a “high order” if he delivers an end to all illegal activity by the IRA.

The IMC’s report said that in the wake of the murder of Belfast father-of-two Robert McCartney and the raid on the Northern Bank, people had several questions about Sinn Féin and the IRA’s future.

The commission asked: “How does Sinn Féin now view the claim made by PIRA (the Provisional IRA) to be the lawful government and representative of the people of Ireland, north and south?

“Does the party seek power in Ireland, north and south, using paramilitary muscle to back its participation in the political process?

“Does it ultimately intend to participate fully in democratic politics, and to observe all the standards that requires, but to reach that position maintaining for the time being some form of slimmed-down military capability?

“Or is it now ready to ensure that PIRA ends all forms of illegal activity and to engage wholeheartedly in democratic politics and in policing?

“In his statement of April 6, as president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams indicated views related to some of the considerations we have raised earlier in this section and if he is able to develop this and to deliver as he seems to have suggested, he will have demonstrated leadership of a high order.”

Despite welcoming Mr Adams’s appeal, the IMC said the Provisional IRA still had the ability to go back to a full-scale terror campaign if it wanted to.

The report said the organisation was also heavily involved in criminal enterprises such as fuel and tobacco smuggling and money laundering.

The commission confirmed that the Provisionals continued to recruit and train new members “including in the use of firearms and explosives”.

The report said: “At the end of September 2004, the police discovered 10,000 rounds of PIRA ammunition suitable for use in assault rifles, of a type not previously found in Northern Ireland.

“This may have only been part of a larger consignment and it demonstrates PIRA’s continuing efforts to maintain its preparedness.”

The IMC said intelligence it received had led them to believe:

:: Provisional IRA members were involved in the murder of Robert McCartney. But it was not sanctioned by the leadership in advance and it appeared the killers were acting on the instructions of a local commander;

:: The organisation was involved in robberies such as December’s Northern Bank heist which used violence or the threat of violence;

:: PIRA members were behind an arson attack at a fuel depot in early September;

:: While the Provisionals allowed some people they had banished to return to the republican Short Strand district in east Belfast after the murder of Mr McCartney, there was no indication that other exiled people could return to their homes in other parts of Northern Ireland;

:: The organisation carried out five shootings and six assaults since August 2004.

The IMC is made up of former US Central Intelligence Agency deputy director Richard Kerr, ex-Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist unit chief John Grieve, retired Irish civil servant Joe Brosnan and the former leader of Northern Ireland’s cross community Alliance Party, Lord Alderdice.

The commission was set up two years ago by the British and Irish governments as a means of shaming loyalist and republican terror groups into abandoning criminality and paramilitarism.

The Government has imposed sanctions twice on Sinn Féin, which is hostile to the commission, as a result of IMC reports, denying them Assembly funds.

Today’s report was being studied closely by unionist and nationalist opponents of Sinn Féin for indications as to whether the Provisional movement is engaged in a process of abandoning the gun.

Republicans have been told the Provisional IRA must be wound down if Sinn Féin is ever to sit in devolved government again.

Northern Ireland’s largest party, the Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists, have also urged the British government to stop waiting for republicans to abandon the gun and press on with devolution in Northern Ireland which freezes Sinn Féin out of ministerial posts.

A bid last year by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to secure a deal involving Sinn Féin and the DUP failed when the Provisional IRA refused to give in to demands to allow its disarmament programme to be photographed.