Insults fly at decommissioning priest's meeting

One of the independent church witnesses to IRA decommissioning tonight compared the unionist community to Nazis for their treatment of Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Father Alec Reid was involved in angry exchanges with several members of the audience at a public meeting in Belfast.

The Catholic priest said: “The reality is that the nationalist community in Northern Ireland were treated almost like animals by the unionist community.

“They were not treated like human beings.

“They were treated like the Nazis treated the Jews.”

Willie Frazer, of the victims group Families Acting For Innocent Relatives, claimed Protestants were butchered by Catholics during the Troubles, before storming out of the meeting at the Fitzroy Presbyterian Church.

Tempers flared after an audience member began talking about restrictions on Orange marches as he asked a question.

A number of people interjected as Fr Reid attempted to answer the point.

The Redemptorist order priest, who is based at Clonard Monastery, raised his voice to tackle his detractors and said: “You don’t want the truth.”

He was then heckled by some of the 200-strong crowd after he made his controversial remarks.

As the debate continued one audience member told Father Reid: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

After the 90-minute meeting, Mr Frazer said he was incensed by the priest's remarks.

He said: “I did fly off the handle but I could not sit there and allow him to accuse the unionist people of persecuting the Roman Catholic community for the last 60 years. That is far from the truth.

“That is not to say Catholics have not suffered but so have the Protestant community.

“He was wrong and bitter and his republican attitude came out when he called us Nazis.”

Mr Frazer, who lost five members of his family including his father during the troubles, added: “Two of my uncles fought in the Second World War.

“It is an insult for that man to call my family Nazis and the people of my community Nazis.”

He said he would be raising Father Reid’s comments with unionist politicians.

Father Reid’s comments overshadowed a public meeting on the decommissioning process which was also attended by the other independent church witness the Rev Harold Good.

Before the meeting descended into a shouting match, Fr Reid revealed the men who had overseen IRA decommissioning were guarded with a loaded Kalashnikov.

The gun then became the last weapon in the terror group’s vast arsenal to be put beyond use.

The priest vividly described the final act in the historic process which was carried out by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.

He told the audience: “Everywhere we went this Kalashnikov was there and I could see it was loaded.

“I was beginning to wonder if they were afraid dissidents were coming.

“They were providing a bodyguard for us, if you like.

“The very last act was this gun.

“The bullets were taken out of it and it was handed over to General (John) de Chastelain (head of the IICD).

“It was handed over to him by a senior IRA man. It was a significant moment. This was the last gun.

“The man handed it over and got quite emotional. He was aware that this was the last gun.”

On the enormity of the occasion, Fr Reid said “We saw the gun being taken out of Irish politics, from a nationalist point of view.”

Once calm restored to the meeting, Fr Reid attempted to make amends for his controversial remarks.

But there was a prevailing sense in the tightly-packed church hall that the damage had been done.

The priest said: “I have said some very hard things about the unionist community, which I think are true.

“There is something else I believe.

“Their history in the last 60 years put them in a position after partition that they did not want.

“They were forced to treat nationalists the way they did.”

Fr Reid told the audience that the nationalist community would have acted in the same way, had the roles been reversed.

Mr Good declined to reveal any more information about the decommissioning process.

He told the audience: “We have already made it clear publicly that it is not for us to go into detail about what we saw.

“Not because we want to be difficult, or devious, nor because we were asked to sign or agree to any secrecy clause.

“There was an understanding between us and the task that we shared that we would respect the confidentiality agreed to by the IICD and the IRA as part of their process.

“We also respected the reasons for that undertaking.”

The former president of the Methodist church added: “Our focus was on the what rather than on the how.

“The outcome is much more important that the detail.”

Mr Good praised General de Chastelain and his two fellow commissioners for their integrity and the thoroughness with which they went about their work.

The audience raised a number of issues ranging from the threat posed by dissident republicans to the key matter of trust.

But, in a bid to reassure the doubters, Mr Good said: “We saw a decommissioning of the intention to return to an armed conflict.”

On the enormity of the act which was announced on September 26, he added: “A huge amount of potential grief has been removed from the equation.”

Fr Reid praised Mr Good‘s trustworthiness and ability when a man asked why he had been chosen to oversee the process.

In one of the lighter moments of the meeting, the priest said: “If he was in our church we would have no problem in making him Pope.”