February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The apparent target for the attack was the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde, who had been due to take part in the race. However, he had already pulled out injured. Nobody was hurt in the incident.
Police said the device was a sophisticated pipe bomb, capable of causing injury or even death. Belfast Lord Mayor Tom Ekin said the attempted bombing was “an absolute disgrace.”
Although pipe bombs have largely been the favored weapon of loyalists in North Belfast, a call to a local journalist seemed to suggest that dissident republicans were behind the incident.
Marathon officials said they opted to re-route rather than halt the race. Its director, David Seaton, said, “It was either that or abandon the race, which we obviously didn’t want to do because people had trained so hard for the event.”
Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland said it was a “reckless act” which could have led to serious injury or worse.
An anonymous male caller to the journalist said “volunteers” had abandoned the device. He added that the Belfast marathon was “just a frill on the six-county state” and continued: “Tell Hugh Orde ‘We will get him the next time.’ “
In other news, it’s already clear that the Orange Order intends to challenge the Parades Commission’s authority by refusing to fill out properly the legal forms required for marches this summer, in protest at new laws giving the Commission legal powers over the behavior of “hangers-on.”
There were more signs this week of the dangers of a possibly difficult marching season. Nationalist youths were blamed for attacking Protestant homes in the Twaddell area of North Belfast, near Ardoyne.
Sinn Fein’s North Belfast Westminster candidate, Gerry Kelly, said the attacks were wrong and would damage both communities. “Whoever carried out them out is doing a disservice to the nationalist community of Ardoyne,” he said.
“Let me make it clear that these attacks are absolutely wrong and can only do damage in the run-in to the marching season. The nationalist community is absolutely opposed to the perpetrators who reject them,” he said.
Meanwhile, Orde said the mainstream IRA is continuing to recruit and target potential victims, although it had no intention of returning to armed struggle. Sinn Fein’s Mitchel McLaughlin dismissed the comments as “yet another political intervention.”
Orde said that the Provisional IRA “still carry out what they have always done with the exception of actually going out to kill soldiers, police, civilians, members of the public.”
McLaughlin responded: “Given the fact that these latest remarks come in the midst of an election campaign and at a time when the initiative by Gerry Adams offers the prospect of forward movement, many questions will be raised about the intentions of the PSNI in the time ahead.”
Meanwhile, tensions within mainstream republicanism in South and East Belfast in the wake of the Robert McCartney killing became obvious this week when Gerry Adams was barracked over his support for the dead man’s family.
The McCartney sisters are still arguing that Sinn Fein has not done enough to bring those responsible for his murder to justice. They met a group of Fianna Fail and Labor TDs and senators from the Republic in Belfast this week. The politicians afterwards urged Sinn Fein to do more.
Anger has grown in the area where the dead man lived, however, over the family’s high-profile campaign and their continuing criticism of Sinn Fein.
Three of those accused of taking part in the fight that resulted in McCartney’s murder were IRA members, and have since been expelled. Two members of Sinn Fein were also recently expelled following allegations that they had failed to heed Adams’s call to give full and frank statements.
The move has caused anger and resentment in some quarters, with family members of some of those linked to the incident shouting abuse at Adams as he canvassed in the Markets area.
Sean Hayes, a Sinn Fein representative and community worker in the Markets area, has criticized the party’s actions as “disenfranchising” local voters, following the suspension of both himself and one-time local council candidate, Deirdre Hargey.