On Monday, a 37-year-old man was taken from a pub in Jonesborough, South Armagh, shot five times in the legs and beaten with iron bars. The same day, a 47-year-old man was set upon by a gang and shot in both legs in the Ardoyne, North Belfast. The incident took place not far from where an earlier shooting incurred involving a 14-year-old boy. The INLA has been accused of brutally assaulting the boy. Meanwhile, a man was shot in Antrim, it is believed by loyalists.
Last Friday night, the boy was taken to hospital with a gunshot wound to the left leg after being found dumped at the rear of an apartment complex in the New Lodge Road district. On Monday, he was said to be “stable” and it is expected that we will make a good recovery.
The INLA has not admitted involvement, but sources have said the Republican Socialist Movement, of which the INLA is a part, is carrying out an investigation. The INLA has been responsible for several incidents in recent months in the Ardoyne-New Lodge area, where it is trying to establish itself in the vacuum left by the IRA’s relative inactivity. However, these recent attacks may indicate that the IRA is once more becoming active in “policing” its districts.
Both the British and Irish governments fear that the current political inertia will encourage more such violence.
The Rev. Aidan Troy, the Ardoyne priest, said the youth, who has learning difficulties, had been attacked before and that he had intervened after the family said the police had tried to induce him to become an informer.
The SDLP mayor of Belfast, Martin Morgan, said the shooting reached new levels of depravity. “The community has to reject these people. They are nothing better than child abusers,” he said.
Meanwhile, the British Ministry of Defense has finally agreed to provide a coroner access to documents and video footage relating to 10 contentious killings (including those of seven IRA men).
But the ruling means the families and their lawyers will not have access to the tapes and that the coroner alone will decide if they are relevant to the repeatedly postponed inquests.
East Tyrone coroner Roger McLernon told a preliminary inquest into the 10 killings that following a High Court ruling it had been agreed the Ministry of Defense would provide him with access to unedited documents and video footage that related to some of the killings.
The coroner said it would take him up to two months to study the thousands of pages of unedited documents and he adjourned the case until March 16.