February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
In the same week, it was revealed that a U.S. citizen, supposedly wanted by the PSNI for questioning about an alleged IRA break-in at top-security Castlereagh police offices, openly visited Northern Ireland in January.
The three main reasons given by the UUP leader, David Trimble, for threatening to withdraw from the power-sharing Executive in October 2004 were the alleged IRA involvement in Colombia, allegations that the IRA was behind a raid at Castlereagh police station, and the “Stormont-gate” claims.
Those, on top of his dissatisfaction with the pace of IRA decommissioning, led to his threat and the British government’s subsequent decision to impose direct rule in Northern Ireland from London, collapsing the Assembly and Executive.
Over a year ago, PSNI said it had submitted a 3,000-page dossier to the director of public prosecutions seeking Larry Zaitschek’s extradition from New York, where he now lives.
All press questions to the DPP’s office since have been deflected. The office has said only that the papers are under “active consideration” with no date set on when a decision to issue warrants will be made.
After the March 17, 2002 raid on Castlereagh, police initially believed it was an inside job but later accused republicans. Homes in West Belfast were raided, and although arrests were made, nobody was charged.
Police began by claiming that Zaitschek, a chef at Castlereagh who had republican friends, had foiled their attempts to question him by fleeing to the U.S., but it later emerged he had voluntarily given himself up for questioning twice before returning home.
He was also later questioned by police in his native New York. In June 2002, the then assistant chief constable of PSNI, Alan McQuillan, said detailed evidence to support Zaitschek’s extradition to Northern Ireland had been given to the DPP.
However, during his trip to Ireland in January, the police came nowhere near him. They said they did not know he was in Ireland and, had they been aware, they would have arrested him.
Zaitschek continues to argue that he should be given access to his son, who lives with his estranged wife, allegedly in the witness-protection program. He is concerned about his son’s psychological state, living for so long in effective police custody.
He said his life has been “put on hold” for two years since he has not been able to see his son, Pearse (the U.S. consulate had a 20-minute meeting with the boy, under police supervision, in November 2003).
“For their own reasons, the intelligence community in Northern Ireland have made me into public enemy number one,” he said. “They have briefed the media that they want to extradite me, yet two years later, the DPP is still stalling.”
Meanwhile, one of the remaining three defendants in the so-called “Stormont-gate” IRA spy ring case has also claimed his life has been in upheaval because of unfounded allegations.
“My family have been victimized and the political process has been damaged,” said Ciaran Kearney, who was charged in October 2002 with spying on political and government papers at Stormont. “Special Branch carry the blame for that. Special Branch collapsed the power-sharing Executive and have endangered the Good Friday agreement. They have not yet been made accountable for that act of political subversion.”.
As revealed two weeks ago, the main charges against two of the defendants, Kearney and his father-in-law, Denis Donaldson (the former Sinn Fein head of administration at Stormont), have been withdrawn.
Kearney, speaking to a hushed courtroom, said: “The allegation that I possessed documents of a secret, confidential and restricted nature originating from the Northern Ireland Office has been withdrawn without explanation.”