February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The statement said that the abduction of Bobby Tohill, a former INLA gunman, “represented a serious breach of paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration,” which Dublin and London issued last year and which demands a complete end to all paramilitary activity. The statement also said that the International Monitoring Commission, set up to police the ceasefires, would be asked to report on the allegations and that next week’s talks in the context of the ongoing review would focus on paramilitary violence. This last is seen as an attempt to placate UUP leader David Trimble, who has repeatedly said that the review should concentrate on the “core” problem, which is the continued illegal activities of the paramilitary organizations.
“Where is the referee?” Trimble asked. “And isn’t it time that people were shown more than just a yellow card?”
It is unclear if it will be enough to prevent a unionist walkout. Trimble could not be reached for his reaction to the joint statement.
The DUP leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, said he would be demanding a British government ruling on the IRA ceasefire. “It is clear the IRA remains a fully armed and active terror machine,” he said.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described the alleged kidnap bid as “a very serious matter” and said he was “disappointed that events like this are still happening, but I am a realist.”
The controversy started last Friday when four men in boiler suits, balaclavas and gloves beat Tohill in Kelly’s Cellar’s pub near Castle Street. He was sprayed with pepper spray. The attack was filmed on security cameras, it has been revealed. Shortly afterward, following a bystander’s tipoff, police intercepted a van in which Tohill was found unconscious. Four men were arrested. They are Harry Fitzsimmons, Gerard McCrory, Thomas Tolan, and Liam Rainey. They have appeared in court, charged with causing grievous bodily harm, possession of articles likely to be of use to terrorists, including metal cudgels and pepper spray, and assault during the alleged abduction.
A reliable source claims that one of the four was Martin McGuinness’s driver when he was minister for education in the devolved government, which has been suspended since October 2002.
According to the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde, the alleged abduction was a Provisional IRA operation.
“We are very clear on this. I met with my senior commanders and I met them again this morning and I am very clear that this was a PIRA operation,” he said. However, charges of membership against the four men have been dropped.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said: “There have been claims about the IRA before which have proven to be without foundation. Orde’s allegation follows a pattern going back to the old RUC, which was also quick to point the finger at republicans.
“There has also been an unholy haste by a range of politicians eager to seize upon Orde’s statement without question.”
The Irish justice minister, Michael McDowell, accused Sinn Fein of “vomit-making hypocrisy” by pushing for political concessions while the IRA “pretends” to be on ceasefire.
The SDLP’s Alex Attwood said it was now essential that the leadership of republicanism “faced down” members of the IRA who, he said, were engaged in illegal paramilitary and criminal activity.
Marion Price, an activist on behalf of dissident republican prisoners, called on Adams to “come clean” about the incident. “I know that Mr. Tohill has been a lifelong republican and is opposed to the current Sinn Fein peace strategy,” she said.
Tohill told some newspapers that members of the mainstream IRA dragged him out of the bar and intended to kill him on the border. He signed himself out of one hospital on Saturday and into another on Sunday and is now claiming he was involved in a drunken row that got out of hand.
Speaking to the Andersonstown News, a West Belfast republican newspaper on Sunday, Tohill altered the version of events he had earlier given to other newspapers. Speaking from his hospital bed, he told the paper that the British government was using him as a “political pawn.”