Provisionals using cover names to mask violence, says unionist
A unionist MP today expressed concern that the Provisional IRA or dissident republicans could be using a cover name for the organisation to allow vigilante violence to take place in the North.
David Simpson, the Democratic Unionist MP for Upper Bann, voiced alarm at a claim received by a Co Armagh newspaper that a group called Direct Action Against Drugs (DAAD) were behind the savage beating of a man last month in a flat in Lurgan by a masked gang wielding baseball bats.
The man was treated in hospital for leg and arm injuries.
A caller to the Lurgan Mail purporting to be from DAAD and using a codeword claimed the attack hours later.
It is alleged that DAAD was previously used by the Provisional IRA as a flag of convenience to claim a number of murders.
These included the shooting dead of 23-year-old Francis Rice in Lenadoon, west Belfast in April 1994, 31-year-old painter and decorator Ian Lyons in a car in Connor Park in Lurgan in January 1996 and 30-year-old Brendan Campbell outside a restaurant on the Lisburn Road in south Belfast in February 1998.
However, security sources have expressed surprise that the provisionals, having declared last year an end to all armed action in a bid to boost efforts to restore power-sharing, would carry out a vicious assault in the nationalist Taghnevan area of Lurgan.
Mr Simpson said today if the provisionals were found to be responsible it would have serious political implications as the Irish and British governments tried to persuade his party to go into a devolved government at Stormont featuring Sinn Féin before November 24.
“What is additionally worrying about this particular attack is that responsibility for it has been claimed by an organisation that is universally accepted as a cover for the Provisional IRA,” he observed.
“If DAAD did carry out this brutal attack it would then be the case that this was no so-called dissident organisation but the work of the Provisional IRA.
“The repercussions of such a situation would be that it would prove that the IRA’s terrorist structure remains in place and that the IRA continues to engage in paramilitary activity.
“It would also make a joke of the Secretary of State’s assessment that the republican movement has ended its violent campaign.
“Coupled with the threat to the sister of IRA informer Martin McGartland and the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee report into organised crime, it is clear that if this claim is true, that republican paramilitaries are very much alive and kicking.”
A PSNI spokesperson said today they were aware of the claim that had been made to the newspaper.
While there was some speculation the cover name had been adopted by the more hardline republican Continuity IRA, Mr Simpson said the apparent re-emergence of DAAD was disturbing.
“Whenever the DUP says that all republican terrorism and criminality must end we mean all of it,” he continued.
“The ’sub-contracting’ of vigilantism, or worse, will not be tolerated and nor will well worn excuses like republican violence is the work of individuals and not the organisation.
“We want to see Northern Ireland develop into a society where democracy flourishes and the rule of law is respected. This sort of activity, irrespective of the source, is the stuff of the past.”
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