IRA

A new report released by the Independent Monitoring Commission concludes that the Irish Republican Army covered up a Belfast killing, is smuggling in new armaments and continues to recruit and train members how to use firearms and make bombs. In addition, the report states that

Paramilitary groups continue to be active in violent and other crime and none have materially wound down their capability to commit violent or other crime. It continues to be the case that dissident republican groups are the most committed to continuing terrorism.

From a recent AP wire:

The report shed new light on a central issue bedeviling Northern Ireland's 12-year-old peace process - whether the outlawed IRA will disarm and disband in support of the province's 1998 peace accord.

It found that the IRA and a half-dozen other paramilitary groups remained highly active from September 2004 to March. While the other groups have no significant political support, the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party represents most of Northern Ireland's Catholic minority, making continued IRA activity a huge political obstacle.

The commissioners, among them a former CIA deputy director, cited evidence that the IRA was smuggling in new weaponry in defiance of the 1998 accord's disarmament goals. The IRA was supposed to have scrapped all its armaments by mid-2000 but didn't
start the process until late 2001 and halted it some two years later.

The report said police in September discovered 10,000 rounds of assault rifle ammunition in an IRA arms dump "of a type not previously found in Northern Ireland and manufactured since the Belfast agreement." These bullets, it said, "may have been only part of a larger consignment."

The IRA "continues to seek to maintain its medium-term effectiveness. It recruits and trains new members, including in the use of firearms and explosives. It continues to gather intelligence," the report said.

It said the IRA committed at least five shootings and six assaults since September and runs a range of criminal rackets such as smuggling fuel and cigarettes and bank robberies - including the world-record theft in December of about $50 million from a Belfast bank. The IRA has denied involvement in the bank robbery.

The commissioners added their take to the IRA's admission that its members stabbed to death a Catholic civilian, Robert McCartney, outside a Belfast bar on Jan. 30.

They accused the IRA of putting "the organization and its members ahead of justice." They said IRA members attacked McCartney "at the direction" of a senior IRA figure in Belfast and afterward cleaned up forensic evidence and intimidated potential witnesses.

The IRA - which initially denied involvement - later expelled three members and offered to shoot two of them as the group faced intense pressure from a public campaign by McCartney's sisters. Sinn Fein also suspended or expelled about a dozen members who were involved in or witnessed the killing.

The commissioners said three groups rooted in hard-line Protestant areas - the Loyalist Volunteer Force, Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force - were responsible for more violence and crime than the IRA and three smaller anti-British gangs. They said, on average, the IRA and these other underground groups combined to shoot or assault four people each week.

(via global-geopolitics)