IRA man who fled jail was pardoned

Belfast Telegraph

An IRA man who escaped prison more than 50 years ago was given a royal pardon by Margaret Thatcher's government, official records from 1985 revealed.

Donal Donnelly fled Belfast's Crumlin Road jail - which he dubbed Europe's Alcatraz - on Boxing Day 1960 while serving a sentence for membership of the armed group during its 1950s border campaign.

Former Northern Ireland secretary Lord Hurd, part of a Conservative government scarred by republican violence, agreed to use the Royal Prerogative of Mercy in May 1985.

His decision was made less than two years after the biggest prison break-out in UK history by 38 republicans and ahead of landmark political talks on British co-operation with the Irish Government.
...

BY REBECCA BLACK - Belfast Telegraph

A small number of blazes were lit across nationalist areas of Belfast last night to mark the controversial remand without charge of mainly Catholic men on August 9, 1971. However, while bonfires on August 8 are the traditional way the event is noted, nationalist and republican politicians condemned the practice. Sinn Fein MLA Fra McCann said there was work being done in republican communities to try and bring people away from the bonfires. SDLP MLA Alex Attwood said most people in west Belfast did not want them. Meanwhile, DUP minister Nelson McCausland claimed two commemorative banners had been stolen from the Shore Road and placed on one of the internment bonfires. The banners had been erected in St Aubyn Street and Keadyville Avenue as part of the area's Twelfth celebrations. "The ritualistic theft and burning of items associated with the culture and identity of the unionist and Protestant community on republican bonfires is nothing less than an act of sectarian bigotry and hatred," he said. ...

Former NI Secretary Peter Hain has said there should be an end to prosecutions over Northern Ireland's Troubles.
It would mean no-one would be prosecuted for the 3,000 unsolved murders during 30 years of violence. Mr Hain made his comments ahead of the start of a trip to London by President Michael D Higgins, the first UK state visit by an Irish head of state. A spokesperson for David Cameron said: "The prime minister does not support the idea of amnesties."Mr Hain was secretary of state for Northern Ireland from 2005 to 2007. In an interview in The Times, he said he realised that his idea would make victims and survivors "desperately angry", but argued it was necessary for Northern Ireland to stop being "stalked" by its past. ...

A man who was jailed for the 1981 murder of a part-time police officer in County Londonderry has failed in a bid to have his conviction overturned. Seamus Kearney was found guilty last December of killing RUC Reserve Constable John Proctor as he visited his wife and new-born son in hospital. Kearney's lawyers claimed he was wrongly convicted on the basis of DNA on cigarette butts found at the scene. The Court of Appeal upheld the DNA evidence and dismissed his appeal. The three Appeal Court judges ruled that the judge in the original non-jury trial was entitled to conclude the stubs were smoked and discarded immediately prior to the shooting. ...

Intelligence failures by the British and Irish authorities in the handling of the Omagh bomb case has left a blot on their reputations that only a full public inquiry can address, families of some of the victims have insisted. Relatives urged the London and Dublin governments to tell the whole truth about alleged security gaffes in the lead-up to the Real IRA attack in August 1998, and the subsequent investigation, as they presented parts of a new report documenting their claims. The families say the information, which they are only publishing in part because they claim most is too sensitive, outlines new evidence that indicates opportunities were missed to prevent the bombing and subsequently to catch the killers. Twenty-nine people, including a woman pregnant with twins, died when the car bomb ripped through the Co Tyrone town. ...

KEVIN MYERS - Irish Independent.

FINALLY, finally, some sense has prevailed in the Army's relationship with the British army. The deployment of a handful of Army soldiers on a training mission in Mali with soldiers of the Royal Irish Regiment, a full 90 years after the two armies went their separate ways, is a long overdue recognition of political, cultural and geographical realities. Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Minister responsible is Jewish, and is therefore less beholden to the traditions of querulous deference to "republican" sensitivities, which has gravely undermined the willingness of our political classes to engage in any closer military co-operation with the British.
...

By Ed Curran – Belfast Telegraph The terrible tragedy of Thomas Niedermayer and his family is a reminder that there are still two distinct groups of people living on this island – those involved in such barbarity and the vast majority who had nothing to do with it. Mr Niedermayer, as an RTE documentary revealed at the weekend, was kidnapped, pistol-whipped, murdered and his body buried in a shallow grave. He was chief executive of the Grundig factory in west Belfast, which employed 1,300 workers in the 1970s. He fell victim to one of his employees, Brian Keenan, then a trade union official, who also happened to be one of the most ruthless leaders of the IRA. Mr Niedermayer's body was not discovered until eight years after his death. The full extent of his family's suffering is now revealed. His widow committed suicide, walking into the sea at Greystone in County Wicklow, and his two daughters also took their own lives, in South Africa and Australia. Keenan went to his grave as a revered republican, mourned and saluted as one of the architects of the peace process. Only now do we learn of the gruesome role he played in Thomas Niedermayer's murder. ...

By Lindy McDowell - Belfast Telegraph You watch that shameful scene on the news of a couple of yobs launching a railway sleeper at the legs of a police officer (in the name of "honouring the flag") and you think to yourself who would want to be a frontline cop in Belfast right now? Money wouldn't pay you. Yet, having said that, you can also understand how much justifiable pride those men and woman (and their families) must surely have in the truly remarkable and admirable job they do. All those of us who support the rule of law owe them all an enormous thanks. Whatever the arguments about overall police strategy, the officers facing down the rioters night after night have shown true, shining courage. Around a hundred have been injured since this carry on started. A scandalous, shameful statistic. ...

By Ed Curran, Belfast Telegraph

When Alex Maskey became the first Sinn Fein Lord Mayor of Belfast, he invited me to lunch.
On my way down Royal Avenue, I met a friend from South Africa and we walked together towards the City Hall. As he caught sight of the Union flag fluttering over the building, my friend expressed surprise: "I thought you told me the Lord Mayor was from Sinn Fein?"
"That's right," I replied. "The fact that the flag is still there and a Shinner is in the Lord Mayor's parlour tells you how far politics have travelled."
...

Two men are being held by police in connection with the murder of prison officer David Black in Northern Ireland - one of them a well-known republican. Colin Duffy, 44, and another man, aged 31, were arrested in the Lurgan area early this morning and have been taken to Antrim Serious Crime suite for questioning, the Police Service of Northern Ireland said. Mr Black, 52, was gunned down on the M1 motorway early on Thursday as he drove to work at the top security Maghaberry jail near Lisburn, County Antrim. The father-of-two's car veered off the road and into a drainage ditch after the shots were fired. He was on a stretch of the motorway between Portadown and Lurgan - a dissident republican stronghold in County Armagh. ...