James Joyce Copyright, Ulysses

COPYRIGHT ON James Joyce’s works in the EU expires at midnight tonight.

From tomorrow, January 1st, writings published during Joyce’s lifetime – Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake – are available for publication and quotation without reference or payment to the James Joyce estate.

Joyce died on January 13th, 1941; originally, copyright in these works in Britain and Ireland extended for 50 years, until 1991. However, some two years after that date, EU copyright law was harmonised to bring it into line with German practice and the period was extended to 70 years.

The end of copyright protection will enable creative artists and theatre companies to stage adaptations and re-enactments. Public broadcast will also be possible. Joyce’s solitary play, Exiles , can also be freely staged, and productions are likely.

The Pan-Pan theatre company is interested in an Exiles -related project around next Bloomsday, while the play Gibraltar by Patrick Fitzgerald, which opens in the New Theatre, Dublin, tomorrow night, draws heavily on the text of Ulysses . Another project well in train is publication of a special edition of Joyce’s short story The Dead by the James Joyce Centre.

Despite the freedom offered by the change, grey areas remain.

Some of Joyce’s manuscripts were reproduced in 1979 in the James Joyce Archive, but others have never been published. The National Library of Ireland is directly involved in this issue, since it is the holder of the largest collection of unpublished Joyce manuscripts in the world.

The legal position over these manuscripts remains unclear. Recently a group of scholars wrote to the library seeking clarity on the issue, while well-known Joycean Senator David Norris has tabled a motion in the Seanad calling for a statement on the issue.

Monaghan Sinn Fein,Sinn Fein Monaghan, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD

Monaghan Sinn Fein

When we see Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD, on TV, we see the respectable side of Monaghan Sinn Fein and the republican movement in general. Rarely will we be exposed to the under-belly and criminality of Sinn Fein and some of the sociopaths and deviants housed within Sinn Fein.

In 1998 Vincent McKenna had become a high profile anti-terrorist campaigner in Belfast, or so it appeared. McKenna had joined both Sinn Fein and the IRA in Monaghan Town, when he was 16 years old; this is only denied by RUC/M15 informers within the republican movement.

When McKenna began to get access to some very influential people in Belfast, due to his new public persona as an anti-terrorist campaigner, the British security services paniced and decided that McKenna needed to be silenced.

The British security services activated two of their assets to begin a campaign to silence Vincent McKenna. These agents were, Dennis Donaldson in Belfast and Owen/Eoin Smyth in Monaghan Town.

While Dennis Donaldson would simply use media facilities at Stormont and co-ordinate a campaign against McKenna suggesting that McKenna was an active IRA Intelligence Officer and a person not to be trusted. Owen/Eoin Smyth would go much further to appease his RUC handlers.

Smyth got together with his former sister-in-law Dr Marian Smyth (Dr Smyth had a child to convicted IRA member Michael Pete Ryan/ Dr Smyth would forge papers claiming that this child was fathered by Dr Brian Smyth) and they hatched a plan to make allegations of child abuse against McKenna.

Central to the child abuse allegations against McKenna, would be McKenna’s ex-wife Fiona McCleary. Fiona McCleary worked as a cleaner for Dr Smyth and was and remains found of alcohol. Mc Cleary had several affairs and at the time of the allegations Fiona McCleary was having an affair with a married man.

Fiona McCleary was a willing participant in the campaign against her ex-husband and she meet with Dr Smyth and RUC Informer Owen/Eoin Smyth on several occasion to plan the campaign to discredit McKenna.

On the 17^th of April 1998 Fiona McCleary returned home to 149 Mullaghmatt after being out drinking all day and told her eldest daughter Sorcha that they were going to be burned out if they did not do something against Vincent McKenna because of his campaign against the IRA. At this time Sorcha was mentally and emotionally weak, Sorcha felt people were talking about her because of her height, her deformed teeth and the fact that she was failing to make the grade at school.

Sorcha was forced to go and see Dr Smyth (Dr Carragher was the family Doctor), Sorcha made no allegation of sexual abuse, but a process had begun. Immediately wall murals appeared on the walls in Belfast accusing Vincent McKenna of being a child molester. Certain journalists who were close to the security services began to print stories linking McKenna with child abuse, a local drunk in Monaghan Town, Patrick Tierney, had been supplied with an NUJ card and Owen/Eoin Smyth used this proxy journalist to pump out press releases about Vincent McKenna. A corrupt Garda Officer, Inspector Joe Sullivan, who would later commit perjury, gave interviews to the media, stating that McKenna was a child molester. All of this was done long before McKenna was even charged.

However, behind the scenes, while certain sections of the media were pushing the child abuse claims against McKenna, Sorcha, had failed to make any allegation against her father.

At this point Dr Marian Smyth began to administer unlicensed-mind-altering drugs (Seroxat) to Sorcha (these drugs are banned in all other European Countries as they bring on personality disorders, false memories and suicidal tendencies) the makers of these drugs state that they should not be administered to anyone under 18 years old.

Months later and Sorcha had made no allegation of sexual abuse against her father, however, following some dubious/discredited ‘regression’ counselling sessions, Sorcha began to make allegations that her father had forced her to masturbate him three time per week by pulling his foreskin back and forward until he ejaculated, however, it would later be proved that Mc Kenna had been circumcised when he was a baby and could not for medical reasons ever be masturbated.

Sorcha said that her father had abused her three times per week in 1989; yet, McKenna could prove that he was living in England during these alleged assaults. In the end it is hard to say whether Sorcha actually believed the story she told, perhaps she did. What is for certain is that in a blaze of publicity and corruption the allegations stuck.

McKenna would eventually bring corrupt Minister for Justice, John O Donoghue before the Dublin District Court for interfering in his case in a criminal fashion.

Throughout all of this evil, McKenna’s former flat mate and republican comrade, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD, sat by and done nothing, in fact he would later worsen McKenna’s situation by criticising McKenna in the Dail. This is the same Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD that had conspired with Vincent McKenna and Jim Lynagh in 1984 to murder an RUC officer.

McCleary, Monaghan Town, County Monaghan, Ireland.

Mary Mc Cleary, author, 13 Glenview Heights, Monaghan Town, County Monaghan has written a novel ‘Betrayals’, the novel has not sold well and has only been picked up the curious, however, we must ask, who is Mary Mc Cleary and why did some national media try and flog Betrayals for Mary, when so much is unknown about Mary Mc Cleary.

Mary McCleary lived in Dungannon in County Tyrone with her Mother Annie Hughes, in 1956 Mary became pregnant and moved to Monaghan Town where she married a local heavy weight amateur boxer, Seamus ‘The Bull’ McCleary. Soon after they were married Mary gave birth to the first child Tom Mc Cleary.

When Mary and Seamus were first married they lived in a council housing estate in Monaghan Town known as Tully. Seamus Mc Cleary worked as a butcher in a local slaughter house. Seamus ‘The Bull’ Mc Cleary also worked as a bouncer/doorman at the Four Seasons Hotel Monaghan and he had a fearsome reputation for beating up young lads, it was due to one such assault on a young lad that Seamus Mc Cleary found himself the subject of a savage assault that left him with serious injuries. Seamus Mc Cleary was rarely seen on the streets of Monaghan following this assault and on occasion men had called to his house to sort him out.

In 1979 Mary’s first son Tom got a young girl pregnant and he left Ireland to live in Algeria where he met and married a black native who could not speak English. Then it was the turn of their son Stephen Mc Cleary who got a young girl from Armagh pregnant, Stephen would marry Patrica Reilly and they would have several children one of whom had a child when she was 14 years old. In 1981 as Mary and Seamus were preparing to celebrate their 25th Wedding anniversary, their second eldest daughter Fiona became pregnant, immediately Mary and Seamus wanted Fiona to travel to England and terminate the baby’s life, however, Fiona’s 16 year old boyfriend refused to allow that to happen.

Mary Mc Cleary insisted that she and Seamus could not afford to pay for Fiona’s wedding as they had their 25th wedding anniversary coming up in June 1981; however, Fiona’s 16 year old boyfriend insisted that they were getting married with or without Mary and Seamus supporting them. Mary and Seamus Mc Cleary met with the 16 year old boy’s mother and father to try and get them to put pressure on their son to terminate the child’s life, this was to no avail and the 16 year old boy married Fiona on the 12th June 1981 and their daughter Sorcha was born in November 1981.

Mary and Seamus had their 25th Wedding anniversary, however, it did not go off without incident as Seamus was caught in a sexual act with another man’s wife in the car park of the Westenra Hotel on the night of the Silver wedding celebration, guests including local garda detective Christy Mc Namee had to break up the fight that ensued.

Shortly following the 25th wedding anniversary celebrations, Mary’s eldest daughter Ann became pregnant, immediately Mary and Seamus Mc Cleary confronted Martin Skinnider from Emyvale in north Monaghan. Mary and Seamus accused Martin of getting Ann pregnant and they wanted him to pay for Ann to go to England for an abortion. Martin denied that the child was his and Mary and Seamus Mc Cleary then went to martin’s brother-in-law Seamus Mc Kenna, Mc Kenna’s pub, Dublin Street, Monaghan Town and demanded that Seamus pay for the abortion, Seamus told the Mc Clearys in no uncertain terms where to go.

Eventually, Ann travelled to England and the baby was no more. Ann would later marry a local man from Clara in north Monaghan.

In 1986 Mary’s youngest daughter Geraldine would become pregnant at the tender age of 13, while Mary and Seamus again wanted to send a daughter to England to terminate the life of an unborn baby; Fiona’s husband stepped in and warned them not to kill the unborn child. Mary then took her daughter Geraldine down to CURA in Dublin where Geraldine gave birth to her baby boy and was forced to give that child up to the Catholic Church, Geraldine was forced to sign away all rights to that child.

Ciaran Mc Cleary, Mary’s youngest son who would live at home with his Mammy until he was in his 30s got a young girl called Lisa pregnant, and secretly she was put on the boat to England and her baby’s life was ended.

In 2004 Mary and Seamus Mc Cleary found themselves the subject of a major Garda investigation into child abuse allegations, that investigation was led by Supt Tom Flannery of Monaghan Garda Station, the Mc Clearys refused to cooperate with that investigation and the DPP decided not to prosecute on the basis of the age and alleged ‘ill-health’ of Mary and Seamus Mc Cleary.

However, Mary McCleary has now published a book called ‘Betrayal’ and that is very fitting, for if anyone knows about betrayal it is Mary Mc Cleary. Some media including The Northern Standard in Monaghan, The Guardian newspaper continue to give Mary Mc Cleary favourable coverage, one wonders why? Indeed Mary Mc Cleary is often invited by Monaghan VEC to speak to an audience of children; I wonder what she tells them?

For further information contact: Patrick Tierney Tel: 088-279 0051

Jim Lynagh, Monaghan Town, Loughgall Martyrs

Loughgall is a picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 25 years ago in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.

The quiet of a May evening on 8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known as the 'A' Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been travelling. The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of its men were wiped out by the notorious 'Black and Tans'. Loughgall police station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA's attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just managed to detonate its 200 lb bomb before the SAS opened up.

A few miles away in the ops room that was the nerve centre of the security forces' Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead 1989) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.

To the British, the SAS had given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew, later said how he felt on hearing the news. 'My personal reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had 'won one' as it were. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight them.'

Certainly the IRA had been playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern Ireland's second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500 lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The explosives were thought to have come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982. He commended them for bringing the deceased to 'the final court of justice'. None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King said, 'We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet it.' The SAS was the cutting edge.

At the time of Loughgall, the IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher's sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya. The depleted ranks of its leadership had also been strengthened by the IRA's mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983, many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick McKearney (32).

It was known that IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been used, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the Birches. But this time British intelligence knew the IRA was coming and was across its plans.

The first indicator about the Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh, however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow and six children. To the IRA he was a 'legitimate target', the first of more than twenty 'collaborators' to be 'executed' by the IRA for 'assisting the British war machine.' One of the weapons believed to have been used in the Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.

On the basis of the information passed to the RUC Special Branch by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA Team at loughgall. The SAS Team was briefed by Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

There was other vital intelligence too from M15's listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA suspects, usually put in place when they were away – or even when the homes of the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out, these technical devices – or 'bugs' - could be monitored many miles away or their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they were hidden. It's likely too that the location where the explosives were stored for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were probably also under human 'eyes-on' observation by operators of the army's top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the 'Det') and the RUC's equivalent covert unit, E4A. 'E' is the code for the RUC's Special Branch.

The security force operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA's planned assault. Three Special Branch officers from the RUC's specialist anti-terrorist unit volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its 'recce'. 'Matt', a veteran of such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the nerves.

The joint leaders of the ASU was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist offences on the word of a 'supergrass' but was subsequently released as the testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to drive the JCB with a 200 lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.

Throughout the long hours of Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched and patrolled by 'Det' operators on the look-out for the 'A Team'. One of them was a young women called 'Anna' who was driving around the area with her 'Det' partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley and the Birches together. 'You suddenly realize it's the MO (modus operandi) used by the East Tyrone Brigade,' she said. 'It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information to the TCG and pulled off.' The Chief Constable of the time, Sir John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.

At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered, the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. Inside the station, 'Matt' (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! 'I thought of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought "I'm dead", simple as that!' Miraculously 'Matt' survived although buried in the rubble 'inhaling dust and darkness.' The 'A' Team did not. 'Declan was mowed down. He could have been taken prisoner,' his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. 'The SAS never gave them a chance.' The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.

'Matt' felt no sympathy for the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of the van. 'They were there to kill us,' he said. 'These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.' Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight murders and thirty-three shootings.

The area around the police station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone within the kill zone.  Perhaps the soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for an IRA 'scout' car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC's Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, described the attack on the two innocent men as 'an unspeakable tragedy' and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational shortcomings, for his death.

When 'Anna', her 'Det' colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. 'There was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,' she said. 'A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.' She said of the dead IRA men. 'They're all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They're 'at war' as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.'

Some new information is contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.

Priory Hall Protest, Tom Feely, Dublin City Council

Residents of Dublin's Priory Hall protested outside the home of developer Tom McFeely this afternoon. McFeely a former IRA hunger striker turned Sinn Fein bagman has turned his back on the good residents of Priory Hall and Sinn Fein have remained silent as their bagman has been exposed as corrupt property speculator.

Some 256 residents were forced out of their homes in October over fire safety concerns. It is estimated the problems will cost €7.3m to remedy.

Last month, Mr McFeely was sentenced to three months in prison and was given a €1m fine for failing to complete court-ordered repair works. He was later granted a reprieve against the sentence.

Last week, residents were told that Dublin City Council had committed to paying for alternative accommodation for them until February.

Spokesperson for the residents' committee Darren Kelly said residents wished to meet the Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan urgently, after a difficult Christmas.

"A lot of people have had a very difficult Christmas, especially those with families. They're grateful for the roof over their heads for Christmas, but it's not their home," he said.

The case is due back in court on January 19.

Smithwick Tribunal, Loughgall Martyrs, Loughgall Informer

Loughgall is a picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 25 years ago in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.

The quiet of a May evening on 8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known as the 'A' Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been travelling. The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of its men were wiped out by the notorious 'Black and Tans'. Loughgall police station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA's attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just managed to detonate its 200 lb bomb before the SAS opened up.

A few miles away in the ops room that was the nerve centre of the security forces' Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead by the IRA 1989, for their role in Loughgall executions/see, Smithwick Tribunal) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.

To the British, the SAS had given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew, later said how he felt on hearing the news. 'My personal reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had 'won one' as it were. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight them.'

Certainly the IRA had been playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern Ireland's second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500 lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The explosives were thought to have come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982. He commended them for bringing the deceased to 'the final court of justice'. None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King said, 'We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet it.' The SAS was the cutting edge.

At the time of Loughgall, the IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher's sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya. The depleted ranks of its leadership had also been strengthened by the IRA's mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983, many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick McKearney (32).

It was known that IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been used, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the Birches. But this time British intelligence knew the IRA was coming and was across its plans.

The first indicator about the Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh, however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow and six children. To the IRA he was a 'legitimate target', the first of more than twenty 'collaborators' to be 'executed' by the IRA for 'assisting the British war machine.' One of the weapons believed to have been used in the Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.

On the basis of the information passed to the RUC Special Branch by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA Team at loughgall. The SAS Team was briefed by Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

There was other vital intelligence too from M15's listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA suspects, usually put in place when they were away – or even when the homes of the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out, these technical devices – or 'bugs' - could be monitored many miles away or their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they were hidden. It's likely too that the location where the explosives were stored for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were probably also under human 'eyes-on' observation by operators of the army's top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the 'Det') and the RUC's equivalent covert unit, E4A. 'E' is the code for the RUC's Special Branch.

The security force operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA's planned assault. Three Special Branch officers from the RUC's specialist anti-terrorist unit volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its 'recce'. 'Matt', a veteran of such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the nerves.

The joint leaders of the ASU was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist offences on the word of a 'supergrass' but was subsequently released as the testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to drive the JCB with a 200 lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.

Throughout the long hours of Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched and patrolled by 'Det' operators on the look-out for the 'A Team'. One of them was a young women called 'Anna' who was driving around the area with her 'Det' partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley and the Birches together. 'You suddenly realize it's the MO (modus operandi) used by the East Tyrone Brigade,' she said. 'It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information to the TCG and pulled off.' The Chief Constable of the time, Sir John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.

At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered, the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. Inside the station, 'Matt' (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! 'I thought of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought "I'm dead", simple as that!' Miraculously 'Matt' survived although buried in the rubble 'inhaling dust and darkness.' The 'A' Team did not. 'Declan was mowed down. He could have been taken prisoner,' his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. 'The SAS never gave them a chance.' The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.

'Matt' felt no sympathy for the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of the van. 'They were there to kill us,' he said. 'These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.' Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight murders and thirty-three shootings.

The area around the police station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone within the kill zone.  Perhaps the soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for an IRA 'scout' car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC's Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, described the attack on the two innocent men as 'an unspeakable tragedy' and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational shortcomings, for his death.

When 'Anna', her 'Det' colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. 'There was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,' she said. 'A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.' She said of the dead IRA men. 'They're all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They're 'at war' as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.'

Some new information is contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.

Loughgall Martyrs, Loughgall Informer, East Tyrone IRA, Sinn Fein

Loughgall is a picture-postcard village on the borders of Tyrone and County Armagh that with its neatly arranged window boxes and hanging baskets you would expect to win the best kept village competition year after year. Tourists come for the antique shops and cosy tea rooms that line its narrow main street. 25 years ago in 1987, other visitors came to Loughgall.

The quiet of a May evening on 8 May 1987 was shattered by the thunder of SAS guns as the Regiment (as it is known) ambushed and wiped out one of the most heavily armed and experienced Active Service Units (ASU) the Provisional IRA had ever assembled. It was known as the 'A' Team. Eight bodies in boiler suits, some with balaclavas, lay bloody and dead on the ground and in the back of the van in which they had been travelling. The SAS had been lying in wait and had opened up with a barrage of over 200 rounds blasted from General Purpose Machine guns (GPMGs) and high-powered Heckler and Koch rifles. The SAS outnumbered and outgunned the IRA by three to one. The van was riddled like a sieve and its IRA passengers cut to pieces. It was the biggest loss the IRA had suffered since 1921 when a dozen of its men were wiped out by the notorious 'Black and Tans'. Loughgall police station, a few hundred yards outside the village and the target of the IRA's attack, was reduced to a twisted pile of concrete and rubble. The IRA just managed to detonate its 200 lb bomb before the SAS opened up.

A few miles away in the ops room that was the nerve centre of the security forces' Tasking and Co-Ordinating Group (TCG) from which the ambush had been directed, an SAS Commander, a Senior M15 Officer and two senior RUC Officers (both shot dead 1989) anxiously gathered to hear the result of one of the most carefully planned M15, RUC and Army operations of the northern conflict. They gathered around an SAS officer who was in radio contact with the SAS commander on the ground, when the news came through, the SAS Officer turned to those gathered (TCG) and declared, “Total Wipe-out”.

To the British, the SAS had given the IRA a taste of its own medicine and to Ulster Unionists clambering for the army to take the gloves off, not before time. There was celebration in the TCG at the unprecedented spectacular and quiet contentment in the Northern Ireland Office. Its Permanent Under Secretary at the time, Sir Robert Andrew, later said how he felt on hearing the news. 'My personal reaction was really one of some satisfaction that we had 'won one' as it were. I think it demonstrated to the IRA that the other side could play it rough. I hope it sent a message that the British government was resolute and was going to fight them.'

Certainly the IRA had been playing it very rough. Only a fortnight earlier, it had assassinated Northern Ireland's second most senior judge, Lord Justice Gibson and his wife with a 500 lb bomb as they drove back across the border after a holiday away. The explosives were thought to have come from Libya. The judge had been a prime target ever since he had acquitted the police officers who shot dead Gervaise McKerr (whose case was also ruled on at Strasbourg) and two other IRA men during a car chase in 1982. He commended them for bringing the deceased to 'the final court of justice'. None of them was armed at the time. The then Northern Ireland Secretary, Tom King said, 'We were conscious we were facing an enhanced threat and we took enhanced measures to meet it.' The SAS was the cutting edge.

At the time of Loughgall, the IRA was brimful of confidence. It had recently had its bunkers filled almost to bursting with over 130 tons of heavy weaponry and high explosives smuggled into Ireland in four shipments courtesy of Mrs Thatcher's sworn enemy, Colonel Gaddafi (murdered 2011) of Libya. The depleted ranks of its leadership had also been strengthened by the IRA's mass break-out from the Maze prison in 1983, many of whose senior gunmen were still on the run. One of them was Patrick McKearney (32).

It was known that IRA Commander, Jim Lynagh, had developed a new Maoist strategy of liberating Green Zones, zones that would be cleared of the British and their collaborators. The IRA began its new strategy in 1985 with a devastating mortar attack on the RUC station in the border town of Newry in which nine police officers died. It followed it up with a bomb and gun attack on Ballygawley police station that left two RUC men dead. In 1986, it launched a bomb attack on another police station, unmanned at the time, in the tiny village of the Birches along the shores of Lough Neagh in County Tyrone. Now a new delivery system had been used, a JCB digger with a 200-lb bomb in the bucket. The digger smashed through the security fence, the bomb exploded and reduced the station to rubble. The attack on Loughgall was designed to be a carbon copy of the attack on the Birches. But this time British intelligence knew the IRA was coming and was across its plans.

The first indicator about the Loughgall operation came three weeks earlier from an RUC agent based in Monaghan Town, Patrick Kelly had travelled to Monaghan to meet Jim Lynagh, however, as often happened, Lynagh was not about, Patrick Kelly made the fatal mistake of making inquiries about Lynagh with Owen/Eoin Smyth, the Round House Bar, Church Square, Monaghan Town. Barely three weeks before Loughgall, five of the East Tyrone IRA had shot dead Harold Henry (52), a member of the Henry Brothers construction business that carried out repairs on security force bases. Just before midnight, the IRA took Mr Henry from his home, put him up against a wall and shot him dead with two rifles and a shotgun. He left a widow and six children. To the IRA he was a 'legitimate target', the first of more than twenty 'collaborators' to be 'executed' by the IRA for 'assisting the British war machine.' One of the weapons believed to have been used in the Henry killing was later retrieved at Loughgall.

On the basis of the information passed to the RUC Special Branch by the IRA informer in Monaghan Town, a major security operation was put into action. Extra SAS Teams were brought into the north, within hours of arriving in the north, the SAS Teams were brought to the firing range beneath the RUC Forensic Lab in Belfast, were they test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA Team at loughgall. The SAS Team was briefed by Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan. This test firing would allow the SAS to distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. While the Monaghan Informer had given an indicator that a major operation was about to take place, the actual target was not immediately known, this would take a detailed mapping of a myriad of intelligence sources. The Monaghan Informer would contact his handler a couple of days before Loughgall to say that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland, County Tyrone.

There was other vital intelligence too from M15's listening devices planted inside the homes of IRA suspects, usually put in place when they were away – or even when the homes of the more prominent ones were being built. As long as the batteries held out, these technical devices – or 'bugs' - could be monitored many miles away or their content down-loaded by helicopters flying over the premises where they were hidden. It's likely too that the location where the explosives were stored for the Loughgall bomb were also under M15 technical surveillance. They were probably also under human 'eyes-on' observation by operators of the army's top-secret undercover unit, 14 Intelligence Company (known colloquially as the 'Det') and the RUC's equivalent covert unit, E4A. 'E' is the code for the RUC's Special Branch.

The security force operation was put in place on Thursday 7 May, the day before the IRA's planned assault. Three Special Branch officers from the RUC's specialist anti-terrorist unit volunteered to remain inside the normally sleepy station as decoys to give the appearance of normality whilst the IRA did its 'recce'. 'Matt', a veteran of such covert operations, was one of them. They entered the station with some of the SAS troopers as darkness fell on the Thursday night. They made sandwiches and cracked jokes to lighten the tedium of waiting and perhaps to calm the nerves.

The joint leaders of the ASU was Patrick Kelly (30), an experienced IRA commander whose sister, supported by the other relatives, was a prime mover in bringing the Loughgall cases before the European Court. Kelly had been arrested in 1982 and charged with terrorist offences on the word of a 'supergrass' but was subsequently released as the testimony lacked corroboration. Jim Lynagh was the second Commander and was the man most sought after by the British and Irish security services. Among the younger members of the ASU were four young friends from the village of Cappagh who had joined the IRA after the death of one of their village friend, Martin Hurson, on hunger strike in 1981. One of them, Declan Arthurs (21), was to drive the JCB with a 200 lb bomb in the bucket – just like the Birches.

Throughout the long hours of Friday, the maze of country lanes around Loughgall police station were watched and patrolled by 'Det' operators on the look-out for the 'A Team'. One of them was a young women called 'Anna' who was driving around the area with her 'Det' partner as part of the surveillance cordon. Suddenly they spotted a blue Toyota Hiace van. At first they thought it was simply stuck behind a slow-moving vehicle but when they realised it was a JCB, they immediately put Ballygawley and the Birches together. 'You suddenly realize it's the MO (modus operandi) used by the East Tyrone Brigade,' she said. 'It was like a replay. But this time we were on top of it and we knew what was happening. So we passed on the information to the TCG and pulled off.' The Chief Constable of the time, Sir John Hermon, said the IRA ASU could not have been arrested. He said it was never a realistic option since the IRA would be unlikely to come out with their hands up and police officers lives would therefore be at grave risk.

At 7.15 pm as dusk gathered, the JCB with Declan Arthurs at the wheel and the bomb raised high in the bucket, trundled past the police station with the blue Toyota van in attendance. Both then turned and headed back in the direction whence they had come. Suddenly, the JCB roared into life, headed for the perimeter fence and crashed through it. Almost simultaneously, the van drew up outside, disgorging Patrick Kelly and other members of the ASU who sprayed the station with their assault rifles. The SAS almost certainly opened up the moment Kelly started firing. Everything seemed to happen at once in a deafening crescendo of noise. Inside the station, 'Matt' (Special Branch), who was by the front window, was only about ten metres from the JCB when it came to a halt right before his eyes. He turned and ran to the back with one word on his mind. Bomb! 'I thought of the Birches and Ballygawley and the next minute there was an almighty bang. I was hit in the face, knocked to the ground and buried. I thought "I'm dead", simple as that!' Miraculously 'Matt' survived although buried in the rubble 'inhaling dust and darkness.' The 'A' Team did not. 'Declan was mowed down. He could have been taken prisoner,' his mother, Amelia Arthurs, said. 'The SAS never gave them a chance.' The photographs taken at the scene are gruesome. The van in which the IRA volunteers had travelled was ripped open by part of the shrapnel from the digger bucket when it exploded, this is new information.

'Matt' felt no sympathy for the bullet-riddled bodies on the ground outside the station and in the back of the van. 'They were there to kill us,' he said. 'These guys were responsible for lots and lots of deaths in that area and other parts of the province. Dead terrorists are better than dead policemen.' Forensic tests carried out on the IRA weapons retrieved at the scene were linked to eight murders and thirty-three shootings.

The area around the police station had not been cordoned off since to have done so would have risked making the IRA suspicious and wary of the carefully laid ambush. As a result, two brothers returning home from work, were shot by the SAS. The security personnel who lay on the outer core of the ambush had been ordered to kill everyone within the kill zone.  Perhaps the soldiers thought they were part of the ASU or mistook their white Citroen for an IRA 'scout' car, maybe because one of the occupants was wearing a boiler suit. The brothers had been working on a car. The SAS fired forty rounds at the vehicle, killing Anthony Hughes (36) and seriously wounding his brother Oliver who was scarred for life. He said no warning was given. The RUC's Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, described the attack on the two innocent men as 'an unspeakable tragedy' and blamed the IRA, not planning and operational shortcomings, for his death.

When 'Anna', her 'Det' colleagues and the SAS returned to base, there were great celebrations. 'There was a huge party and it probably went on for 24 hours,' she said. 'A lot of beer was drunk. We were jubilant. We thought it was a job well done. It sent shock waves through the terrorist world that we were back on top.' She said of the dead IRA men. 'They're all volunteers and actively engaged against the British army. They're 'at war' as they would describe it. My attitude is that if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. We were just happy at the end of the day to be alive ourselves.'

Some new information is contained in this article, it is certain that the first indicator for the Loughgall operation came from an RUC Special Branch Informer in Monaghan Town. This informer also contacted the RUC to let them know that Jim Lynagh had moved to a safe house in Coalisland just before the Loughgall operation. Once the security services had their first indicator of a major IRA operation, M15 and the RUC had to simply correlate their myriad of intelligence to match the A Team with their target. At the same time that M15 and the SAS were focused on the East Tyrone IRA, M16 were working closely with Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and had adopted a hands-off approach to the IRA in Derry and Belfast.

Abortion is murder, Catholic Church Excommunication for Abortionists

Two doctors have been charged under a fetal homicide law after an investigation into a botched abortion uncovered 35 fetuses in a Maryland clinic's freezer, authorities said late yesterday, calling the case the first of its kind in the state.

The doctors, Steven Chase Brigham (55) and Nicola Irene Riley (46) were both arrested on fugitive warrants on Wednesday, police in Elkton, Maryland, said.

"They have been indicted based upon a fetal homicide statute. This is probably the first case that Maryland has ever seen with this factual scenario using this statute. It's a unique situation," said Maryland state attorney Ellis Rollins.

The Baltimore Sun newspaper said the fetuses discovered at the clinic ranged up to 35 weeks in development. A fetus is generally considered viable at about 24 weeks.

Mr Brigham was arrested on Wednesday in Voorhees, New Jersey, according to a statement by the Elkton Police Department.

Ms Riley was arrested at her home in Salt Lake City without incident, according to lieutenant Justin Hoyal, spokesman for the Unified Police of Greater Salt Lake.

Prosecutors were expected to seek their extradition to Maryland.

The Baltimore Sun said the case was believed to be the first use of Maryland's fetal homicide law involving medical professionals. It said the law had previously been used in cases involving the slayings of pregnant women.

The newspaper said Maryland law forbids aborting a fetus deemed viable but does not define viability in terms of number of weeks of development.

The investigation began in August 2010, when a young woman sought an abortion from the pair.
The abortion was induced in New Jersey and the patient was then transported across state lines into Maryland, according to the Elkton police statement.

The operation was botched with both Mr Brigham and Ms Riley present, Elkton police said, although the statement did not elaborate on the nature of complications.

Ms Riley took the woman to a nearby hospital, police said. The woman, who was not identified by authorities, survived and was later moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

Both Ms Riley and Mr Brigham have had their medical licenses suspended by the state of Maryland, according to the Maryland State Board of Physicians.

Mr Brigham has carried out approximately 50 such cross-state abortions, according to documents on the board's website.

Officers who searched the Elkton clinic found several fetuses in a freezer, police said. A source who spoke on condition of anonymity said there were 35 fetuses found in the clinic freezer.

Mr Brigham is charged with five counts of first-degree murder, five counts of second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

Gardai Appeal, Missing Person, Monica Riordan

Monica Riordan was last seen in Holles Street area on 20 December

 

Gardai have issued an appeal to trace a 39-year-old woman who has been missing since Tuesday, 20 December.

Monica Riordan, from Navan in Co Meath was last seen in the Holles Street area of Dublin at around 11am.
She is described as being of average height, thin build and with shoulder length blonde hair.


When last seen, Monica was wearing a long grey coat, dark jeans and grey or white trainers.


Anyone with information is asked to contact to contact Pearse St Garda Station 01-6669000 or the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111.

Sean McKenna, IRA Hunger Strike 1980, Republican prisoners

On 27 October 1980, republican prisoners in HM Prison Maze (Long Kesh) began a hunger strike. Many prisoners volunteered to be part of the strike, but a total of seven were selected to match the number of men who signed the Easter 1916 Proclamation of the Republic. The group consisted of IRA members Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Raymond McCartney, Tom McFeeley, Sean McKenna, Leo Green, and INLA member John Nixon. On 1 December three prisoners in Armagh Women's Prison joined the strike, including Mairéad Farrell (later murdered by the SAS), followed by a short-lived hunger strike by several dozen more prisoners in HM Prison Maze.

 In a war of nerves between the IRA leadership and the British government, with Sean McKenna lapsing in and out of a coma and on the brink of death, the government appeared to concede the essence of the prisoners' five demands with a thirty-page document detailing a proposed settlement. With the document in transit to Belfast, Brendan Hughes took the decision to save McKenna's life and end the strike after 53 days on 18 December.

Sean McKenna, who was hospitalised, played no part in ending the 1980 Hunger Strike; this was the sole decision of Brendan Hughes and the IRA leadership in Long Kesh.

Outside Long Kesh the Sinn Fein leadership had wanted the Hunger Strike to continue in order to maximise public support. The British secret service had also wanted the IRA Hunger Strike to continue as they were able to promote many of their agents within Sinn Fein/IRA as the numbers of new recruits swelled to unprecedented numbers.

Ed Moloney, Antony McIntyre, Jean McConville murder

The wife of a former member of the Provisional Irish Republican Army said in a court filing yesterday that her family could be harmed if Boston College complies with an order to turn over interview transcripts of a former IRA member to federal prosecutors in Boston today and if additional materials are released in the future.

“As a result of Anthony being labeled an informer because of his previous work at Boston College, I live in constant fear of some form of IED being lobbed into the house or of him being shot in the street,’’ said Carrie Twomey, the wife of Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA member who conducted interviews for the Belfast Project.

The project, conducted at BC, chronicled the period in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, in which more than 3,000 people were killed in the armed struggle for control of the region.

McIntyre and Ed Moloney, the project director, promised interview subjects anonymity until they died.
But on Tuesday, a federal judge in Boston ordered BC to turn over materials relating to interviews with former IRA member Dolours Price to federal prosecutors, who subpoenaed those items and others on behalf of British authorities investigating the 1972 disappearance and killing of Jean McConville, a mother of 10 in Belfast.

The release of the materials to law enforcement will infuriate former IRA members, who have already threatened McIntyre and Twomey, she said, and excrement has been smeared on the car and front door of a neighbor.

“I have no doubt but that this was intended for us,’’ she wrote in an affidavit included in a motion that McIntyre and Moloney filed yesterday asking for a stay to the court order on the Price documents, pending their appeal of a separate order barring them from acting as intervening parties in the case.

A spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office in Boston declined to comment on the appeal late last night, because she had not yet seen the filing.

Prosecutors have argued that a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom requires the countries to share information that would help solve open criminal investigations.

“My husband has been publicly labeled as an informer, the most dangerous pejorative in the Irish republican vocabulary,’’ Twomey wrote.

“The stress levels on my family have soared, and I fear that our persecutors will not get the wrong house next time.’’

Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau

British urged to include Mitchell Principles in N.I. Bill of Rights

(by Henry McDonald, The Observer)

The British government is being urged to put the Mitchell principles on non-violence into its forthcoming bill of rights for Northern Ireland as a means of further securing the IRA and loyalist ceasefires.
A new human rights pressure group believes incorporating Mitchell into the bill will mean Sinn Féin cabinet members in a Stormont executive will be directly accountable for any IRA violence including so-called punishment beatings.

The bill of rights is one of the key elements in a series of human rights reforms contained in the Good Friday Agreement.

The campaign is headed by Jeff Dudgeon, the gay rights activist who successfully took the British government to the European Court of Human rights in 1981 over the law in Northern Ireland banning homosexuality. The court ruled that the ban was a breach of human rights. His group is comprised of those who were denied interviews for the Human Rights Commission, a government quango which has come under fire for failing to recruit enough representatives from the unionist community.

Dudgeon said the ad hoc human rights group which includes Belfast solicitor and former Northern Ireland Labour Party member Brian Garrett was concerned that human rights violations from paramilitaries may not be covered by the government appointed body.

"If parties linked to paramilitaries are in government but their allies are still engaged in violence then they would be in breach of the bill of rights as well as being guilty of breaking the European Convention on human rights.

"In practice it means that if Sinn Féin is a Northern Ireland Executive and meanwhile the IRA are breaking teenagers' limbs with baseball bats in west Belfast, then that party could face a legal challenge on the basis of the new bill of rights. Our idea is that ordinary citizens in this scenario could take a judicial review to find if paramilitary linked parties, as part of our government, were breaking European human rights legislation," Dudgeon said.

In the latest Kafkaesque twist to the peace process, Dudgeon said his group will monitor the Human Rights Commission to ensure that it takes the issue of paramilitary human rights abuses seriously. He pointed out that Amnesty International now investigates human rights violations by non-state armed groups including paramiltiaries in Northern Ireland.

"Our relationship with the Commission will be to monitor it, advise it and ultimately to enter it legitimately. And the most important challenge now is to ensure that any party which becomes a government and is linked to paramilitaries must be tied to their obligations on human rights," Dudgeon added.

The Commission has been severely criticised for refusing to grant interviews to a number of figures prominent in the defence of human rights over the last 30 years. They include Paddy Joe McClean, the former chairman of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association who was tortured by the British Army during internment in 1971.

The idea of linking the Mitchell principles on non-violence to the bill of rights was welcomed yesterday by Vincent McKenna, a former IRA member who has just founded the Northern Ireland Human Rights Bureau.

"I think it's a very useful idea and one that should be implemented. It will be useful if it is legally binding on those paramilitary linked parties that will be in government. If you have a bill of rights in which it is incorporated that if there is a link between violent incidents and parties in government then a citizen has the right to take that party to court. That's how it should work - you take the party to court," McKenna said.

The Mitchell principles were named after the George Mitchel, the U.S. Senator who chaired the talks leading to the Good Friday Agreement. All parties at the talks, including Sinn Féin, had to sign the principles which commit them not to use violence to influence the outcome of political negotiations.

Loughgall Martyrs, East Tyrone IRA, Loughgall Informer

The Smithwick Tribunal

The Smithwick Tribunal of Inquiry into suggestions that members of An Garda Síochána or other employees of the State colluded in the fatal shootings of RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and RUC Superintendent Robert Buchanan on the 20th March, 1989, was established by Resolutions passed by Dail Eireann and Seanad Eireann on the 23rd and 24th March 2005 respectively, and by Instrument entitled Tribunals of Inquiry Evidence Act 1921 (Establishment of Tribunal) Instrument 2005.

The Smithwick Tribunal is operating on the premise that Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan were executed by the Provisional IRA because they were RUC officers, this is not correct. Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan were executed by the Provisional IRA as both officers lead the British Team that executed 8 IRA volunteers at Loughgall on the 7th of May 1987, including IRA Commanders Jim Lynagh and Patrick Kelly. Harry Breen, Robert Buchanan, a Senior M15 Officer and SAS Commander were the lead team tasked with taking out the East Tyrone IRA Team at Loughgall.

The Loughgall informer remains alive and well in Monaghan Town, while the identity of the Loughgall informer has been known to the IRA in Monaghan for many years, the republican movement in Monaghan decided that his execution would not be in the political interests of Sinn Fein and so the Loughgall informer has simply been side-lined in Monaghan.

Both Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan were present at the RUC forensic Lab in Belfast, three weeks before the Loughgall executions when an SAS unit used the firing range below the Forensic Lab to test fire weapons similar to those that would be used by the PIRA unit at Loughgall. On the night that the SAS Team test fired these weapons, the weapons were signed in and out of the firing range in the normal fashion, so records do exist. The reason the SAS Team test fired similar weapons to those that would be used by the IRA unit at Loughgall was so that the SAS Team could distinguish between friendly and enemy fire on the night of the Loughgall executions. The SAS Team and their back up units were instructed to execute everyone in the kill zone as soon as the IRA Team opened fire on the unmanned RUC station. The IRA Team Modus Operandi was to open fire in an act of bravado to intimidate the local Protestant community.

Information about RUC officers travelling to and from Garda Stations in the Republic had been known to the IRA for many years, in the weeks running up to the Loughgall executions Jim Lynagh had placed one of his men close to a Garda station to monitor such activity. However, the IRA did not kill nor intend to kill every RUC officer that they had intelligence about, it was much more important to the IRA to watch, monitor and act only where desirable. Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan had been on the IRA books for a long time before they were executed; it was only when the full involvement of Breen and Buchanan in relation to the Loughgall executions was established that they became targets of interest to the IRA. The executions of Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan were specifically sanctioned by Kevin McKenna and Thomas Slab Murphy, the IRA unit who carried out the executions operated directly under the orders of Thomas Slab Murphy.

The question for the Smithwick Tribunal is whether a Garda/Gardai assisted the IRA in the executions of Harry Breen and Robert Buchanan. The answer is simply no; the IRA unit who carried out the executions of Breen and Buchanan were never going to ‘act’ directly on information provided to them by a state agent. This is not to say that the IRA never received information from members of the Gardai and Freestate Army, because they did, however, no IRA commander was ever going to take a unit out on active service on information provided about an immediate operation.

Over the years some Gardai and Freestate soldiers did provide information to the IRA, this information would have been about border patrols, tip offs about raids, location of armoury within an army barracks and so forth, however, it is highly unlikely that any IRA commander is going to put an operation into place purely on information provided by a Garda/Freestate soldier.

Garda stations, particularly in border areas were constantly monitored by the IRA, car details were noted and logged, the registrations and details of these cars would be compared with information gathered by IRA members/supporters in counties Tyrone, Armagh and Fermanagh.

When Michael McKevitt (Real IRA/serving 20 years) told the Smithwick Tribunal that he had never received a tip-off from a Garda about an imminent raid on his home, McKevitt was most likely lying, as this is the type of information that would have been available to the IRA from certain Gardaí. However, it is likely that those engaged in the IRA operation that executed Breen and Buchanan, and who have told the Smithwick Tribunal that the Gardai did not provide the information that lead to the execution of Breen and Buchanan, were telling the truth.

It is being alleged at the Smithwick Tribunal that Garda Corrigan also told the IRA that Tom Oliver was a Garda Informer, the fact that Dundalk was riddled with informers; one would have to wonder why Tom Oliver would be singled out, particularly when it is claimed by those who knew Tom Oliver that he was never an informer.

Previous Updates from the Smithwick Tribunal

A written statement that claims up to a quarter of the IRA gang involved in the killing of two top Ulster policemen were British agents has been handed to a tribunal investigating collusion between terrorists and the security forces during the Northern Ireland Troubles. The document, handed to the Smithwick tribunal by a former British military intelligence officer, shines new light on Ulster's covert war – and raises concerns that the murder of Superintendent Bob Buchanan and Chief Superintendent Harry Breen in March 1989 could have been prevented.

The material, given to the tribunal by Ian Hurst, a former member of the force research unit (FRU), claims that one of Britain's most important agents in the IRA, codenamed Stakeknife, was aware of the murder plot, prompting accusations that in turn his spy bosses failed to inform either the Royal Ulster Constabulary or the Garda Síochána about it. In his 24-page statement, passed to the tribunal headed by Judge Peter Smithwick in June, Hurst claims that Stakeknife – FRU informer Freddie Scappaticci – played a key role in intelligence-gathering that led to the double murder. Yet Scappaticci, the then head of the IRA's spy-catching unit, was in fact a top British agent in the Provisionals.

The Smithwick tribunal is investigating allegations of gardai collusion with the IRA in the murder of Buchanan and Breen on 20 March 1989. The two RUC officers were killed in an IRA ambush shortly after they left Dundalk gardai station, where they had been attending a high-level cross-border security conference aimed at targeting the smuggling empire of IRA commander Thomas "Slab" Murphy.

Up to 25 IRA operatives were directly or indirectly involved in the shooting near Jonesborough, South Armagh. Hurst has estimated that by the late 1980s one in four IRA activists were working for one or more branches of the security forces. One of Breen and Buchanan's former RUC colleagues now claims, as a result of this latest information, that the pair could have been saved.

Colin Breen, a former RUC officer who was himself an IRA murder target during the Troubles, also backed Hurst's demand to travel to Dublin and give evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal. On Hurst's allegations about the extent of security force penetration of paramilitary organisations, Colin Breen said: "I have always known that the degree of penetration of the Provisional IRA by the security forces was high and at all levels.

"Mr Hurst's analysis, based on his considerable experience in the intelligence gathering world, that one in four provisional IRA volunteers were informants and one in two 'officer class' members were also informers can only lead to a fairly damning conclusion in relation to this inquiry." Breen, said: "If these figures are accurate – and I have no reason to suspect otherwise – it is logical to assume that the authorities must have had prior knowledge of this operation.

"Given that there were over two dozen terrorists involved there must at the very least have been indications that something major was being planned by the Provos in the area."

Given the number of potential intelligence streams it would appear inconceivable that these murders could not have been prevented.

"While I would concede that the specifics of the operation may not have been known in time, there must have been enough information to cause the instigation of a spoiler operation by the security forces at the very least.

"Based on this testimony it is with a heavy heart that I conclude that Breen and Buchanan might have been saved."

Hurst also names Martin McGuinness as the man Scappaticci answered to directly within the Provisional IRA.

"The security unit came under the operational command of Northern Command PIRA … and the person in charge of that unit throughout the entire Troubles was PIRA member Mr James Martin McGuinness MP.

"Mr McGuinness was the operational commander of Mr Scappaticci and directly involved in matters of life and death for persons rightly or indeed wrongly suspected of informing upon PIRA members.

"Mr McGuinness was also a key player in the long-term strategic strategies used by PIRA and thus was involved in almost all major strategic decisions, political kidnaps, human bombs etc."

It is now known publicly that Martin McGuinness was answering to an M16 Agent Michael Oakely, however, McGuinness was viewed as a valuable intelligence asset to the British security services and was allowed to continue his role as IRA Commander and the death and violence that involved, if McGuinness had not be allowed to continue his high powered role in the IRA his position would have been weakened and his value to the British would have been quickly undermined.

Hurst says that former Metropolitan police Chief Sir John Stevens, who headed the collusion inquiry into the murder of the Catholic Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane, was aware of Scappaticci's role as a British agent. The former military intelligence officer claims that as far back as 2000 Stevens's team of detectives knew about Stakeknife and his relationship with alleged rogue gardai in the border region.

At that time Stevens was investigating the collusion scandal, mainly into the role of state agents inside loyalist terror groups. Referring to a meeting with one of Stevens's unit at Heathrow, Hurst says: "He then engaged me on a number of subjects relating to Scappaticci, one of which related to rogue gardaí. Another related to Tom Oliver [murdered by the IRA] and [Francisco] Notarantonio [murdered by the UDA].

"I told him I knew [Stakeknife] had meetings with rogue gardaí. I told him that I knew this from [a senior FRU officer].

"I can say with absolute clarity that he raised Mr Scappaticci with me in the context of him being an agent, I believe he was trying to ascertain the extent of any damage and it was my firm belief that he knew that Scappaticci was the agent known as Stakeknife."

Towards the end of the document Hurst raises the possibility that the IRA had originally planned to capture and interrogate Breen and Buchanan rather than murder them. Another FRU agent and one-time IRA member known as Kevin Fulton has claimed state agents involved in the ambush killed the two police officers to prevent them being handed over to a Provisional interrogation unit, with the danger of them leaking the names of informants under torture.

The Guardian has learned that the Smithwick tribunal has asked Hurst to give his evidence in private. But Hurst is understood to insist that he will only speak in public about the Breen-Buchanan double murder and the role of state agents in the IRA. It is understood Hurst may be considering legal action to challenge the tribunal's decision. He has an Irish passport, holds Irish citizenship due to marriage and could argue that the ruling to force him to give evidence in camera is a breach of the Republic's constitution and his right to give evidence openly to a legally constituted inquiry.

The ex-undercover soldier has declined to comment on the information contained in the statement sent to the tribunal, citing legal action by the Ministry of Defence against him over his role in exposing Stakeknife as one of the key reasons why he cannot make any statements relating to the information he has provided. His written evidence also contains the names of senior FRU military intelligence handlers who ran agents such as Stakeknife and senior MI5 officers operating in Northern Ireland at the end of the 80s.

In the document Hurst also claims that a female IRA mole working inside a government agency in Northern Ireland who was under surveillance by the security forces in the late 1980s is still in post.