THE IRISH OBSERVER: IRA Informers, Sinn Fein, Owen Smyth Monaghan Town, Eamon Collins Newry, Bernard McGinn

Thursday, October 8, 2020

IRA Informers, Sinn Fein, Owen Smyth Monaghan Town, Eamon Collins Newry, Bernard McGinn

Rhetorical Question: “Can you tell us why some Sinn Fein/PIRA Informers/Touts were Murdered and others were allowed to live?”

Firstly, I would say that from my experience, many who were branded Informers/Touts and then Murdered, were not in fact Informers/Touts and were never in a position to be Informers/Touts.

For example, an RUC Informer/Tout in Monaghan Town was the Sinn Fein/PIRA member who began the rumors that Gerry Adams had set up Loughgall, yet, I know for a fact that Gerry Adams was not in possession of any operational detail relating to Loughgall until after that operation had failed.

This sadly was the type of Duplicity that one encountered on a regular basis within Sinn Fein/PIRA. Freddie Scappaticci is another good example of a British Agent pointing the finger at others while all the time he was the Rat.

Dennis Donaldson regularly issued statements to discredit people, and yet again he was the Rat, it’s a dirty business, and one sadly where many lives have been lost due to Duplicity.

Case Studies

A case study that I am very familiar with is that of Eoin Smyth, Monaghan Town. In 1981 Owen Smyth was arrested by the RUC, he began to talk immediately and told The RUC everything he knew about Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan. Smyth was then charged with the Murders of 86-year-old Norman Stronge and his son James.

Smyth would walk away from the murder charges and simply serve a few months in The Maze. On the basis of information supplied to the RUC by Smyth, Jim Lynagh’s brother-in-law Seamus Shannon would be extradited for the murders of Norman Stronge and his son James.

Seamus Shannon also walked away from the murder charges but only on the basis that Smyth had not given State’s evidence against him.

When Owen Smyth was released from The Maze in 1983, there was division within Sinn Fein/PIRA in Monaghan Town, some wanted to shoot Smyth for touting, others said No. Smyth would have been closely associated with Jim Lynagh over many years and Lynagh gave him the benefit of the doubt, this view was supported by J.B. O’Hagan and so forth, as Sinn Fein/PIRA were at that time making some electoral impact in Monaghan.

While Smyth was allowed to return to the ranks of Sinn Fein/PIRA he was never trusted again by many, although the exception was Michael ‘Pete’ Ryan was in a sexual relationship with Smyth’s sister-in-law Dr Marian Smyth. It was Pete Ryan that allowed Smyth to participate in a Human Bomb attack in Fermanagh, 1990.

Eamon Collins

Eamon was in a similar situation to Smyth, he had turned tout, then withdrew his evidence and was given permission by the Sinn Fein/PIRA Leadership to return to Newry. However, Eamon continued to high-light Sinn Fein/PIRA Criminality and for this reason he was murdered by people well known to him.

Bernard McGinn

The sniper who killed the last British Army victim of the Troubles shot by the IRA has died at his home, reportedly of natural causes. Bernard McGinn was the infamous IRA sniper who shot Lance Bombardier Stephen Restorick dead in Bessbrook in February 1997.

When arrested McGinn turned informer and gave information on the South Armagh IRA leading to the arrests of many significant IRA activists, McGinn, unlike other informers was not executed by the IRA as he was brother-in-law to Sinn Fein TD Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin.

Freddie Scappaticci

Dennis Donaldson

Joe Cahill, Gerry Adams and Liam Adams

The South Armagh sniper was one of the most feared figures of The Troubles, shooting down soldiers from as far away as half a mile. He became a folk hero in Republican circles while derided by others.

McGinn was 56 when he was found dead at his home in Monaghan town on Saturday.

Police say it is thought he died of natural causes with a post mortem due to be held on Monday.

An IRA volunteer at the age of 15, McGinn was the son of a local Sinn Fein councillor and the brother-in-law of current Sinn Fein deputy and Health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, O’Caolain married Briege McGinn.

McGinn was a member of one of two IRA sniper teams which used the deadly Barrett 50 M90 calibre sniper rifle.

The rifle was used to kill a total of nine members of the British Army including Restorick who was gunned down as he chatted to a Catholic woman in Bessbrook in 1997.

McGinn was apprehended by British Army SAS operatives at a farm near Crossmaglen on 10 April 1997.

He confessed to his role in the IRA bombing campaign involving attacks in Northern Ireland and England.

He implicated more than twenty members of the IRA’s South Armagh Brigade in his evidence and was sentenced to a total of 490 years in 1999 for 34 separate offences, however, this was a smoke screen as he would be released under the terms of the 1998 GFA.

They included his involvement in the 1992 bombing of the Baltic Exchange and the 1996 South Quay bombing, and the bombing of Hammersmith Bridge later the same year.

McGinn was released in 2000 under the Good Friday Agreement.