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Gerry Adams' Relative Linked to Murder Gang
by Liam Clarke and Vincent Kearney
A RELATIVE of Gerry Adams was part of a three-man gang that murdered Joseph O'Connor, a republican dissident, earlier this month, according to RUC sources.
The man is alleged to be a member of a hit squad that has been active since 1990. One of the gang has gone on the run since O'Connor's killing. Another is a prominent West Belfast republican.
Their link to the murder will cause embarrassment for the Sinn Fein president at a time when many unionists are calling for his party to be removed from the power-sharing Stormont executive. Although the IRA has denied O'Connor's killing, security chiefs, rival republican groups and locals in Ballymurphy, where the murder took place, are discounting their statement.
This week, Jeffrey Donaldson and Ken Maginnis, two unionist MPs, will ask Peter Mandelson, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland, to seek a statement from the RUC on the IRA's involvement in murder this year. They believe that Mandelson has avoided asking the chief constable for a ruling in order to avoid a crisis.
Maginnis said: "It is not good enough for senior police officers to tell politicians and journalists they know the IRA is involved. The chief constable must make the position clear to the two governments at an official level.
"If his report confirms what we all suspect, that the IRA murdered three men this year, then it is up to the governments to decide what sanctions to impose against republicans."
Donaldson, the leading Ulster Unionist dissident, is demanding an urgent meeting with Flanagan. "It is essential he makes clear whether the RUC believes the IRA was behind these three killings. I would hope that political pressure is not being applied on him not to make a statement," Donaldson says.
"If Ronnie Flanagan says the police believe the IRA was responsible, it is incumbent on Peter Mandelson to act on that information and impose sanctions against those responsible."
The RUC special branch has already told Flanagan that, in addition to O'Connor, who was second in command of the Real IRA in Belfast, the Provisionals also murdered Patrick Quinn, 32, in Magherafelt last month, and Eddie McCoy, 28, in Dunmurry in May.
McCoy's and Quinn's deaths were allegedly drugs-related, and the IRA has a history of murdering suspected drugs dealers. One security source said: "All the information we have points clearly to the IRA. There is not enough evidence yet to convict the killers, but there is enough to conclude that the IRA was involved."
The close-quarters assassination unit which killed O'Connor is believed by RUC sources to have killed three police officers in 1990 and to have been deployed against drugs dealers on several occasions since then.
The first known RUC victims of Adams's relative and his gang were John Beckett and Gary Meyer, two uniformed officers shot in Belfast in June 1990. Two gunmen walked up behind the officers, grabbed each of them by the shoulder and shot them in the heads in front of dozens of frightened shoppers.
The gang struck again in October 1990, when they killed Constable Samuel Todd, an RUC dog handler, at a security barrier in Belfast's High Street. Another officer was seriously injured but survived.
There are fears that O'Connor's murder will spark a wave of retaliation in which Adams's relative may be a victim.
The Real IRA does not have the same strength in Belfast as in Derry or South Armagh, but is recruiting heavily in the Ballymurphy estate where O'Connor lived.
Two men were arrested
in connection with the Omagh bombing in the Irish republic yesterday. The
arrests bring to six the number of suspects detained last week for questioning
about the blast, in a renewed garda drive to catch the perpetrators. The
men are from Louth, home to several of the Omagh bomb suspects.
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