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by Jim Dee
It was a scene not witnessed in the Belfast Irish Republican Army stronghold of Ballymurphy in many a year. A masked IRA dissident, flanked by nine others from the self-styled ``Real IRA,'' fired three shots over the coffin of a slain comrade.
The dead man was Joseph O'Connor, 26, a leading Belfast RIRA member who was shot Oct. 13 by masked gunmen while sitting in a car outside his mother's home.
No group claimed responsibility. But O'Connor's family accused the mainstream IRA of killing him over his opposition to the Good Friday peace accord.
On Tuesday, the row over who killed O'Connor hit Belfast's main pro-Irish nationalist paper, the Irish News, which carried a scathing letter from two former IRA members, Anthony McIntyre and Tommy Gorman, accusing their former comrades of the murder. Stressing they weren't backing the RIRA, the two alleged that the IRA killed O'Connor to stifle ``any semblance of alternative republicanism,'' peaceful or otherwise.
Tuesday night, the IRA denied responsibility, and charged its accusers of leveling ``malicious accusations . . . to heighten tensions and promote the agenda of those opposed to the current IRA strategy.''
That denial was backed by a mainstream republican source who told the Herald that the IRA conducted a three-day investigation, quizzing all of its volunteers in the Ballymurphy area, before issuing its denial.
A police determination of IRA responsibility would almost surely spark pro-British unionist demands for Sinn Fein's expulsion from the North's coalition Cabinet and trigger a massive peace process crisis.
The RIRA was formed in late 1997 by IRA members opposed to peace talks leading to 1998's Good Friday accord. In August 1998, it detonated a car bomb in Omagh, killing 29 people. A month later, amid international condemnation, the RIRA called a cease-fire.
Police detained two men for questioning in the Omagh bombing yesterday, and were holding one of three others they picked up earlier in the week. Although the RIRA hasn't officially ended its cease-fire, police North and South believe it's operating a ``no claim, no blame'' policy, in launching a string of recent attacks without taking credit.
Despite its alleged increased activity, few observers believe that the RIRA will ever be stronger than the mainstream IRA.
Key to the IRA's survival during three decades of conflict was the widespread support it received in areas like west Belfast, where IRA funerals regularly drew thousands.
In contrast, 200 people attended Joseph O'Connor's funeral, a low turnout which RIRA sympathizers attributed to supporters' fear of IRA retribution.
IRA intimidation certainly could have been a factor. But so too could be the fact that the IRA-allied Sinn Fein polled 17 percent across the North - and roughly 40 percent amongst pro-Irish nationalists - in 1998's assembly elections, when running on a pro-peace accord platform.
In contrast, with the RIRA refusing to grant any press interviews, the specifics of exactly how they'll deliver Ireland a more durable peace than the Good Friday accord, remains a mystery to most republicans and nationalists.
But sympathizers, including the 32-County Sovereignty Movement - a political pressure group which denies having any link with the RIRA - now regard the RIRA as the true bearers of the torch of militant republicanism.
Joseph O'Connor is the RIRA's first Belfast martyr, a fact which will likely draw new recruits in the months ahead. TV footage of heavily armed riot police surrounding his mourners, as a British Army chopper hovering overhead during the graveside oration, will have a similar effect.
O'Connor's funeral oration was delivered by Marion Price, who was jailed in the 1970s for her part in an IRA bombing campaign in London. Her words, like the masked firing party, carried echoes of the past all too familiar in Belfast.
``Republicans have withstood similar
attempts . . . by the Brits to undermine and break their spirit,'' she
said. ``It has been men like Joe who defiantly resisted - and who will
continue to resist until British rule is ended.''
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