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Eamon McAuley, who this weekend underwent a second operation on his feet, is the latest victim of gun law in Northern Ireland which punishes anyone who opposes west Belfast's Sinn Fein and IRA elite.
Last October, McAuley's cousin, Joe O'Connor, a local hard man who was briefly associated with the dissident Real IRA, was shot dead by Provisionals. O'Connor, who was not suspected of involvement in terrorism, sealed his fate when he told a leading IRA figure that his son was a drugs dealer.
His killers walked up to O'Connor as he sat in his car and shot him 10 times. Up to eight IRA "volunteers" took part in the terrorist attack. RUC sources believe that a relative of Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, was part of the gang that murdered O'Connor.
McAuley threw stones at the windows of a number of houses in protest at his cousin's murder. In an interview with The Sunday Times yesterday, he said: "They saw me but couldn't catch me. I ran."
Soon afterwards the IRA came looking for McAuley, who lives with his aunt, Anne McManus. In late October three masked terrorists burst into McManus's bedroom demanding to see McAuley.
A few days later a well-known IRA man from the Turf Lodge estate called to McManus's house and said he was from the Community Restorative Justice programme. She said: "He told me he knew Eamon was angry but he said that these people whose windows were broken wanted justice. So he asked Eamon to meet him the next night at seven o'clock to get his hands broken. Eamon said 'Okay' but he never went."
Instead McAuley fled the area and stayed with friends. This month he felt it was safe to return but last Monday, three masked men came to McManus's house. One pinned the 43-year-old woman to the wall, while another ran upstairs in search of McAuley who eventually. At first he jammed his door but hearing his aunt being manhandled as they were trying to lock her in the kitchen, he gave himself up.
He was first taken to a house where he was made to lie on the floor. "They asked me if I wanted a job as a glazier because I was so fond of breaking windows," McAuley said. "They asked if I wanted to be known as the hard man who took on the IRA single-handed. 'This will teach you not to f**k with the IRA', one of them said." One terrorist sang I Did it My Way while another threatened to kill McAuley.
After an hour of taunting he had a towel tied over his face and was taken to waste ground, where he was shot in both feet. He had no socks on and his wounds were complicated by powder burns as the hot gun was forced into them.
McManus said: "Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson don't seem to care. They tell us there is a peace process, but where is it, when these people are being allowed to have guns and to go out and treat kids like that."
Anthony McIntyre, a former IRA commander in the Lower Ormeau area of Belfast, agrees that west Belfast is turning into a one-party police state. "If the RUC was coming round and doing this to people, Sinn Fein would be up squealing about it," he said.
Police and local people expect the tempo of attacks to increase in the coming months as Sinn Fein and its IRA backers gear up for the local council elections.
An RUC officer
in west Belfast said: "On one side it's a grip of fear - they are telling
people here what happens when you stand up to them. On the other hand it's
a populist thing, rallying mobs to drive people out of their homes."
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