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http://icnorthernire...-name_page.html
Real IRA Kills Father of Six

Aug 18 2003


By Alan Erwin


A WEST Belfast man was gunned down in front of his children after a row with dissident republicans flared out of control, it emerged last night.



Two Real IRA gunmen pumped three bullets into Daniel McGurk, 35, at his home in the Lower Falls area when he opened the front door.

The father-of-six was murdered less than 24 hours after he had taken a knife and gone hunting for the men who beat him days earlier.

But when he failed to find them his killers ended the dispute by calling at the Ross Road house and opening fire at around 11am yesterday.

Mr McGurk, who was hit in the chest, thigh and ankle, died later in the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital. His partner and at least some of his children were at home with him when the gunmen called.

Even though the shooting took place in the staunchly republican west Belfast, security sources immediately ruled out any Provisional IRA involvement.

Police believe renegade republicans opposed to Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and their support for the Northern Ireland peace process were behind the murder.

Neighbours said a row broke out between Mr McGurk, who was not attached to any organisation, and Real IRA men after he was accused of urinating against a house in the area.

"He got a hammering a few days ago and then he went looking for them with a knife last night,'' said one.

"But they decided to get their retaliation in first and just shot him dead.''

Speculation that the murder was a paramilitary-style shooting that went wrong has not been confirmed.

A police spokeswoman said officers were keeping an open mind.



NIO Minister John Spellar hit out at the murder and urged any witnesses to inform the police.

He said: ''Those who carried out this cowardly and barbaric attack have nothing to offer but further pain and misery.''

Sinn Fein west Belfast councillor Fra McCann said he was stunned at the killing.

He added: ''I know this man and his family and I am shocked at this incident.

"Although details of what happened are not yet clear, there can be no possible excuse or justification for the murder of this man.''

SDLP councillor Margaret Walsh said: "If people have a concern with someone's behaviour they should deal with this through the proper channels."

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http://icnorthernire...-name_page.html
Killing Won't Start Feud Say IRA

Aug 19 2003


By Gemma Murray


THE names of the three men believed to have assassinated west Belfast hardman Danny McGurk are with the Provisional IRA.



Republican sources have told the News Letter that while the ''west Belfast rumour mill is in full swing'' the PIRA is not prepared to take action until it has all the facts.

"There will not be a feud in west Belfast between the PIRA and dissidents, if they are involved. There is no support for micro-organisations in west Belfast and they will eventually disappear.

"We need to know exactly what has happened before it is decided what needs to be done.''

A Sinn Fein spokesman last night said he was confident there would be no feud in response to the murder.

"It just won't happen because the community won't tolerate it,'' he said.

"As someone who lives in west Belfast, I know this community won't tolerate feuds and I don't think republicans are going to go down the road of feuds with criminal gangs.''

Last night, 73-year-old Mary McGurk vowed not to be silenced by the ''thugs and drug dealers'' who murdered her son - because she has nothing to lose.

Mrs McGurk said while she has never wished revenge on anybody in her life, she hopes those who gunned down her 35-year-old son will ''die crawling up the walls''.

The pensioner spoke as Danny McGurk's widow Patsy told of her fear that she and her young family may be targeted by her husband's assassins.

The mother-of-five said: ''These are the kind of people that come after you if you speak out against them. My husband stood up to them and they killed him. My fear now is that they will target me or my family.

"Don't these people have families of their own? Don't they have a conscience at all? They have left my children without a father and me without a husband. I wouldn't wish this on anyone.''

Security sources said the murder may have been a punishment shooting gone wrong or that ''just got out of control''.

But Mrs McGurk said she is convinced the dissidents intended to murder her son.

Just 24 hours earlier, Mr McGurk had taken a knife to go looking for men who had beaten him up with hatchets and hammers after a dispute.

Even though still badly injured, he signed himself out of the Royal Victoria Hospital.

"This wasn't a punishment shooting, they were out to murder him for speaking up against them and their criminal behaviour,'' said Mrs McGurk.

"They are drug-peddling scum and disciples of the devil. Danny

would never knuckle under them and he would have to be silenced.

"He was murdered for nothing by scumbags. They'll die crawling up the walls, every one of them - that is my wish on them - and I don't wish revenge on anybody.''

The father-of-five was shot in the legs and the back at his home in Ross Road in the lower Falls at 11am on Sunday. He had been watching television as three of his children slept upstairs and the other two played outside with their mother.

Mrs McGurk Snr said she was not afraid of her son's murderers. ''I have said a whole lot, but I am not afraid to say anything because I am 73 now and I have nothing to lose.

"I won't be silenced ... that's the way I look at it. The people on this road are sick of them but nobody has the heart to do anything about it.''

Mr McGurk was beaten up last week with iron bars and a hammer by a 14-man gang after speaking out against the rogue republicans. Family members

said he was targeted after he intervenved in a dispute involving his brother's friend.

Mrs McGurk Snr said her son had vowed revenge on those who had beaten him.

"He told them that when he got better he would get them one by one ... and they know he would have done it because Danny was a straightforward fella. So they had to come with guns to silence him.''

West Belfast MP Gerry Adams told of the sense of anger and outrage in the community at the, ''brutal and senseless murder of Danny McGurk''.

He said Mr McGurk had been the ''victim of gangsterism and thuggery''.

Former SDLP MLA Dr Joe Hendron described the killing as ''murder most foul''. After visiting the family - his patients for many years - he said: ''They are a lovely family.

"I agree with his mother Mary who repeated to me that those responsible are the 'devil's disciples'.''

NIO minister John Spellar condemned the murder as '' cowardly and barbaric''.

g.murray@newsletter.co.uk

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Sunday Life
Publication Date: 24 August 2003

Rebels face Provo backlash
PIRA outrage at Falls killing

By Stephen Breen


IRA bosses are set to declare war on renegade republican gangs across Belfast, it was claimed last night.

Sunday Life understands that Belfast Provo chiefs have run out of patience with the dissidents, and have "drawn up" a hit-list of leading Real and Continuity IRA chiefs in the north and west of the city.

Republican sources say the IRA had already being growing "impatient" with the dissidents, over their growing links to criminal gangs, loyalist terrorists and drug dealers.

But Provo leaders in west Belfast were outraged by last week's brutal murder, by the Real IRA of Danny McGurk, in the lower Falls.

Senior republican sources told us the IRA leadership was previously "reluctant" to launch an attack against the dissidents because of the peace process, but said the group is now coming under intense pressure from its own ranks to target the rival gangs.

The Provos have moved against the dissidents before, most notably they were blamed for the murder of Real IRA chief, John 'Jo Jo' O'Connor, in October 2000.

They were also behind punishment attacks on senior renegades in the south Down area, and north Belfast.

But now the IRA is set to scale up attacks against dissidents.

This latest development comes after Sunday Life exposed links between the dissidents and Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair's old C company.

We also revealed how the former leader of the Real IRA in west Belfast - Anthony Notorantonio - was jailed after he was found with one of Adair's old UZI sub-machine guns.

A senior security source told us it would be "no surprise" if the IRA leadership sanctioned a move against the dissident gangs.

Said the source: "Apart from the killing of Jo Jo and sporadic punishment attacks against suspected dissidents, the IRA has been keeping a distance from these dissident gangs.

"They know everything that they're involved in, but they will only take action against them when they feel the time is right.

"The Provos have to look at the bigger picture, but with a vacuum in the peace process at this stage, the feeling among its rank and file now is that maybe this is the time to strike.

"The dissident gangs have been terrorising places like north and west Belfast, and the people have had enough.

"They are now looking to groups like the mainstream IRA to take action.

"The IRA knows who the leaders of the renegade gangs are.

"And the general feeling is that they could be ready to take one of them out on a no-claim no blame basis."

Dissidents face protests on their home front

OUTRAGED residents in west Belfast are set to hold a series of protests, outside the homes of leading dissident republicans.

The plan has been drawn up by people in the lower Falls, and in other parts of the republican stronghold, after last weekend's brutal murder of Daniel McGurk.

The protests have been organised by local people, in a bid to force the Real and Continuity IRA terror bosses to leave the area.

Mr McGurk was gunned down in front of his wife and children, by a Real IRA gang, after he was involved in a row with some of the terror group's leading members in the west of the city, earlier this month.

He was shot in the feet and the back, in what may have been a savage attempted punishment-style shooting that went wrong.

Although a number of protests have been held outside the homes of renegade republicans in north Belfast, this is expected to be the first time protests will be staged in the west of the city.

Even before Mr McGurk's murder, there was growing anger in west Belfast towards the dissident gangs, which are linked to criminal, and drug dealing, gangsters across Northern Ireland.

One concerned resident - too terrified to be named - who lived close to the home of Mr McGurk, told Sunday Life people in the area have "had enough" of the dissident republican groups.

Said the resident: "It's about time something was done to let the thugs of the Real IRA know that they are not wanted, in nationalist areas.

"The Provos don't seem to want to get involved, because of the peace process, but if the ordinary people come out and protest at these people, they cannot be stopped.

"The protest outside the home of a senior dissident, in the Bone area of north Belfast, was a success because he has now left, and there is no reason why it can't happen here.

"They class themselves as true republicans, yet they are working with well-known criminals and loyalists."

http://www.sundaylif...sp?story=436699

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Very interesting piece here

-------------------


A Pathological Political Disorder

A tyrant ... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader - Plato

Anthony McIntyre • August 21, 2003

Last weekend's killing of Danny McGurk by the Real IRA was an incident as predictable as it was fatal. As an Irish News editorial pointed out `it is worth remembering that three other young men were shot in the legs in nationalist parts of Belfast and Co Tyrone' on the same weekend that Danny McGurk died. This increase in punishment attacks during the Stormont institutional hiatus always carried with it the potential to see the Andy Kearney murder revisited on some other misfortunate. Andy Kearney died at the hands of a Provisional IRA punishment squad just over 5 years ago. His death prompted considerable public disquiet. The lesson is simple: corporal punishment administered by any of the various IRA's can on occasion, despite the intent, become capital punishment.

This is to assume of course that the attack was in fact a punishment designed to maim rather than kill. The record of the Real IRA is that it kills civilians rather than administers non-lethal punishments to them. A member of the renamed RUC commented: `because he was shot in the ankle it may have been one that went wrong or just got out of control.' This interpretation is not one shared by the dead man's mother. She said the men who murdered him were `drunk and that the attack wasn't even a punishment shooting. They shot him in the back and they shot him in the legs.'

Whatever the facts, it is mere rhetoric to indulge in the usual game of condemnology, issue the same pious diatribes, and then keep stum when the IRA you agree with is responsible for a punishment attack. John Morley once observed that `where it is a duty to worship the sun it is pretty sure to be a crime to examine the laws of heat'. Worshipping at the altar of the assumed right of republicans to maim those they find socially obnoxious within their own communities and then attack those who ask awkward questions about the hot laws of consequence means that any subsequent critique of deaths like that of Andy Kearney or Danny McGurk will always come accompanied by the whiff of self- serving attitudinising.

This holds true for the Sinn Fein president who proclaims shock and outrage at the killing. But such sentiments only have substantive ethical weight if those who hold them are wholly sans ambivalence about their rejection of murder. Mr Adams credentials here are suspect. He covered up for the organisation which, in the constituency for which he serves as a member of the British parliament, murdered Joe O'Connor in October 2000, and then supported his party members when they mounted a campaign of intimidation against those opposed to the killing.

If no IRA has the right to maim those - no matter how abhorrent their behaviour is - within the community, then it is a relatively simple matter to make a credible and consistent stand against those who murdered Danny McGurk. But if his killers only lack justification because they were members of the wrong IRA then an end to killing is not what is sought but rather a moral cataract behind which the community can fumble and feign blindness when `legitimate' killings occur. And while nothing legitimises any of the murders West Belfast has played host to over the past five years, the fact that the constituency elects a MP who is ambivalent on these matters suggests a certain level of social tolerance for some degree of maiming and murder.

It is against this backdrop which heavily favours Provisional republicanism that the Real IRA should give serious consideration to its future. In communities where the power to create `truth' is deferred to rather than truth itself, an ever deepening hostility towards the Real IRA is taking root. Even prior to the McGurk murder, Denis Bradley, the vice chairman of the Policing Board, warned that `the political vacuum is dangerous for everybody, including the Real IRA.' The organisation is frequently compared to the IPLO of the 1980s and `90s. The language used by the mother of Danny McGurk to describe her son`s killers - "thugs and drug dealers" - and that employed by the local MP - "gangsterism and thuggery" - finds resonance with those who remember the IPLO. Some republicans, who can not be labelled 'Shinners' by those sympathetic to the Real IRA, have expressed severe dismay at the McGurk murder and point to the likely negative consequences that the murder will have on community support for republican prisoners in Maghaberry. One went further and predicted a Provisional IRA move against the Real IRA - he accompanied his prediction with the words 'and no one will care.'

Whatever the Real IRA may think of itself most in these communities would be glad to see the back of it. It is not that the organisation pursues its futile campaign without approval or even with indifference in the community, it actually faces outright opposition and resentment. Conscious of its pariah status the Real IRA now gives off the appearance of skulking as it seeks to evade telling the public why exactly it targeted Danny McGurk. Its moral courage seemingly existing in inverse proportion to its incompetence.

Danny McGurk leaves a widow and six fatherless children. It is not the first time the Real IRA has unleashed its violence on members of the civilian population. The only people seemingly safe from the organisation are British state security personnel to whom the group appears to pose no threat. That the physical force tradition would want to remain on the scene after what it perpetrated at Omagh suggests it is now a pathological political disorder rather than a serious contemplative and rational choice body of opinion determined to bring any positive change to the country. Its attitude of functioning with absolute contempt for the wider public will produce a response in kind.

Does the Real IRA accept that people have more right to exist than it does? And does it further realise that people may choose to protect their right to exist by taking whatever appropriate measures they deem necessary to render the threat posed by the Real IRA to the civilian population negligible? The Real IRA needs to think long and hard on why so many of its members are in prison, why so many of its operations are compromised, and why the campaign to secure public support for its protesting prisoners is sluggish. Is this an indication that we are approaching that decisive break, once unthinkable, where people are prepared to turn self-proclaimed republican activists overto the state rather than allow them to inflict their lethal incompetence on the communities from which they hail? If Real IRA members are seen as little more than gangsters and thugs - in a way that Provisional IRA volunteers were never perceived within their own communities during their war - and reinforce that perception through their actions and civilian kills, the community will feel no loyalty to the organisation to which they belong and may become less inhibited about turning them in.

32 County sovereignty is a myth if the people are not party to it. They alone are sovereign. The Real IRA should get off their backs.

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UTV
SUNDAY 24/08/2003 16:13:40
Police copied IRA files

Police secretly copied files stolen by the IRA from the government's main offices in Northern Ireland as part of a major anti-terrorist intelligence gathering operation, it has been claimed.


Special Branch and MI5 traced the documents which went missing from Castle Buildings, Belfast, copied them at police headquarters and then returned them to where they had been hidden by the Provisionals, according to a new book.

Security chiefs had been keeping senior republicans under surveillance at the time as they prepared to try and trap a top IRA man in the city.

But the plan had to be abandoned because of fears the Provisionals were about to move the files to another location. Names and addresses of hundreds of prison officers were included on them.

Operation Torison, according to the book by BBC`s Northern Ireland security editor Brian Rowan, also involved the former Secretary of State John Reid signing bugging warrants.

It ended in October last year with the arrests of a number of republicans, but for months the British government had been aware the IRA was spying inside Castle Buildings where the Good Friday Agreement was signed in April 1998.

A senior IRA man from west Belfast who headed the Provisionals` intelligence unit, was the main target.

Three men and a woman are awaiting trial on charges in connection with the theft.

The IRA also stole hundreds of files when they broke into Special Branch offices in Belfast in March 2002 They are still missing.

Rowan claimed the decision to photo-copy the stolen Castle Buildings files and then leave them back to where they had been hidden was to help protect the identity of a Special Branch informer.

He said: ``Spooks, spies and the Branch were all at play. They knew everything they needed to know. They had bugs in place, and unknown to it`s owner, they had his house under surveillance.

``This had been a long-term monitoring operation. The branch wanted the IRA`s director of intelligence to fall into their net, but he stayed well clear.

``Long before the branch made the arrests they knew precisely what the republicans had. The stolen files had been removed, copied and then returned to where they had been hidden by the Provos.``

Rowan`s book also reveal details of:

:: Secret meetings between republicans and the government in a bid to persuade the IRA to agree to Unionist demands for the terrorists to get rid of all their weapons and explosives

:: Unpublished documents as part of those exchanges

:: A threat by the jailed loyalist paramilitary leader Johnny ``Mad Dog`` Adair to have a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly killed.

The Armed Peace: Life and Death after the Ceasefires (Mainstream Publishing), £15.99 is published on Wednesday.

http://u.tv/newsroom...p?id=36403&pt=n

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Sunday World
24 Aug 2003


By PAULA MACKIN

Provos set up loose cannon" for RIRA hit

MURDERED Belfast man Dan-ny McGurk was a pawn in a potential feud between the Provisional IRA and the Real IRA.

The Sunday World today reveals the untold story behind the assassination of the father-of-six and how his life was put on the line by the Provos in a bid to justify a full-scale internecine

republican vendetta.

The 35-year-old was shot five times in the back and legs when his killers stormed into his home in the Lower Falls last Sunday morning.

The Real IRA was behind the attack.

But the Sunday World can reveal it was orchestrated by members of the IRA who McGurk would have viewed as his protectors.

They are secretly plotting for an all-out feud which would see bloodletting between the Provos and IRA rebels who are continually seen to be 'strutting their stuff in republican areas.

Bad blood is running because the dissidents are also trying to take on the mantle of the 'protectors of the people' - as well as promoting their anti-Sinn Fein

and Good Friday Agreement mantra.

"The IRA has his blood on its hands too," said one source furious at Danny McGurk's murder.

"It set him up for assassination so it would have reason to declare war on the Real IRA.

"That's the truth behind the murder of Danny McGurk."

Other sources say the Real IRA presence in West Belfast has became a major thorn in the side of the Provos in recent months.

They claim the only obstacle stopping the 'hard men' of PIRA from moving against the diehard, dissident republicans is the fear of a public backlash if another republican feud

spills on to the streets - like what happened after recent loyalist feuds.

"The Provos knew they couldn't just start shooting people without reason," said one republican source.

"That's where Danny McGurk came into it. They knew he was a loose canon and was crazy enough to continuously put it up to the RIRA - until its members snapped and shot him.

"That's exactly what hap-pened.They egged him on to goad the Real IRA.They used him for their own means.

Stories

"They even put out spurious stories that he was 'spying'for the Provos against RIRA.

"They used him so they could justify retaliation attacks," the source alleged.

Danny McGurk was known for his unpredictable and violent nature, especially after drink.

With convictions for grievous bodily harm - and one for his part in a knife killing - he was seen as the ideal candidate to provoke more trouble between the two paramilitary groups.

Ironically, there were claims that Mr McGurk had gone hunting before his death for hoods who had beaten him - brandishing a knife.

"Danny had a hair-trigger temper," said another West Belfast source.

"He was a total loose cannon and could be talked into anything with drink on board. He was an extremely

volatile and violent character who was notorious for his short temper.

"It only took someone to sav something and he was off on one.

"He had no fear. He was scared of nothing and no one. and that included the RIRA.

"He didn't even need weapons. He just needed his fists and his temper.

"The IRA knew this and exploited it.

"It got h im riled up and then sent him out to start fights knowing what the outcome would be," our source said.

Over three months ago Danny McGurk attended an RIRA fund-raising function at a republican club in West Belfast.

"Danny went up to an RIRA 'do' and they wouldn't let him in because he was so drunk," said sources who talked to the Sunday World.

"He went absolutely mad and started a big fight with bouncers and members of the RIRA.

"Guns were drawn but nothing was done at that time.

"He was calling them all the names of the day and told them he was going to kill them and burn their houses down.

"He had made himself a few dangerous enemies before but his actions that night certainly played a central role in his death," said the sources.

Shortly after this incident Danny approached a prominent republican to vent his fury.


"When the drink wore off Danny McGurk wanted the IRA to know what was going on.

"It was probably the worst thing he could have done. His action gave this republican, and others, the idea to use him as a scapegoat for starting an internal republican scrap.

"He should never have gone near them.

"He would have probablu been alive today if he had stayed awau and kept his nose clean.

"They used him so they could settle scores, and take on rebel republicans, using his fate as justification," said a West Belfast source.

Danny McGurk reacted by continuing to goad and harass and threaten RIRA volunteers.


Hatchet


Eventually some of them retaliated and beat him with hatchets and hammers, leaving him in hospital.

Battered and bruised, he defiantly signed himself out of medical care.

"The beating was a warning but he didn 't pull back," said someone dose to him.

A gang of RIRA men burst into the McGurk family home at eleven o'clock last Sunday morning and shot Danny McGurk at dose range.

His wife Patsy was outside with two of their children when the cowardly gunmen struck.

"All I could think of was getting an ambulance because I could see he was dying and I just wanted to get him to hospital. Thank God the children didn't see what happened," she said.

At his funeral yesterday Fr Matt Wallace branded Danny McGurk's killers "drug traffickers and cowards' before urging to them to give themselves up.

He described the brutal murder of the father-of-six as "unnecessary" and said the men responsible for the cold blooded assassination could never be considered Catholics or nationalists.

"They are the devil's disciples, drug traffickers and cowards," he said at the mass at St Paul's church on the Falls Road

As Daniel McGurk's remains arrived for the 9am mass, his heartbroken children and devastated widow wept openly behind his coffin.

His widow Patsy was comforted by a family member while her children, Eva, Lisa, Paula, Scan, Mark and Danny, walked behind the cortege carrying red roses and white lilies.

As the remains were taken from the church, his widow Patsy stumbled behind the coffin crying "No".

The funeral was attended by former MLA Dr Joe Hendron, Sinn Fein's Fran McCann and Tom Hartley.

As Danny Me Gurk's sister Mary walked from the chapel she collapsed behind the funeral cortege. Dr Joe Hendron rushed to the scene and took her away in his car.



Victim Was a Mad Killer


MURDER victim Daniel Thomas McGurk was a convicted killer.

He was jailed in 1999 for six years for his role in the killing of Falls Road man Kevin Taylor.

The 23-year-old was stabbed to death in a house at Lisvama Heights on September 14 1997 by McGurk and a gang of friends who claimed to be from the IRA.

"Danny was a complete nutter. Once the mist came down you knew to get out of the way. He would have stuck a screw driver in you and thought nothing of it,"

said a friend of the victim.

Kevin Taylor was stabbed after McGurk and his gang forced their way into his flat.

"There was about seven or eight of them and they asked for Kevin when the door was answered.

"If they only wanted to give him a hiding why did so many of them come and why did they bring a knife and a stick with nails in it?" the former friend of Kevin Taylor's said.

During the deadly fracas McGurk himself was stabbed and a trail of his blood was found leading from the flat to the Royal

Victoria Hospital where he was
treated for a collapsed lung.

"Danny McGurk was in the thick of it, that's how he got stabbed," he explained.

Disgrace

"It!s a disgrace he only got done for manslaughter. It should have been murder though I would never wish what happened to Danny McGurk last Sunday on anyone."

Though the gang claimed to be from the IRA at the time, the police slated it was not a paramilitary punishment attack.

It later transpired it was carried out after a drink- fuelled party.

McGurk was initially charged with murder but it was dropped to manslaughter when he pleaded guilty to lesser offences.

Four other men - Barry Broad-man, Kevin Nellis, Paul Lynn and Paul Clarke - pleaded guilty to their involvement in the attack.

Both Broadman and Lynn received three and a half years for GBH and ABH. Nellis was sentenced to five and a half years for manslaughter and Clarke, 19 at the time of the stabbing, was sentenced to four and a half years, also for manslaughter.

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Attacks follow funeral
RIRA men flee after shooting

(Allison Morris, Irelandclick.com)

A number of Real IRA members from across West Belfast have fled their homes in fear of a ‘Night of the Long Knives’ style blitz in the wake of the murder of Danny McGurk.

The Andersonstown News has learned that five members of the group thought to be connected to the RIRA killing of Danny McGurk last week have fled their homes.

Three of the men were told by the PSNI that they are subject to an IRA death threat. The others left after a number of homes in the Divis area were wrecked in weekend attacks by local people angry at the organisation’s increasingly criminal and anti-social behaviour.

The lower Falls is now bracing itself for an all out war on the RIRA – similar to action taken against the now disbanded IPLO in 1992.

IPLO man Samuel Ward from the Short Strand area was gunned down in a Belfast bar on 31 October 1992 when up to 100 IRA men took part in a crackdown operation to disband the organisation.

Ten other alleged members of the group were wounded in punishment shootings on the same night – many shot in the legs with rifles in order to cause maximum damage.

Four days later the leader of the IPLO’s Belfast Brigade made a statement saying the organisation was to disband.

Members of the RIRA are now fleeing their homes convinced that their days are also numbered.

One RIRA member who was involved in the fight that led to the rift and later the murder of Danny McGurk, has fled to an address in Co Down.

And we can reveal that another man who has been hiding out in Ballycastle since last Tuesday has made approaches to mainstream republicans and offered to trade information on his RIRA colleagues in a bid to save his own skin.

Mainstream republican sources are now saying that the organisation’s days are numbered and that members of the RIRA will from now on be treated as common criminals.

In the Divis area yesterday local people told the Andersonstown News that the community has ostracised all known members of the RIRA.

Shops and bars have refused to serve known members of the organisation and local people say they are no longer welcome in West Belfast.

“We don’t want them here any more,” said one woman.

“They are more interested in lining their own pockets than they are in republicanism.

“No one tried to stop the people who were wrecking their houses because no one cares.

“This area has seen this all before when the IPLO were selling drugs, murdering and raping, thinking they could get away with anything. They were soon put in their place.

“The same thing is happening to the RIRA and there are not too many people shedding tears.”

At Danny McGurk’s funeral on Saturday morning Fr Matt Wallace, who married Danny and his wife Patsy just two years ago, condemned the attack. He said his killers were not Catholic but disciples of the devil.

“What type of people would do this, are they Irish, Catholic, nationalist?

The answer is no.

“His mother described them as the devil’s disciples, drug traffickers and I believe that is the best answer.”

August 26, 2003
http://www.nuzhound....RA_men_flee.php

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Belfast Telegraph
Eamonn McCann: 'Killers only lack justification because they were members of the wrong IRA'


By Features Editor
featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

28 August 2003
SPEAKING at the funeral mass for Danny McGurk on Saturday, Fr. Matt Wallace wondered what sort of people might have killed him. "Are they Irish, Catholic or Nationalist?" he asked, then went on to answer his own question - "No!"

But Matt Wallace will have known full well that the gang which gunned the 35-year-old father-of-six down on August 17th will have come within each of his categories: Irish, Catholic and Nationalist. Indeed, he will have been able to narrow the ideological identification down further, to have guessed that they belonged to that tendency within Irish Catholic Nationalist politics which lays claim to the designation "Republican".


It has widely been noted that the killing bore grisly resemblance to the killing of Andrew Kearney in the New Lodge in July 1998. McGurk's crime was that he'd had a row with members of the Real IRA after he'd rejected their dictation of what was socially acceptable. Kearney's offence had to do with a personal grudge arising from a fight. Provisional IRA men held him down, shot him three times and left him to bleed to death in a lift.


Both men had challenged IRA authority in their areas, and so had to die.


Republican reaction to the killings has depended on specific allegiance. Sinn Fein leaders expressed regret at the Kearney killing. On the other hand, the moral rhetoric was revved up to the max for McGurk. As the writer and former Republican prisoner Anthony McIntyre commented, it wasn't the nature of the act which made the McGurk shooting morally reprehensible to Sinn Fein. "His killers only lack justification because they were members of the wrong IRA."


This raises a question which Matt Wallace's facile funeral formulation left out of account: what is it about the Republican tendency within Irish Catholic Nationalism which leads its adherents to believe that the paramilitary group they support has a right to kill people who challenge its authority?


In terms of the Republican tradition as expressed over the past 30 years, it goes back to the "mandate" of 1916 and the notion of the "army" as the legitimate representative of the will of the Irish people. If you believe that the Provisional IRA embodies this will, then their killings, however abhorrent in particular cases, are acceptable, carried out in the line of patriotic duty.

Likewise for the Real IRA, if you believe that they have now assumed will-of-the-people status. The size and credibility of the organisations may be very different, but the principle is exactly the same.


It is this principle which the Provos will believe they are upholding if they decide that the time is now propitious to take out the rival IRA, go gunning for some of their better-known associates, for example. It will have been very far from Wallace's intention, but the notion that McGurk's killers are beyond the pale of Irish Catholic Nationalist society might facilitate such a move.


The factor to be faced up to here goes far beyond the circumstances of a particular killing. It has to do with the whole business of any group operating clandestinely on behalf or in the name of "the people". It has to do with what's accepted as the Republican tradition.


The tradition was given particularly sharp expression earlier this month in the IRSP's complaint against the Housing Executive for the demolition of a plinth on which the party had intended to erect a monument to two INLA members killed in Dungannon in 1983. "Was the Good Friday Agreement not meant to enshrine the rights of the indigenous Irish to their own cultural identity?," the Irps asked.

Brendan Convery and Gerald Mallon may have been sent out by their INLA bosses. But, to the IRSP, they actually carried a mandate from "the indigenous Irish."


It is mystical nonsense of this sort that the killing of Danny McGurk tells us we need rid of.

http://www.belfastte...sp?story=437901

[bluebear]

Belfast Telegraph
Eamonn McCann: 'Killers only lack justification because they were members of the wrong IRA'


By Features Editor
featureseditor@belfasttelegraph.co.uk

28 August 2003
SPEAKING at the funeral mass for Danny McGurk on Saturday, Fr. Matt Wallace wondered what sort of people might have killed him. "Are they Irish, Catholic or Nationalist?" he asked, then went on to answer his own question - "No!"

But Matt Wallace will have known full well that the gang which gunned the 35-year-old father-of-six down on August 17th will have come within each of his categories: Irish, Catholic and Nationalist. Indeed, he will have been able to narrow the ideological identification down further, to have guessed that they belonged to that tendency within Irish Catholic Nationalist politics which lays claim to the designation "Republican".


It has widely been noted that the killing bore grisly resemblance to the killing of Andrew Kearney in the New Lodge in July 1998. McGurk's crime was that he'd had a row with members of the Real IRA after he'd rejected their dictation of what was socially acceptable. Kearney's offence had to do with a personal grudge arising from a fight. Provisional IRA men held him down, shot him three times and left him to bleed to death in a lift.


Both men had challenged IRA authority in their areas, and so had to die.


Republican reaction to the killings has depended on specific allegiance. Sinn Fein leaders expressed regret at the Kearney killing. On the other hand, the moral rhetoric was revved up to the max for McGurk. As the writer and former Republican prisoner Anthony McIntyre commented, it wasn't the nature of the act which made the McGurk shooting morally reprehensible to Sinn Fein. "His killers only lack justification because they were members of the wrong IRA."


This raises a question which Matt Wallace's facile funeral formulation left out of account: what is it about the Republican tendency within Irish Catholic Nationalism which leads its adherents to believe that the paramilitary group they support has a right to kill people who challenge its authority?


In terms of the Republican tradition as expressed over the past 30 years, it goes back to the "mandate" of 1916 and the notion of the "army" as the legitimate representative of the will of the Irish people. If you believe that the Provisional IRA embodies this will, then their killings, however abhorrent in particular cases, are acceptable, carried out in the line of patriotic duty.

Likewise for the Real IRA, if you believe that they have now assumed will-of-the-people status. The size and credibility of the organisations may be very different, but the principle is exactly the same.


It is this principle which the Provos will believe they are upholding if they decide that the time is now propitious to take out the rival IRA, go gunning for some of their better-known associates, for example. It will have been very far from Wallace's intention, but the notion that McGurk's killers are beyond the pale of Irish Catholic Nationalist society might facilitate such a move.


The factor to be faced up to here goes far beyond the circumstances of a particular killing. It has to do with the whole business of any group operating clandestinely on behalf or in the name of "the people". It has to do with what's accepted as the Republican tradition.


The tradition was given particularly sharp expression earlier this month in the IRSP's complaint against the Housing Executive for the demolition of a plinth on which the party had intended to erect a monument to two INLA members killed in Dungannon in 1983. "Was the Good Friday Agreement not meant to enshrine the rights of the indigenous Irish to their own cultural identity?," the Irps asked.

Brendan Convery and Gerald Mallon may have been sent out by their INLA bosses. But, to the IRSP, they actually carried a mandate from "the indigenous Irish."


It is mystical nonsense of this sort that the killing of Danny McGurk tells us we need rid of.

http://www.belfastte...sp?story=437901