Republican Criminals Smoked Out

The Anne Scan - "No Smoking"

In the bad old days before the Gerry Adams Gang aka Gerry and the Peacemakers discovered Peace, Love and Understanding one of the more disreputable aspects of the IRA (In Ireland these things are relative) was the euphemistically named “Fundraising Activities.” Indeed these crypto-fascists masquerading as Republicans were the greatest beneficiaries of Partition running numerous rackets in the border areas of Ireland relating to smugglings, fraud on EEC subsidies, diesel rackets etc; Indeed it was never obvious where private gangsterism and “The Cause” began and ended as many fine houses and “businesses” owned by Republican hard men in border areas testify.

Now the group of Neanderthals known as the Real IRA were last night being linked to the largest ever haul of contraband cigarettes in Ireland, in what Gardai described as a significant strike against organised crime. Nine people, including seven Irish nationals, were arrested after a ship “Anne Scan” containing 120 million cigarettes worth €50m was seized in Co Louth following a massive surveillance operation.

The haul, with a potential revenue loss of €40m, was destined for the Irish and UK markets. Regarded as the biggest seizure of its type in Europe and described as organised crime on a global scale, the contraband was uncovered after the chartered ship arrived at 6am on Monday at Greenore Port. Code-named 'Samhna', the operation, which targeted an organised crime group operating on both sides of the Border, involved the Revenue Customs Service, the Naval Service, Air Corps, Gardai, the Criminal Assets Bureau and PSNI officers and HM customs officials.



When customs officers searched the cargo, they found over 1,400 bags containing up to 120 million cigarettes hidden among a consignment of animal feed. While the top quarter of each of the one-tonne bulk bags of feed was genuine, the rest were packets of two brands of cigarettes including Palace, which are sold in Britain. Seven Irish nationals, all male, aged between 19 and mid-40s, one Lithuanian male in his 50s and one Ukrainian male in his 40s were arrested after part of the ship's cargo was loaded early yesterday onto waiting trucks. Gardai and customs officers pounced when the convoy was driven to the importer's premises.


The Anne Scan's cargo of cigarettes

Last night, the men, who included the ship's captain and first officer, were being detained at Garda stations in counties Louth and Monaghan. The Real IRA have funded their terrorist activities partly by smuggling along the Border and by operations bringing material into Ireland. In 2003 a large haul of cigarettes was seized as a Real IRA cigarette smuggling ring was smashed when warehouses in Holland and the Ireland were raided. Six men were arrested after consignments of cigarettes worth millions of euro were found in the searches.

As part of follow-up searches more cigarettes were found in a warehouse in Monaghan. In another incident Gardai and the US authorities investigated links between the terrorists and a major cigarette smuggling ring in the United States. The seizure in Greenore is significant as this port at the end of the Cooley Peninsular (along with Heysham in Lancashire) was built by the LMS Railway based in Euston Station as part of a Rail / Ferry connection to Ireland and Greenore still has Euston and Crewe roads and the remnants of a once fine railway hotel as visible evidence of this connection.


The Greenore Hotel, built by The London and North Western Railway in the 1870s as one of the most imposing railway hotels in Ireland, and one of only a handful to be built of brick.

The Cooley Mountains form the setting for "An Tain Bo Cuailgne" or "The Cattle Raid of Cooley". Recounting the heroic defence of Ulster by the legendary Cuchulainn against Queen Medbh of Connacht and her attempt to seize the prize brown bull of Cooley, the story is at least 1,200 years old and is among the oldest surviving pieces of vernacular literature in Europe. This very beautiful part of the world has suffered greatly from IRA “fundraising” over the years including the murder of a local farmer, Tom Oliver, and the burying of bodies of IRA murder victims. One of these was Jean McConville, a 37 year old Catholic mother of 10, who was abducted from her home, St. Judes Walk, Divis, Belfast, around Xmas 1972 when Gerry Adams was commander of the “West Belfast Brigade”. She was accused of giving water to an injured British soldier. Her remains were eventually recovered, on general instructions from the IRA, buried at Shelling Hill beach, near Carlingford, Co. Louth, on 27 August 2003.


Jean McConville and three of her children

And consider those who suffered from the euphemistically titled “fundraising” which enabled Gerry and the Peacemakers pay for their comic strip patriotism. There was Thomas Niedermayer, the German managing director of Grundig’s Belfast factory where IRA Godfather Brian Keenan once worked who was kidnapped for ransom and whose body has never been found. Of course Brian was not there that wet dark night at Greystones pier in Co. Wicklow some years later when his widow, still consumed with grief, walked off the end of the pier. He was however, in West Belfast when Grundig closed down with a loss of 900 jobs, but he wasn’t at Balinamore Wood in Co. Longford when the Army and Gardai rescued the kidnapped managing director of an Irish Supermarket chain but not before the fleeing IRA gang killed two 19 year olds, a rookie cop and soldier, as they broke out of the cordon. Nor did he know the girlfriend of one of them who worked for me who had a breakdown as her life and future were so cruelly destroyed.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/05/death-of-brian-keenan.html

So let us praise the security services for frustrating the Neanderthals of the so called “Real IRA” in their gangster activities and remember those who did not live to see the discovery of democracy by Gerry and the Peacemakers. They are remembered on the Cain Index of violent deaths caused by the IRA and others who feel it is right to kill for “Freedom”.

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html


Cooley Peninsular

The Death of Brian Keenan

Brian Keenan

The death through illness on the 21st May 2008 of a former Provisional IRA commander who masterminded the organisation’s bombing campaign in England has raised questions about the future of its “Army Council”. Brian “The Dog” Keenan, the son of a Royal Air Force member who grew to become the Provos’ “chief of staff”, was once described as the single biggest threat to the British State.

With Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams paying tribute at the funeral of Provisional IRA leader Brian Keenan in Belfast there are a couple of interesting points to note. First up the Independent’s David McKittrick on Keenan’s “paradoxical duality in that he first helped build up the organisation and then, decades later, helped shut it down.”

It was the combination of Keenan’s Libyan and English exploits that led Jonathan Powell, formerly Tony Blair’s chief-of-staff, to describe him in his recent autobiography as “at one stage the biggest single threat to the British state”. Keenan’s importance was further reflected in one writer’s assessment that he was “regarded by his friends and enemies alike as possessing the best organisational brain in the IRA”.

This is how IRA / Sinn Féin’s newspaper An Phoblacht spins the life of this IRA Mr. Big;

“Brian Keenan tells us, in his own words, about how the IRA sustained a heroic guerrilla campaign against one of the most powerful nations in the world for decades until a viable alternative for political progress was presented. And this leading exponent of the most successful IRA campaign since the 1920s has a message for those who cling to armed struggle as a principle rather than a tactic.”

Aficionados of the genre will note the passive weasel words; “... until a viable alternative for political progress was presented.” Let’s kill people until we have viability!

The Patriot Game

By 1977 Keenan was the IRA’s director of operations, responsible for the conduct of its operations in Britain and Europe, having masterminded the detonation of a 200lb landmine under the car of Sir Christopher Ewart-Biggs, the British Ambassador to Ireland, six months earlier. The ambassador and a civil servant, Judith Cook, were killed instantly.

English cities came under severe assault from the IRA in the 1970s when Keenan was in charge. A warrant issued for his arrest in 1975 emerged from a visit he made to an IRA unit in London, where police were later able to find his fingerprints and handwriting. Four years later Keenan was arrested outside Banbridge, Co Down, and flown to England to face trial relating to the Balcombe Street Gang’s campaign of terror in England in the mid-1970s. At the time he was joint Chief of Staff of the Provos with Martin McGuinness.

He stood trial at the Old Bailey in 1980, defended by barrister Michael Mansfield, accused of organising the IRA’s bombing campaign and being implicated in the deaths of eight people including Ross McWhirter. He was found guilty and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Two days after his arrest Sir Richard Sykes, the British Ambassador to the Netherlands, was shot dead by an IRA unit. The IRA did not claim responsibility until after Keenan’s conviction. Sykes had been in charge of an internal inquiry into the murder of Ewart-Biggs, suggesting ways to tighten security.

Euston Station 1991

Keenan served a dozen years, emerging in 1993. Those killed by his unit included ordinary civilians who died in up to 50 bombing and shooting attacks on London railway stations, hotels, restaurants, pubs and other places designated by the IRA as “establishment targets”.

One of Keenan’s last public appearances was a year ago when he sat in the public gallery of the Stormont Parliament, accompanied by other members of the IRA’s Army Council and just a few feet away from Tony Blair, to watch Gerry Adams, his mentor, going through the formalities of power-sharing with Ian Paisley, the Nemesis of the Provos. By then the Provisional IRA had declared its war over, had decommissioned and its political wing was administering British rule in a part of Ireland. To talk of a life’s work left in ruins is an understatement.

On the occasion of this IRA hardman’s death it is perhaps appropriate for the sake of balance to consider those who cannot express a view as they themselves were killed by his activities or had their lives destroyed. And for what? Brian Keenan and Gerry and the Peacemakers half baked brand of crypto fascism which says we can bomb the unwilling and uninterested into a United Ireland where by magic everything will get better because we have killed and maimed all these people in the name of human happiness.

Canary Wharf 1996

And consider the “establishment” targets destroyed by these comic book patriots. The bomb in a litter bin on the 18th February 1991 at Victoria Station which killed a 33 year old civil servant with shrapnel through the heart, on 12th October 1992 the bomb in the Sussex Arms pub in Covent Garden which killed a 31 year old male nurse out for a drink with his friends, or on the 10th February 1996 the truck bomb at Canary Wharf which killed 2 Indian newsagents and injured 40 others. Establishment targets indeed! And consider those who suffered from the euphemistically titled “fundraising” which enabled Brian and Gerry and the Peacemakers pay for their comic strip patriotism. There was Thomas Niedermayer, the German managing director of Grundig’s Belfast factory where Brian Keenan once worked who was kidnapped for ransom and whose body has never been found. Of course Brian Keenan was not there that wet dark night at Greystones pier in Co. Wicklow some years later when his widow, still consumed with grief, walked off the end of the pier. He was however, in West Belfast when Grundig closed down with a loss of 900 jobs, but he wasn’t at Balinamore Wood in Co. Longford when the Army and Gardai rescued the kidnapped managing director of an Irish Supermarket chain but not before the fleeing IRA gang killed two 19 year olds, a rookie cop and soldier, as they broke out of the cordon. Nor did he know the girlfriend of one of them who worked for me who had a breakdown as her life and future were so cruelly destroyed.


Jean McConville and three of her children

Or there was Jean McConville, a 37 year old Catholic mother of 10, who was abducted from her home, St. Judes Walk, Divis, Belfast, around Xmas 1972 when Gerry Adams was commander of the “West Belfast Brigade”. She was accused of giving water to an injured British soldier. Her remains were eventually recovered, on general instructions from the IRA, buried at Shelling Hill beach, near Carlingford, Co. Louth, on 27 August 2003. Or there was the brother of a friend who had acted as a lookout at an IRA “fundraiser”, a bank robbery in Tramore, Co. Waterford in the Republic where a 34 year old father of 2 was shot dead for getting in the way of the fund raising patriots. Many years later when the ring leader got out of jail my friends brother was “lifted”, tortured and shot as an informer and his body dumped on a border road where it could not be recovered for 3 days (due to the possibility of bobby traps). The fact that he was in a bitter separation from his wife who was also in the so called Republican movement and had made totally unfounded (and disproved) abuse accusations surely didn’t influence the patriots who acted as judge, jury and executioners. I remember well my friends’ expression when he returned from identifying his brother’s body in Craigavon mortuary. And then there was my friend Peter Nesbitt. Peter was the most caring of people and this instinct led him to want to give something back to the community. This he did in two ways, one by being a leader in a Scout Group in Ballysillan on the edge of the Ardoyne which was run, despite the polarisation of the area, by mixed Protestant and Catholic friends and secondly by being a reserve Constable in the RUC, the police force. Peter used to really enjoy visiting us in Dublin as he could leave the Walther PPK revolver he had to carry everywhere in the North behind. He used to joke how tall Dublin policemen were saying it was too dangerous to be a tall policeman in the North. Peter died by being nearly blown in two by a litter bin bomb answering a false robbery call in the Ardoyne near where he lived with and looked after his elderly parents. He didn’t quiet get the respectful funeral afforded to Brian Keenan as on the day of his burial the IRA planted a bomb in the gate lodge of Roselawn cemetery in Belfast and his funeral cortege had to be kept in a British Army base for six hours before he could be buried. Some “legitimate” targets.


So as Brian Keenan is buried with the rites of Mother Church and is eulogised by Gerry Adams let us remember those who could not make it to his respectful obsequies: They are remembered on the Cain Index of violent deaths caused by the IRA and others who feel it is right to kill for “Freedom”.

http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/sutton/index.html