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IRA groups behind surge of attacks in Northern Ireland

IRA splinter groups are behind a surge of attacks in Northern Ireland and are increasingly trying to kill police, a report has found.

Amid a political stalemate in the British province, the Independent Monitoring Commission report says Irish Republican Army dissidents are behind "a more concentrated period of attacks than at any time since we started to report on them 4 1/2 years ago".

"We believe that dissidents have also been undertaking planning and preparation for other attacks," the report says, noting that Republican dissidents of the Continuity IRA (CIRA) and the Real IRA (RIRA) "have been especially active".

The IMC says the Real IRA badly wounded one police officer by detonating a bomb under his private car in May; fire-bombed four businesses; tried to recruit disillusioned members of the mainstream IRA; and "continued to seek to obtain weapons from associates, criminals and from overseas as well as by manufacturing them itself".

The Continuity IRA tried twice in recent months to blow up police patrols near the border. The group planted a remote-controlled bomb under a small bridge in June, and in August fired rocket-propelled grenades that contained Semtex plastic explosive.

In both cases, the homemade devices failed to detonate fully.

A devolved power-sharing government between pro-London Protestants and Republicans who want union with Ireland resumed in Belfast last year, nearly a decade after the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement ended most violence.

But the loyalist Democratic Unionists and Republican Sinn Fein have failed to agree on the crunch issue of policing, leading British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to warn in September that they were putting a decade of progress at risk. Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Shaun Woodward, underlined the need to reach agreement on devolving police and justice powers from London to Belfast.

"It is clear that both RIRA and CIRA have been more active ... in recent months and they remain determined to kill police officers," he said, while also warning that loyalists had been "disappointingly slow" in decommissioning arms.

Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern slammed the dissidents. "These groups have no mandate - they represent only themselves," he said. "Their criminal activities should leave no doubt about their priorities.

"Members of these groups need to leave behind their failed ideology, move on and join the rest of the people of this island in rejecting violence and in building a better, more inclusive society to the benefit of all."IRA splinter groups are behind a surge of attacks in Northern Ireland and are increasingly trying to kill police, a report has... more

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IRA funds worth up to €200m put at risk in United States

The IRA may have lost a substantial amount of its fortune in the banking collapse in the United States, according to republican sources.

Sources say that in recent years the IRA's financial bosses moved large amounts of money through front companies into a number of Wall Street financial institutions that were offering high dividends, but which have been devastated by the sub-prime market collapse.

One source put the amount invested in the US institutions at €200m. They said most of this was made through the sale of commercial properties mainly here in the Republic.

Advisors brought in by the IRA in the aftermath of the 1997 ceasefire directed that IRA money be invested in the then booming property market.

According to the sources, the same people advised to get out at the top of the property market and sink the money into high-dividend deposit accounts in Wall Street in the past few years.

The extent of the losses incurred in the crash over the past few weeks is not known. However, sources in Northern Ireland said that one senior IRA finance figure made four apparently frantic visits to New York as the markets began showing signs of impending disaster and then collapsed. According to the sources, well-known republican figures in Belfast were in a "state of panic".

Mr Adams and senior Sinn Fein figures enjoy an extraordinarily lavish lifestyle in the US, staying in suites in top hotels and dining in top restaurants. During his visit to New York for this year's St Patrick's Day celebrations, Mr Adams had lunch with top Wall Street financiers at Bobby Van's restaurant on 54th Street, a favourite haunt of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack in the Fifties and Sixties.

According to republican sources, however, large amounts were deposited with the very same high-yield financial institutions in Wall Street which were making extraordinary profits on the back of the sub-prime market in the US. The sources say that recent indications are that the IRA has lost heavily.

Another irony for republicans is that Sinn Fein's four TDs in the Republic voted to support the Irish government's bailout of the banking system 11 days ago, despite the party's stated claims of being "socialist".

There are also indications that despite the amount of money at its disposal for elections north and south in recent years, the party's coffers appear to be drying up. Up to last year Sinn Fein had more constituency offices and full-time staff than most of the political parties north and south put together.

However, since mid-2007 it has been hit by a series of resignations, mainly of full-time workers and councillors. According to one source one of the current sources of disillusionment among the remaining 50 or so councillors in the Republic has been the withdrawal of "political operating expenses" to top up their council salaries and expenses which rarely exceed €30,000 a year. The IRA may have lost a substantial amount of its fortune in the banking collapse in the United States, according to republican... more