INLA Claim Responsibility For Policeman's Murder In Belfast

PC Bradshaw

24 year old Constable Darren Bradshaw was drinking in the Parliament Bar, Dunbar Link, Belfast, on Friday night when he was attacked by two gunmen whose getaway car was later found burning in a street off the Falls Road.

The Police say he was killed in a "well thought out and planned operation", but the IRA denied any involvement. Today the Republican splinter-group the INLA claimed it had killed the policeman.

The killing was condemned by Junior Northern Ireland Minister Tony Worthington who said: "Nothing illustrates better the futility and sheer wickedness of terrorism than the gunning down in a crowded bar of a young man enjoying a night out."

Mr Worthington added: "For its part, this Government reaffirms that it will never give way to, or be deflected from its course by, politically-motivated violence from wherever it comes."

Rev Ian Paisley - "The war is on"

He was the first RUC man murdered since the IRA ceasefire announcement of August 1994 and the Rev Ian Paisley said he had no doubt who was responsible.

The Democratic Unionist Party leader claimed: "The IRA have all sorts of people they can use if they don't want to claim a particular killing for themselves. The tactics used and the place where the car was destroyed show that it came from West Belfast."

"There is no cessation of violence as far as republicanism is concerned. They are out to kill and maim members of the security forces; the war is on."

The dead officer originally came from Belfast. The Parliament Bar is one of the city's best known gay pubs. About 100 people were drinking at the time and some were slightly injured by flying glass.

The bar remained closed today. Staff said the were shocked by the shooting. One said: "It's very, very sad that an incident like this should happen on our premises."

Ulster Unionist deputy leader John Taylor said he believed the killing was linked to the murder of a Catholic who died after being kicked by loyalists in Portadown, Co Armagh, where police were accused by some nationalists of failing to stop the attack a fortnight ago.

Robert Hamill, a Catholic, died in hospital yesterday as a result of a fractured skull he suffered in a roadside beating twelve days ago - he never regained consciousness. Police are trying to establish whether there is a connection between the two deaths.

Mr Hamill was walking along the street close to his home in Portadown, Co Armagh, when he saw a loyalist group in the road ahead. He decided not to cross the road, avoiding the group, because there was an RUC unit nearby.

The father-of-two was kicked to death by the mob, and his family allege that the RUC unit not only failed to intervene, but also did not go to help the injured man after the mob had left. They say Mr Hamill did not receive any aid until an ambulance arrived twenty minutes later.

An inquiry has been launched to investigate the family's claims.

For its part the RUC said its unit reacted immediately, but was forced to call for reinforcements when the crowd turned on it. A spokesman said "The police officers were unable to contain the situation and became themselves the subject of attack. Police reinforcements arrived and calm was later restored."

The officer shot on Friday night was the first to have been killed since the end of the IRA ceasefire in February 1996. However hostility toward the constabulary has been on the increase this year.

In April, Constable Alice Collins, a 40-year-old mother-of-three was gravely injured after being shot in the back by an IRA sniper in Londonderry in April. She returned home last week after being discharged from hospital.

On March 27, terrorists who used a coffee jar bomb packed with Semtex explosives to attack an RUC station in Coalisland, Co Tyrone, were foiled by undercover soldiers.

Earlier in March a joint RUC-Army patrol narrowly escaped injury in a bomb attack in west Belfast.

In January police escaped unharmed when IRA terrorists fired a mortar at two armour-plated RUC Land Rovers, again in West Belfast. A similar device had been fired at an RUC patrol in Londonderry days earlier. A bomb attack on a police station in Co Fermanagh earlier that month led security chiefs to voice fears that the IRA was deliberately targeting the RUC in its new terror campaign.

The INLA; a briefing

The Irish National Liberation Army emerged from a republican ceasefire more than 2O years ago. It became one of the most vicious, unpredictable and sectarian of all the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, considered more hardline even than the IRA.

But it has been riven throughout its history by internal splits and feuds with rival Republican terror gangs, which on more than one occasion have brought it to the brink of destruction.

The INLA's most terrible act was the 1979 car-bomb assassination of Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave in the House of Commons car park, which showed the group capable of penetrating the securely-guarded heart of the British state.

And it has also shown itself capable of acts of the most callous brutality, such as the no-warning bombing of the Droppin' Well pub and disco at Ballykelly, Co Londonderry, in 1982, which killed 17 people, including 11 off-duty soldiers.

Sinn Fein Westminster Office

A convicted IRA terrorist has been put in charge of setting up the planned Sinn Fein office in the House of Commons, according to a newspaper report. Siobhan O'Hanlon, 36, served four years of a seven-year sentence for explosives offences after being caught in a Belfast bomb-factory in 1983.

The Sunday Times reports that she has started discussions with Commons officials on setting up the Sinn Fein office which party leader Gerry Adams this week announced he was planning.

The office would give Sinn Fein's two newly-elected MPs access to Commons facilities including free phone calls, stamps, photocopying and stationery, as well as use of the firing range.

The move is a significant relaxation of Sinn Fein's traditional policy of abstention from involvement with Westminster, although the MPs - Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness - will stop short of taking their seats.