Many still remember Robert Russell being rushed North without the proper paperwork, howling 'Victory to the IRA.' It was almost four decades ago that the Ballymurphy man was handed over to the RUC at a border crossing following his unsuccessful attempt to thwart extradition. Two years later it was the turn of Dessie Ellis, currently a Sinn Fein TD. He underwent a prolonged hunger strike in a bid to prevent the Dublin government surrendering him to the British, halting it only when the transfer was complete, rendering any continued food abstinence futile.
Last week Martin McAuley was arrested by An Garda on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the PSNI. He appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody. McAuley had come to prominence on two separate occasions, firstly, when he was shot and injured by a RUC kill team. His companion in the Armagh hayshed, Martin Tighe, died as a result of the ambush. Secondly, when he was arrested in Bogotá International Airport, securing him his place in the annals of history as one of the Colombian three.
Last week Martin McAuley was arrested by An Garda on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the PSNI. He appeared before a judge and was remanded in custody. McAuley had come to prominence on two separate occasions, firstly, when he was shot and injured by a RUC kill team. His companion in the Armagh hayshed, Martin Tighe, died as a result of the ambush. Secondly, when he was arrested in Bogotá International Airport, securing him his place in the annals of history as one of the Colombian three.
The British authorities want to prosecute McAuley in a juryless court and imprison him in relation to the deaths of three members of the RUC killed in an IRA bomb attack in Co Armagh in October 1982. That was the same year when the RUC in North Armagh set out on a summary execution spree, claiming the lives of six people, five of them unarmed republicans. No RUC facing extradition or prosecution for North Armagh killings that year. Since the Legacy legislation kicked in at the start of May only republicans have faced prosecution. A number of extradition cases are currently underway. This is despite Kenova producing enough evidence - even with MI5 withholding lots of it - to prosecute agent handlers and those within the IRA who collaborated with them. What Mephistophelian bargain might have been struck there in return for a Sinn Fein vow of silence we might wonder.
On both the Russell and Ellis extraditions, Sinn Fein, rightly, had quite a lot to say. Now, wrongly, the party has very little to say. It has made as much noise about the extradition proceedings against Martin McAuley as Fianna Fail made when Ellis and Russell were facing a similar fate. Even when the volume is pumped up, there remains only the sound of silence.
Here's the thing: Sinn Fein actually supports the process which sees the British police prosecuting republicans like Martin McAuley and John Downey in no-jury British courts where if found guilty they will be cast into the British penal system. The career cartel that is the party leadership is terrified of standing over the volunteers some of its prominent figures effectively procured and counselled the operations for which they now face extradition and prosecution. Having promised all things to all sorts, the party has been left deciding who to shaft - the victims of British state violence or the IRA volunteers who took up arms against the violent British state. The party won the battle with its conscience, calculating that it needed former volunteers less than it did the victims if it is to get its feet even further under Farmer Jones' table.
When the erstwhile IRA volunteer Pearse McAuley died earlier this year, the Sinn Fein TD Eoin O'Broin claimed there that party had no time for him. It now seems it has no time for Martin McAuley either.
 |
| ⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre. |
Whisper by whisper calls the Commons.
ReplyDelete(Note to Editor: Please disregard earlier version of this now revised comment, if it had been received. It disappeared off my screen, and don't know if it had been prematurely sent in.
DeleteThank you)
After Robert Russell was helicoptered to the border, he was shoved across. It was as if a sack of potatoes were kicked off the back of a truck.
If I had imagined what an extradition looked like, I might have thought of a scene at a public airport, in a well-lit passenger lounge. There might be men in suits, seemingly involved in some business transaction.
Not here though--this secretive operation, cloaked in night's darkness, resembled not a business affair, but more a deal between two sinister forces. Someone had been betrayed, and was now being delivered into the hands of the enemy.
The ugliness of this lingers in my head still. An anger is directed more at the Free State government that arranged it. Hard to believe that it's thirty six years and a day or two since the shameful event occurred.
There was a war going on then. Robert had passionate supporters on both sides of the border, and further afield too. Sometime afterwards, two of his sisters traveled abroad to meet with his supporters in NYC.
When Dessie Ellis went on hunger strike, the gang of the usual suspects in NYC decamped from their semi-permanent protest position at 845 Third Avenue, the then address of the British Consulate.
They set up shop in front of the Irish Consulate, some distance north (?) and some distance west. The venue was so unique, and the protests of much shorter duration, that that address is no longer remembered with any certainty. But there was enthusiastic support for Dessie there too, though the chants needed to be changed up.
The war is long over, some thirty years years now. Who is still here, who is out now, and who will come out sooner, rather than later, to support this staunch patriot Martin McAuley?
And what is one to make of the agreement that was much celebrated in 1994? Why were people like Martin abandoned? Would it be fair to call this an oversight of unbelievable magnitude ?
Where is Sinn Fein now? Should that question even be asked of an organization that advocated for introducing Diplock Court-like proceedings on the South of Ireland?
May help be obtained for Martin in his time of need.