Northern Ireland:
Collusion with death squads exposed — again

The collusion between the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary 
(RUC) on one side and the loyalist paramilitaries (death squads) of 
Northern Ireland on the other has been exposed yet again with the discovery 
of 300 British Army security files in a loyalist paramilitary cache.

The files, containing photographs, names and personal details of 
nationalist and republican families in the South Armagh and greater Belfast 
area, were found after a raid on an Orange Hall in Stonyford, County 
Antrim.

Sinn Fein has called on British Security Minister Adam Ingram to give an 
immediate explanation to the public as to how the files came to be in the 
possession of the loyalist death squads.

Sinn Fein Northern Ireland Assembly member Conor Murphy said: "The 
Stonyford Orange Hall raid underscores again the level of collusion which 
exists between loyalist death squads and the British Army/RUC."

Mr Murphy recounted an incident at the beginning of November in which the 
RUC sent a summons to a man at an incorrect address. Shortly afterwards the 
man received a loyalist death threat at the same incorrect address used by 
the RUC.

Sinn Fein North Belfast Assembly representative Gerry Kelly has revealed 
that at least one man has been visited by the RUC and told that his details 
were found in the Orange Hall and are therefore presumably known to 
loyalist death squads.

Mr Kelly said: "The man was met by a wall of silence when he tried to find 
out from the RUC exactly what information the loyalists have. These files 
are apparently relatively new and provide hard evidence that collusion has 
remained a constant factor in the actions of the loyalist death squads."

He called on Adam Ingram, the British Minister with responsibility for the 
RUC, to instruct his force "not to withhold vital information from the 
victims of this conspiracy, information that might save their lives. The 
RUC should be ordered to provide collusion victims with all of the 
information on them, which the RUC know to be in the possession of 
loyalists."

Sinn Fein has demanded that the RUC be disbanded in its present form, a 
move the British Government and the loyalists are strenuously resisting.