Arrests In Murder Of Northern Ireland Cop

IRA Dissidents Claim Ambush On Police Officer Less Than 2 Days After Killing Of 2 British Soldiers

(CBS/AP)  The Protestant and Catholic leaders of Northern Ireland mounted an exceptional display of unity against rising violence from Irish Republican Army dissidents - and vowed Tuesday to defeat hard-liners with the power of popular will.

Former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who long hoped that slaying police officers would help him achieve his dream of a united Ireland, stood shoulder to shoulder with his Protestant partner atop the government, Peter Robinson, and Northern Ireland police commander Hugh Orde.

Police raided several homes in a nearby state housing project Tuesday and arrested a 17-year-old-boy and 37-year-old man on suspicion of involvement in 48-year-old Constable Stephen Carroll's slaying.

At the unprecedented joint appearance, McGuinness, whose Sinn Fein party has faced years of outside pressure to embrace British law and order, pledged his personal support to the English police chief. He demanded that his own police-loathing supporters abandon their traditional code of silence and expose the IRA dissidents in their Irish Catholic communities.

"I have to keep my nerve, and to appeal to my community to assist the police services north and south to defeat these people," McGuinness said of the dissidents who killed two British soldiers and a Carroll over the past three days - the first such killings in more than a decade.

"There is a duty on me, a responsibility on me to lead from the front, and I expect that people will follow," McGuinness said. He called the IRA splinter groups "traitors to the island of Ireland. They have betrayed the political desires, hopes and aspirations of all of the people who live on this island, and they don't deserve to be supported by anyone."

Analysts said the dissidents' dramatic escalation of bloodshed since Saturday was designed to divide and undermine McGuinness and Robinson as they embarked on their most significant foreign mission: a planned 10-day tour of the United States culminating at the White House on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, to meet U.S. President Barack Obama.

Twice, deadly shootings have obliged the power-sharing chiefs to postpone their departure. They will try again Wednesday, and still expect to meet Obama next week on Ireland's national holiday, the day when Northern Ireland leaders traditionally curry U.S. economic and political support.

(A Police Service of Northern Ireland officer aims his rifle as he takes up position near Lismore Manor, Craigavon, Northern Ireland, March 10, 2009.)

After their first-ever joint appearance with the police chief, McGuinness and Robinson - who have kept their distance during eight frosty months sharing power - traveled in the same car together to visit Carroll's widow. The 23-year police veteran was shot in the back of his head Monday night when a gunman from the Continuity IRA dissident group fired on his parked police car.

Carroll had been part of a police backup unit for front-line officers investigating the home of a woman who reported that youths were smashing her windows in a Catholic part of Craigavon. Carroll's widow, Kate, said he had hugged her and told her before leaving home that morning: "Don't worry - they won't get me."

"A good husband has been taken away from me, and my life has been destroyed," she said.

But political analysts widely suggested Tuesday that the dissidents, though likely trying to exacerbate tensions between Robinson's Democratic Unionists and McGuinness' Sinn Fein, were having the opposite effect.

The Northern Ireland Assembly, the 108-member legislature that provides the bedrock for the Robinson-McGuinness administration, observed a minute's silence Tuesday in honor of Carroll's sacrifice. The day before, they did the same in memory of Cengiz Azimkar, 21, and Mark Quinsey, 23 - the unarmed, off-duty soldiers gunned down by another splinter gang, the Real IRA, outside their army base Saturday.

Both the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA are committed to unraveling the 2005 decision by the mainstream "Provisional" IRA to renounce violence and disarm, officially ending its 1970-97 campaign to force Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom after killing 1,775 people and maiming thousands more.

(Paul Faith, Press Association/AP)

Graffiti on a wall in Craigavon, near the scene of the murder of a policeman. An IRA dissident group, the Continuity IRA, claimed responsibility for the killing.)

Politicians and police agree it has been only a matter of luck that, until Saturday, more than 20 dissident attacks against police and army bases since November 2007 have wounded just seven policemen and killed nobody.

Both groups remain small, with estimated membership ranging from 200 to 500, and their pool of recruits is restricted versus previous generations. Whereas the Provisional IRA enjoyed strong support in a largely poor and excluded Catholic minority, today's Catholics are largely middle class, comfortable and pleased to have a share of power.

Nonetheless, experts on the IRA and its dissident offshoots caution that the Real and Continuity factions are unlikely to stop in response to public pressure - because they are pursuing the same stubborn example long set by McGuinness' generation.

"The kinds of things they (dissidents) are doing now is what the Provisional IRA, which was led by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, was doing 15 years ago," said Kevin Toolis, author of a study of the IRA and commentator on the Sinn Fein-IRA movement.

The dissidents' determination to keep killing police and soldiers is "not alien and foreign to Irish republican thinking," he said.

A fringe political party linked to the Continuity IRA, Republican Sinn Fein, forecast Tuesday that troops and police would always remain subject to attack in Northern Ireland until the territory was merged with the Republic of Ireland.

"It's always been on the cards while England remains here, and while they have their occupying forces here," said Geraldine Taylor, a former IRA prisoner who represents the party in Catholic west Belfast. "It's inevitable that you'll have young people take up arms against the occupation of this country, whether it be the armed force of the police or the British Army."

[Ferguslea]

I heard about these murders only today, I swear I feel sick to the pit of my stomach. My best friend (a British soldier) was shot in Ireland.

We all thought that at last the hatred was fading and the will of the majority for peace, was winning.

I can stop crying, I just can?t believe this could happen again. For the love of god please, if you know anything about anyone involved in these splinter groups, shop them, NI crime stoppers 0800 555 111. Don?t let them drag you back, not again!

[cgwinnett]

*******

[cgwinnett]

test; *******

[mick7744]

In the past, gunmen like these were protected by the community through loyalty or fear.

That will not be the case any longer. The various factions that make up Northern Ireland are not going to allow a small group of thugs with no agenda other than a return to the bad old days to drag them back into he11.

[casionova]

Isn't that terrible how the he11 do you think we got this country, by having picnics with the Indians.
/\
"We"?
I'm not american, I'm irish, incidentally I'm from the same place as J. Flood. So, what point are you trying to make here? Sarcasm really doesnt come across online if thats what your going for.

[onelib]

Not much different than radical Muslims---religion and territory, the fodder of all wars.

These people have zip for intelligence and nothing to contribute to the betterment of society. The radicals of any religion need to be eradicated, sadly too many innocent people have to die for the cause of anothers hatred.

[Chris_Butler]

For those who might care successive so called Irish Governments have been committing crimes against humanity by stealing from social welfare recipients to hide their economic mistakes for over a decade.

Those employed in law (Judges, Police, Lawyers) know the crimes have been committed and made no attempt to stop it because they were paid to look the other way. If those employed in law took the pay rises and did not protect society then we have a complete lack of law in Ireland.

Terrorists know their is no proper judicial systems in Ireland and know they can get away with their crimes that the majority of convictions for terrorist offences were made by British Authorities. If British Authorities can do the work then so could so called Irish Authorities.

Until Ireland cleans out the **** employed in law in Ireland these troubles will continue.

[happyass3]

I am not from Ireland nor have I ever visited. I guess because I am so removed from the situation I don't know how things in Northern Ireland would be different if it was independant of Great Britain. I just wish that people all over the world would just learn to get along and respect each other's views on a subject.

[casionova]

These terrible murders and all the troubles of the last century are the result of ignoring the democratic will of the people of Ireland.

78% voted for independence in 1918 but this was ignored, and northern Ireland was created with an artificial majority. Thats why its only 6 counties of Ulster, not 9. If it was 9 it would have had a Irish majority and quickly been freed.

Instead the fuse was lit on a century of political and religous violence all because the anti democratic forces of intolerance could not accept the will of the Irish people. Until real justice and unity is achieved there will always be Britains legacy of religous violence.

[Chris_Butler]

Another sense less waste of life for ideals that are long gone.

[j_flood]

Let the world know that these thugs and murders are not doing this in the name of the people of Ireland. Our family lives in County Wicklow and totally condemn these murders and hope that the killers of the soldiers and policeman are soon caught and face the full extent of the law. Make no mistake - these men are murders, criminals they are not true republicans - if you are a republican you are committed to a future of political reform and change.
Our family wishes to express our condolences to the families of the policeman and soldiers and wish the other victims a full and speedy recovery from their wounds.
J. Flood
Bray, Co. Wicklow
Republic of Ireland

[moodonia]

This is terrrible. I want to see a free and united Ireland but murdering is not the way to do it.

The English conquered Ireland with bloody murder, torture and genocide, but leave those tactics to the English.

A free Ireland should be free of bloodshed and tolerant of all.

[SocialistBritain]

Now give the British view.

[juwboy]

If you visit the city of Antrim in Northern Ireland, where the soldiers were shot, and take their guided walking tour, you`ll be shown the firing positions taken up by opposing U.S. white and black soldiers who were billeted there during World War II.

The "Battle of Antrim", with live ammunition, was a consequence of an inter-racial brawl that had taken place earlier at a bar in the town.