Journalist Killed By 'New IRA' During Riots In Northern Ireland

Zero Hedge

Twenty-one years after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, a resurgent 'New IRA', which has taken responsibility for a car bombing and a series of parcel bombs discovered at landmarks in London and Glasgow, was blamed on Thursday for the killing of a journalist during riots in the city of Londonderry, Northern Ireland's second-largest city. 

Reporter Lyra McKee, 29, was shot and killed during rioting that broke out in the Creggan neighborhood of the city Thursday night. Unrest erupted after police tried to raid the homes of several suspected militants in search of weapons and ammunition, fearing violence over the Easter weekend. Mark Hamilton, PSNI assistant chief constable, said 50 petrol bombs were thrown and two cars hijacked during the rioting, while McKee's death was the only fatality. She was killed after being caught in the crossfire between dissidents and police sent to quell the riots.

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Political Timing of Manchester Terror Attack is Suspicious

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

Given that Islamic terrorism has been the most influential political and social meme of the last 17 years, the motive for a 'Muslim terror attack' at a UK concert venue 2 weeks before a UK general election may be more complicated than it at first seems.

Even more suspicious is the fact that there appears to have been a deliberate set up for this event that makes it clear that the goal was to directly attack the reputation of the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Immediately after becoming the Labour party leader in 2015, the British media decided that Corbyn's history of acting as a would-be peace broker in the Northern Ireland conflict between Irish Catholics and the British state made him an easy target. In January this year, British Foreign Sec. Boris Johnson defended talking to Donald Trump by saying it was better than talking to Jeremy Corbyn who "advocated talking to the IRA".

In recent months however with election day looming, media focus on Corbyn's 'support for terrorists' took a back seat to more important domestic policies like the dire state of the UK health care system and the Conservative party plans to make it (and everything else) much worse for the British taxpayer.

Last Friday however, the British Daily Telegraph ran a story reporting that MI5 had 'opened a file' on Corbyn in the early 1990's due to his support for a united Ireland and fears that he was a 'threat to national security'. In that report, the Telegraph reminded readers that when he was interviewed by the BBC in August 2015 during his Labour party leadership campaign, he refused five times to condemn IRA violence, preferring instead to condemn all violence by all parties.

Strangely enough, two days later (last Sunday) in an interview with Sophy Ridge on Sky News, Ridge asked Corbyn five times to condemn IRA violence. In response, Corbyn reiterated what he had told the BBC two years ago, that he condemned all killing, whether by the IRA or the British state or its proxy 'loyalist' forces (an early version of 'ISIS' with a white Western twist), and refused to be coerced into singling out one party or minimizing one set of atrocities to score political points.

While this was a reasonable position to take, in the 48 hours since then, the British media has gone into overdrive to paint him as a terrorist sympathizer, with headlines like "Growing row over Jeremy Corbyn's links to the IRA as he refuses five times to condemn the militant group" and "Jeremy Corbyn refuses to condemn IRA", (despite the fact that in the Sky News interview he said "I condemn all the bombing by both the loyalists and the IRA").  

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London to get manned checkpoints for first time in 24 years amid MI5 security crack down

Express UK 

 

The proposals are intended to protect London’s finance district and its skyscrapers from a terrorist attack. 

 

MI5 and counter-terrorism police have proposed to install the manned checkpoints, rising street bollards and crash-proof barricades. 

 

The last time manned checkpoints were used was in 1992 following the IRA’s bombing of Baltic Exchange.

 
When the IRA bombed the Baltic Exchange in April 1992, three people died and 91 people were injured.

Governments are tightening up security in the wake of the Berlin attacks.

 

In 1993, the IRA also bombed Bishopsgate detonating an explosive in London’s financial district, killing one and injuring 44.

A Corporation of London report said they "had identified that the area was highly sensitive to... a hostile vehicle-borne security threat".

 
Security across Europe is striving to beat terror in the wake of the Berlin Christmas market terror attack on Monday when Anis Amri ploughed into shoppers, killing 12 and injuring 49 people.

 

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Undercover soldiers 'killed unarmed civilians in Belfast'

Comment: Long suspected now admitted.

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BBC News

Soldiers from an undercover unit used by the British army in Northern Ireland killed unarmed civilians, former members have told BBC One's Panorama.

Speaking publicly for the first time, the ex-members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), which was disbanded in 1973, said they had been tasked with "hunting down" IRA members in Belfast.
The former soldiers said they believed the unit had saved many lives.

The Ministry of Defence said it had referred the disclosures to police.

'Surveillance from gutters'
 
The details have emerged a day after Northern Ireland's attorney general, John Larkin, suggested ending any prosecutions over Troubles-related killings that took place before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

The proposal has been criticised by groups representing relatives of victims.

The soldiers appeared on Panorama on condition their identities were disguised

Panorama has been told the MRF consisted of about 40 men handpicked from across the British army.

Before it was disbanded 40 years ago, after 18 months, plain-clothes soldiers carried out round-the-clock patrols of west Belfast - the heartland of the IRA - in unmarked cars.

Three former members of the unit, who agreed to be interviewed on condition their identities were disguised, said they had posed as Belfast City Council road sweepers, dustmen and even "meths drinkers", carrying out surveillance from street gutters.

But surveillance was just one part of their work.

One of the soldiers said they had also fired on suspected IRA members. 

He described their mission as "to draw out the IRA and to minimise their activities... if they needed shooting, they'd be shot".

[...] Panorama has identified 10 unarmed civilians shot, according to witnesses, by the MRF:

• Brothers John and Gerry Conway, on the way to their fruit stall in Belfast city centre on 15 April 1972
• Aiden McAloon and Eugene Devlin, in a taxi taking them home from a disco on 12 May 1972
• Joe Smith, Hugh Kenny, Patrick Murray and Tommy Shaw, on Glen Road on 22 June 1972
•  Daniel Rooney and Brendan Brennan, on the Falls Road on 27 September 1972