International fight against `Real IRA' is stepped up

The arrest of three Co Louth men in Slovakia last week and the discovery yesterday by Special Branch detectives of a weapons bunker in Co Kildare are the latest developments in an increasingly international police and security agency campaign to stem the rise of the "Real IRA".

The anti-Belfast Agreement republican group has been recruiting and organising in the Republic and Northern Ireland with the intention of reinstating the terrorist campaign forsaken by the Provisional IRA in favour of a place in the political process.

The "Real IRA" has received several knocks since it carried out the Omagh bombing atrocity on August 15th, 1998, and there are now some 33 prisoners in Portlaoise Prison on the "dissident" republican wing. There are another dozen in prison in the North.

There have been repeated successes by the Garda and RUC against the group, but it shows a determination to intensify its campaign and to replace the Provisional IRA as the principal republican terrorist group.

Last year the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, and the RUC Chief Constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, both made it clear there was an urgent need to take stern action against the "Real IRA" before it fulfilled its wish of becoming the Provisional IRA Mark II.

While the group exists and continues to acquire arms and carry out attacks in the North, it creates difficulties for the elements within the Provisional IRA leadership who would like to see further moves on the decommissioning of weapons and consolidation of the political/peace process.

In an attempt to break the organisation police forces on this island have been working together and with other police forces and security agencies, such as Britain's MI5 and the American FBI. It is not known if there was Garda involvement in last week's arrests in Pistini, Slovakia, of three men from the Cooley peninsula in Co Louth. The men were arrested by Slovakian authorities on foot of British warrants and are expected to be extradited to Britain.

It is understood that a Co Louth man who was formerly a close associate of the man who created and led the "Real IRA" until earlier this year was tracked from Ireland to Slovakia. It is suspected he and others were involved in an enterprise to buy weapons on the eastern European black market, where a huge variety of ex-Soviet bloc weapons is available.

The arms-buying trip shows that the organisation has been successfully raising funds through illegal activities in this State, principally smuggling and extortion. The group is also involved in drug-trafficking. Last month, when gardai uncovered a bomb factory near the Border at Colman's Island, Co Monaghan, they also discovered 11 bars of cannabis and 2,750 ecstasy tablets with an estimated street value of £26,000.

Previously, republicans had tended to avoid direct involvement in the drugs trade. The Provisional IRA, which has shot dead eight men in the past 18 months for alleged drug-dealing, is known to allow other drug-dealers and criminals to operate on condition they pay a dividend on their profits to the IRA.

The principal cause of concern for the Garda and RUC has been the development by the "Real IRA" of precision mortars and highly effective remote-controlled detonating equipment for roadside bombs. The detonating apparatus, using mobile telephones, is said to have caused consternation among ordnance crews in the British army and the Defence Forces.

The organisation was responsible for the gun attack on a polling station at Draperstown, Co Derry, during the June 7th elections in Northern Ireland, in which two RUC constables and a young woman were injured. The incident illustrated its opposition to any kind of internal political arrangements in Northern Ireland and also, it is suspected, its frustration at Sinn Fein electoral advances.

The "Real IRA" does not have a developed political side. The political ginger group which supports it, the 32-County Sovereignty Committee, is involved primarily in spreading its message among receptive audiences here and in the United States.

The group's attempts to establish a fund-raising arm in the United States were of concern to both the Garda and RUC. Both recommended it be designated a terrorist organisation in the US with the intention of preventing it from fund-raising.

In March Sir Ronnie Flanagan urged its proscription in the US, saying: "It is a terrorist organisation that is fairly well developed and one we must be constantly on our guard against. We cannot be complacent."

Senior security figures in Ireland and the UK welcomed the decision by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, in March proscribing the organisation and preventing it from establishing open links in the US. The move towards designation in the US was also accompanied by close co-operation between the Irish, British and US security services in tracking down any trans-Atlantic activity by the organisation.

The battle against the "Real IRA" in the Republic is led by the Garda's Crime and Security Branch at Garda Headquarters and the Special Detective Unit (SDU) based at Harcourt Square, Dublin. The Crime and Security Branch has increased in size and has acquired new eavesdropping and other sophisticated surveillance equipment to help in its campaign against the dissident elements.

Whatever tools it is using, the Garda is currently having a run of successes against the "Real IRA". The frequency of its attacks in Northern Ireland - there were about a dozen serious attempts to kill members of the security forces in the North up to the end of June - has abated and seizures and arrests have increased.

One area of concern for gardai has been the relatively light prison sentences imposed on men who have been caught red-handed with explosives and firearms. Gardai particularly expressed concern at a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions in May to accept guilty pleas from six men arrested at an arms training camp in Co Meath in October 1999.

Charges of possession of weapons under the Firearms Act, which could carry sentences up to life imprisonment, were not pursued and the State accepted pleas of guilty to the lesser offence of "drilling" or arms training.