Who brutally beat Paul Quinn to death? Despite political denials, his family and their local supporters have no doubt that it was the IRA, writes Susan McKay.
A lock of slaps is what they call it in South Armagh. A few thumps. A bit of a beating. It is how grievances are settled. Paul Quinn had been waiting for it. He'd crossed some of "that crowd" and he knew he'd have to pay for it. No one guessed he'd have to pay with his life.
"That crowd", according to his family and friends, is the IRA and, according to his father, Stephen Quinn, they have "no doubt whatsoever" that it was the IRA that beat Paul Quinn to death last month at a farmyard in Co Monaghan, a mile or two from his home across the border in Co Armagh.
Sinn Féin denies it. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness called the murder "disgusting" and called on people to co-operate with the joint Garda-PSNI investigation. The Minister for Regional Development, and MLA for South Armagh, Conor Murphy, says he is "very confident" that members of the IRA were not involved.
A month after the murder of her youngest son, Briege Quinn still can hardly speak for tears. "I just want to dig him up and bring him home," she sobs. "I love going to bed at night with sleeping pills and I hate the sight of daylight in the morning. I try and drag myself through the day and I go to visit his grave." She is angry about what the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, said in the Dáil on Wednesday. "This was not paramilitary but pertained to feuds about criminality," he said, citing sources in the Garda and the PSNI.
"How does he know?" says Briege. "He doesn't know us. He didn't know Paul."
Paul Quinn, who was just 21, is buried next to his best friend, who died in a drowning accident while they were on holiday in Greece last summer. "I wish now he'd drowned with him," says Briege, dragging heavily on a cigarette she lit off the one she smoked before. "It would have been a less brutal way to die." She shudders.
The front room of the Quinn's modest rural bungalow between Crossmaglen and Cullyhanna is still laid out like a shrine to their lost son. A poem he wrote on Bebo is framed beside a bouquet of flowers on the hearth. There are lines that suggest he knew he was in trouble: "In this life, if you want to survive, you'll play by the rules, there is no time to hide . . ."; and "live your own life, they don't have control, stand up for yourself . . ."
PAUL WAS, HISparents agree, "no angel". This means, his father says, that he stood up for himself and wouldn't be bullied. It means, says a neighbour, that Paul was "hasty, quick to use his fists". It means, says a friend, that he drove lorries with cargos of laundered diesel on board. "So do hundreds of other young men round here." It means, says a local Sinn Féin supporter, that he was part of a criminal subculture which was engaged in fuel laundering, smuggling, car crime, theft and every other sort of anti-social behaviour.
"Pure lies," says Briege Quinn.
Friends say Paul Quinn had got into fights with the local "OC" of the IRA and with another IRA hanger-on. He had defied an order to leave the area, and was waiting for his "lock of slaps". His friend, who doesn't want to be named, describes what happened on the night Paul Quinn was killed.
"I'd been playing a game of football in Cullyhanna," he says. "Paul was watching and then we were just spinning about. We were going to go to Blayney that night to a pub. Then a friend rang Paul. He said they wanted us down to clean up a yard for cattle coming the next day."
He says that it was getting dark when they got to the yard and there seemed to be nobody around. "I walked over to an old lorry and that's when I saw a person hiding there with a balaclava on with just holes for his eyes. I said, 'Paul, fucking run . . .' but they had us trapped. They came out from everywhere, about 10 of them, all masked and with iron bars." He says the beating took place in silence.
Then, he says, a man signalled that the beating on him (Paul's friend) was to stop, and he was brought into a shed and held captive. The boy who had phoned Paul was also there with another boy, both tied up. It turned out he had been forced to lure Paul to the ambush.
"Paul was screaming at them to stop and we could hear them beating him until he stopped screaming," he says. Before leaving in a van, one of the gang warned them not to move. "I got up and went to Paul. He was the picture of death, eyes black, face white, arms and legs all broken and the bones sticking out the wrong way. He was trying to talk but he couldn't. I told him to shut up."
The friend rang Paul's girlfriend, Emma, and told her to get an ambulance. Emma came, and the Garda, and the ambulance. Paul was taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. By the time his parents arrived, he was dead.
Some of the neighbours are prominent republicans. Stephen Quinn says one or two came to the family home the day after the murder but were sent packing and told their presence would not be welcome at the funeral.
Geraldine Donnelly, a local SDLP councillor, is a friend of the Quinns. "I didn't know Paul but the Quinns are a very decent, hard-working family," she says. "They want nothing to do with the politics of the situation they are in. They want justice and for the truth to be told about their son's short life and terrible death."
LOCAL REPUBLICANS CLAIMthe support campaign set up last week with a meeting at the Quinn's house is being manipulated by Sinn Féin's political opponents, some of whom are former members of the republican movement. Several former Sinn Féin councillors are backing the campaign. All deny that they are motivated by political antagonism.
The SDLP also backs the campaign, and points to the comments of a member of the Independent Monitoring Commission, who claimed last week that it appeared that past or present members of the IRA were involved in the murder. Like the Taoiseach, he cited police sources. Local MLA Dominic Bradley accused Sinn Féin of "peddling a fairy story" and of blackening Paul Quinn's name to protect their new relationship with the DUP.
Local republicans argue that the IRA would not have carried out a murder, not least because the stakes are so high. In a remarkable turnaround, it was Minister for Finance and DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson who moved to calm unionist disquiet immediately after the murder by stating that he had been told that it was not sanctioned by the IRA leadership.The DUP does not want the executive to fall.
However, Lord Laird's naming of names under parliamentary privilege in the British House of Lords last week, and warning statements from MLA Willie McCrea and others, indicate that while the party clearly does not want to make a stand on this, it could yet do so.
The history of beatings in South Armagh is a long one. Last week, the funeral took place of former SDLP MLA John Fee, who died after an illness. A fearless critic of republican violence, he had been severely beaten up by the IRA in the past.
A week after the Quinn murder, an inquest into the murder in 1999 of former IRA man Eamon Collins found that he had been hacked to death by weapons which included machetes. Former IRA associates were believed to be responsible. Collins had turned against the movement.
Four years ago, young IRA volunteer Keith Rogers was shot dead during a confrontation while out on what Sinn Féin called "community business" at Cullaville. It appeared that he was on a mission to carry out a punishment beating.
THERE HAVE BEENother unreported beatings. Republicans admit the IRA has a credibility problem. However, this weekend they are "spinning" that the people who killed Rogers are leading figures in the criminal gang with which they say Paul Quinn was associated. This could, they are suggesting, have been a falling-out among thieves.
"The thing about these people," says one South Armagh man with no political affiliations, "is that they are married in and out of one another so that you don't know where the half of them stand." A republican woman who threatened Paul Quinn with a hammer over one of the fights he'd had in recent months is, according to local sources, married to the man who shot young Rogers. These are very murky waters.
Remarkably, all parties are putting their faith in the joint North-South police investigation to find out the truth. The joint Garda and PSNI teams doing the rounds in South Armagh and Monaghan are reportedly getting good co-operation from people who would, in the recent past, have had no truck with them. Paul Quinn's brutal death is a throwback to dark times which most people thought were over.