Authorities pursue criminal assets in latest bid to get their man

Background: The authorities are attempting to emasculate the alleged IRA chief of staff, Thomas "Slab" Murphy, not for running…

Background: The authorities are attempting to emasculate the alleged IRA chief of staff, Thomas "Slab" Murphy, not for running the republican killing machine but for criminal greed. It is reminiscent of the way Al Capone was finally nailed in Chicago, not for murdering people but for tax evasion.

The Assets Recovery Agency under former RUC officer Alan McQuillan ran yesterday's operation in Manchester. It has had Murphy in its sights for years. So has the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab). Both agencies are co-operating in their objective.

Murphy lives on a farm near Hackballscross, smack on the Border straddling counties Armagh and Louth. Security sources say he is the IRA chief of staff who made the south Armagh IRA its most feared force, and who ran the organisation with clinical and murderous precision. Former members of the IRA said the same. Twice Dublin juries branded Murphy a liar when he denied his IRA connections.

Republican sources were dismissive of yesterday's searches in Manchester. They likened it to the controversy surrounding the Northern Bank robbery and the alleged IRA Stormontgate spying operation, for which nobody has been convicted.

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The BBC's Underworld Rich List estimated Murphy has amassed between £35 and £40 million over the past 35 years, smuggling pigs, grain, oil and cigarettes.

The then RUC chief constable, Sir John Hermon, first identified him in a veiled way when in 1985 he said a "wealthy pig smuggler" living in the Republic was behind an IRA bombing that killed four RUC officers close to the Border in May that year.

Toby Harnden in his book, Bandit Country, quoted Garda, RUC, British army, MI5 and republican sources who identified Slab Murphy as an IRA leader who was behind some of the worst multiple killings of the Troubles. He was named as planning the Narrow Water massacre of 1979, in which 18 British soldiers were killed, and was also allegedly implicated in the Mullaghmore bombing the same day, which killed Lord Louis Mountbatten, two children and the elderly Lady Brabourne.

Murphy was allegedly involved in smuggling in huge stockpiles of weapons from Libya in the 1980s and was part of the IRA army council that decided to end its first ceasefire with the London docklands bomb in 1996. He has been IRA chief of staff for the past seven or eight years, the security services believe.

A balding figure, he is a non-smoker and moderate drinker. Aged 56 and single, his main interests outside republicanism and smuggling are said to be Gaelic football, darts and road bowls.Throughout his IRA career he built up a formidable machine, planning carefully and acting cautiously. That was until 1987 when he decided to sue the Sunday Times for reporting two years earlier that he was a senior IRA member responsible for an IRA seaside bombing campaign in England in 1985.

In 1990 a Dublin jury dismissed the libel case. Six years later he successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to have the case reheard. The retrial, which took place over three weeks in 1998, exposed Murphy to media ridicule. He portrayed himself as an innocent small farmer, which cut little ice with the second jury. "Never been a member of the IRA, no way," he said when asked was he a senior IRA figure. "No way," he replied when asked did he support violence. He claimed he never heard of the Maze prison.

Garda IRA informant Sean O'Callaghan said he met Murphy at a senior IRA meeting in 1983 in the company of Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and other named IRA members. He also said he met Murphy at IRA meetings in 1984 and 1985.

Another former IRA member Eamon Collins, author of Killing Rage, also confirmed Murphy as an IRA army-council member. The following year, Collins was bludgeoned and stabbed to death.

The jury took less than an hour to reject Murphy's libel case. That caused some damage to him within the republican movement but not enough to force him off the IRA army council. As a supporter of the Adams-McGuinness peace-process strategy, he proved useful.

Now that he is under the spotlight of the Cab and the Assets Recovery Agency, Murphy might be more seriously undermined. The pressure will now be on these agencies to deliver.