INLA rivals fight it out for power and vengeance

"THAT gunman was either very brave or very stupid, or maybe both," observed an RUC officer shortly after Mr Dessie McCleery was shot dead in the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory in Belfast on Saturday afternoon.

"He is going to be caught very soon," he predicted.

His confidence was based on the fact that the killing took place in a crowded restaurant, beside a crowded thoroughfare where people with cameras and videos were recording for their own amusement a charity abseiling event.

Security cameras in and around the restaurant were also sure to have captured the killer's movements, the officer said. "And he wasn't even masked," he added.

The recklessness and brutality of the act was characteristic of INLA actions, coming from whichever faction. Revenge and domination are potent driving forces and that's what the murder of Mr McCleery was about gaining power and getting even.

The thirst for power and vengeance now seems likely to continue. The two factions are determined to fight it out until one or the other is wiped out or surrenders. There appears to be little room for mediation at this stage.

Saturday's murder was carried out by the INLA faction called the "Army Council" which is loyal to the late Mr Gino Gallagher, who was shot dead in a west Belfast dole office at the end of January.

Mr McCleery was a member of the opposing INLA faction known as the "GHQ" grouping, which murdered Mr Gallagher. Since Mr Gallagher's killing there have been about a dozen tit for tat incidents.

Viewed in the context of death and bloodshed, the Army Council camp has been most effective of the factions.

It also murdered Mr John Fennell, one of the founding members of the INLA, by dropping a breeze block on his head in a Bundoran caravan site, after first reputedly torturing him. Two weeks later in mid March it murdered nine year old Barbara McAlorum, as she played at her home in north Belfast.

This month the same faction tried to murder her father, Kevin, at Maghaberry Prison where he was visiting his son, also called Kevin. The bomb placed under his car was discovered and defused.

Mr Kevin McAlorum jnr is accused of attempting to murder two men near the Royal Victoria Hospital in an attack linked to the INLA split.

The day before the failed bomb attack on Mr Kevin McAlorum snr the GHQ faction shot and critically wounded Mr Joe Keenan, a senior member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party.

The split relates to the arrest in April last year of four INLA members, including Mr McCleery, for allegedly attempting to smuggle arms from the Republic into the North. When they appeared in court they declared, without the agreement of the general organisation, that the INLA had called a ceasefire.

The GHQ leader who was responsible for the ceasefire declaration was deposed by Mr Gino Gallagher, who objected to the declaration.

Tensions ran deep but they reached crisis point with the killing of Mr Gallagher. The faction loyal to Mr Gallagher now seems to have the upper hand. Mr McCleery was second in command to the GHQ leader who, as a result of Saturday's killing, has lost one of his most trusted lieutenants.