Dissident republicans are being blamed for a rise in shootings, writes GERRY MORIARTY, Northern Editor
THE YOUNG man shot and seriously wounded in the paramilitary-style shooting in north Belfast on Thursday night is the fourth victim of such attacks in less than two weeks.
Security, political and local sources say dissident republicans are behind the shootings, and that they are seeking to assume for themselves a brutal community policing role – a function in former years administered by the IRA.
This is another weapon in the dissident republican arsenal that, in addition to inflicting serious injury, is a calculated taunt to Sinn Féin and former local IRA leaders in republican areas.
The PSNI reported two suspected paramilitary shootings on April 1st. In the Poleglass area of west Belfast, a 28-year-old man was shot in both knees and in his left ankle. He was bundled into a car at Twinbrook and driven to the Colin Mill area of Poleglass where the shooting took place.
The same night four masked men entered a house in the Creggan Heights area of Derry city where their victim, a 26-year-old man, was sitting with three women. They escaped but the man received bullet injuries to his left thigh, knee, ankle and right calf.
Two nights prior to that attack, a man was injured in another attack in Derry, in the Rosemount Gardens area. Two masked men entered a house and shot their victim a number of times, causing injuries to his legs.
Local sources said they could not account for why the man was targeted on Thursday. One source said it may have been a paramilitary shooting that “went wrong”. That such attacks should go “wrong” is hardly surprising considering the multiple injuries suffered by the three other most recent victims and the number of shots fired in the attacks.
Police said that since the beginning of the year and in addition to these aforementioned shootings, there were five republican so-called punishment shootings and one so-called punishment beating – again with dissidents the chief suspects.
Sinn Féin and the PSNI are conscious that dissidents are intent on causing trouble on a number of fronts. The Real IRA murders of British soldiers Patrick Azimkar and Mark Quinsey, and the Continuity IRA murder of PSNI constable Stephen Carroll, are the most violent manifestations of that tactic.
The dissident bomb hoaxes, hijackings and disturbances, mainly in Belfast and Lurgan, of recent weeks that were in response to arrests related to the killings were another example of the threat from these groups. These incidents prompted a range of nationalist leaders in west Belfast such as Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and MEP Bairbre de Brún, leading republicans such as Danny Morrison and Bobby Storey, and SDLP Assembly member Alex Attwood to publish a letter in Thursday’s Irish News condemning them.
On Thursday, the Belfast High Court heard how dissident republicans issued threats against anti-social elements in west Belfast, some as young as eight, who go under the name the Divis Hoods Liberation Army.
It is all indicative of what the dissidents can do from a limited base. It makes life difficult for PSNI chief constable Sir Hugh Orde and his force, and challenges Sinn Féin and now mainstream, but former IRA leaders, in republican areas.
Such mainstream leaders say that the dissidents, while attempting to arrogate on to themselves a quasi-policing role, are heavily involved in drugs and other forms of criminality and that additionally they are “levying” local drug dealers for part of their takings. But now that Sinn Féin and such republicans are part of the “system”, so to speak, it is difficult for them to resist that challenge in the same local quasi-policing manner that they would have employed in the past.
Sinn Féin Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, speaking to The Irish Times on Thursday just hours before the Ardoyne shooting, said these groups must be resisted. “There needs to be a mobilisation of voices within the community, of positive constructive voices who will make it clear that this type of activity is unacceptable and that we are not going back to the past, we are moving forward to a better future.”