Irish American Information Service, IAIS, April 1, 2002
Republicans will not take the blame for a raid on Castlereagh police station
Republicans will not take the blame for a raid on
Castlereagh police station, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams
has warned Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid.
As police carried out further house searches following the
arrest of six people which, police suggested, linked the IRA
to the theft of intelligence files from the Castlereagh
complex, the west Belfast MP accused the British government
of dirty tricks.
He said: "Let`s make it clear to John Reid and anyone else
who`s listening. Republicans will not be scapegoated and
will not accept responsibility for the working out of the
British agenda."
Five of those listed by detectives probing the St Patrick`s
night burglary of security documents from a Special Branch
office at Castlereagh have now been released without charge.
But more searches have been carried out across Belfast
including in Poleglass, a staunchly republican area on the
outskirts of the city.
No new arrests have been made, while just one man was still
being questioned about the March 17 St Patrick`s night raid.
But speaking at an Easter Rising commemoration rally in
North Belfast Mr Adams claimed this merely proved that
policing in Northern Ireland has not yet been sufficiently
reformed.
"Does anyone here think that any of the youngsters here have
any desire to make a career out of policing?" he asked.
Mr Adams said many nationalists and republicans were now
enduring more sectarian harassment and attacks, since the
Good Friday Agreement was signed four years ago.
"In 10 years' or 15 years` time we will look back on this
period as a period of great difficulty," he said.
He accused the Ulster Defence Association of mounting a
vicious campaign against Catholics, but added: "The puppet
masters are people within the British system. They are the
ones who don`t want to see change."
The Sinn Fein leader said that republicans could not be
compared to loyalist paramilitaries.
"Irish republicans are not the mirror reflection of
loyalists," he told the crowd in the New Lodge district.
"Irish republicans can be and should be anti-unionist
philosophy or anti-loyalist philosophy but we are not
anti-Protestant."