Irish Echo Online - News, January 28, 2004


Charges dropped against pair in North spy case

By Anne Cadwallader

BELFAST -- Charges against two republicans said to be part of an alleged spy ring that caused the collapse of the Assembly and power-sharing executive, leading directly to the political crisis facing the peace process, have been dramatically dropped.

Sinn Fein has accused elements within the police of "an outrageous act of political sabotage" after the main charges against the party's former head of administration at Stormont, Denis Donaldson, were withdrawn last week.

Similar charges against his son-in-law, Ciaran Kearney, were also withdrawn. The two now face only minor charges of collecting information on a judge, a former British soldier and a loyalist politician.

The men are strongly contesting those charges as well, but the withdrawal of the main charges against them means there was insufficient evidence to sustain the "spy ring" charges that caused the collapse of the institutions set up under the agreement.

At the time, the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, threatened to resign from the executive, calling the claims "bigger" than Watergate and accusing Sinn Fein of political espionage.

To prevent him resigning, the British government reimposed direct rule from London and the Executive and Assembly ceased to operate.

Donaldson and Kearney were originally charged with possessing documents of a "secret, confidential or restricted nature that originated in government offices." That central charge no longer exists.

The men were arrested after a highly publicized police raid, captured by a local television crew.

The raid netted nothing and the chief constable, Hugh Orde, later apologized for the very public and heavy-handed operation. This in turn led to the resignation of a former Special Branch police chief who claimed he had been victimized because of his determination to obtain evidence of a "Stormont spy ring."

Sinn Fein has begun using the term "Bogusgate" to replace the name given by journalists to the original claims -- "Stormontgate."

More UUP defections

It's emerged, meanwhile, that both the SDLP and UUP are having internal difficulties after their relatively poor showing in the November Assembly elections.

Trimble's troubles appear to be the more serious with reports that dozens of members are quitting the party -- although it's claimed others are joining up now the anti-agreement wing has defected to the Rev. Ian Paisley's DUP.

More than 30 UUP members in Trimble's own constituency are reported to have walked out of its AGM in Upper Bann, which was attended by several hundred people at the weekend.

It came just days after the DUP claimed to have gained more than 100 new members from the UUP in the Lagan Valley, where prominent anti-agreement unionist, Jeffrey Donaldson, is the sitting MP.

On Saturday night, Garfield Gilpin, a former vice chairman of a branch in Upper Bann who walked out of the UUP meeting, said: "The wheels are falling off the machine. We are probably looking at several branches facing closure."

In a counterattack, the UUP Assembly member for Lagan Valley, Billy Bell, said: "We have moved on. We would urge them to do the same. The repeated attempts at destabilizing the party by stage managing the limited number of defections of people comes as no surprise." this article available at : http://www.irishecho.com/search/searchstory.cfm?id=14124&issueid=345 (c) 2004 Irish Echo Newspaper Corp.