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head of administration at Stormont, Denis Donaldson, were withdrawn last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withdrawn.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."