Officer tells of frantic bid to save corporals

RUC officers from west Belfast mobile support unit apprehending two men later convicted of murdering corporals Derek Wood and David Howes. The dramatic scene was captured by a press photographer on the Andersonstown Road minutes after the horrific murders on March 19, 1988.

TWENTY-FIVE years after RUC officers ignored orders in an attempt to rescue two abducted Army corporals, a former constable has spoken for the first time of his role in the incident.
The officer – then a member of the mobile support unit in west Belfast – was on duty at Woodbourne RUC Station while the funeral of IRA man Kevin Brady was taking place in nearby Andersonstown. Brady had been shot and killed by Michael Stone at an IRA funeral in Milltown cemetery three days earlier.
Speaking candidly to the News Letter, the ex-RUC constable revealed how he listened in horror as radio transmissions reported the mourners’ abduction of two men from their car close to Casement Park GAA ground.
As the drama unfolded in a running commentary from an Army helicopter over the scene, the Woodbourne-based officers immediately prepared to crew their vehicles. Within minutes, it had become clear that the two, as yet unknown, men were in mortal danger.
However, the ex-officer claimed they were ordered not to leave the station by senior commanders.
“When we tried to crew up we were told: ‘You’re going nowhere,’” he said.
Risking dismissal for disobeying direct orders, the rebellious officers raced along the Andersonstown Road in two Land Rovers, along with a Land Rover of military escort.
The former member of the specialist mobile support unit — known as The Blues — said the “duty to protect life” came before their orders as tensions reached boiling point at Woodbourne.
On the way to Casement Park, they encountered a black taxi making off from the scene and arrested two men later convicted of the soldiers’ murders.
The ex-RUC constable (pictured above kneeling over one of those arrested) said: “Coming down in the truck (Land Rover), I looked out the side porthole and said ‘stop the truck, there’s [Alex] Murphy in the back of a black taxi.’
“We pulled it over, and I mean literally banged it over to the side of the road. The black taxi itself was the one that had the corporals in it and was taken away by Murphy and [Harry] Maguire.”
Harry Maguire and Alex Murphy were jailed for life for the murder of the two corporals. They were released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
The former officer, who does not wished to be named, said he felt angry, even now, as he recalled how the dramatic police response began with the overheard radio transmissions.
“We had been listening on the radio [at Woodbourne] and could hear them saying ‘they’ve taken them out of the car, and now they’re stripping them, and they’re now going into Casement Park’.
“The next thing we heard was that they’d been thrown over the wall and it was at that point we turned round to our sergeant but he said: ‘Guys, I can’t go anywhere yet.’”
As the constables from The Blues ignored orders and raced out to their Land Rovers, they encountered a more senior officer on the stairs of the station who ordered them back, according to the constable.
“He said to us: ‘You’re going nowhere.’ Those were his exact words.”
The initially hesitant sergeant was to follow his men out of the station when he realised they weren’t for turning back.
Commenting on the encounter with the black taxi, the constable said: “It was ourselves who got them at the time otherwise they were gone. We then drove that taxi back to Springfield Parade for SOCO (Scene of Crime Officer).”
The former officer, who gave evidence at the trial of Murphy and Maguire, said he faced no penalty for his disobedience but felt the truth of what he called “police indecision” on the day of the murders was suppressed.
“There are things about what happened that absolutely haunt me to this day. But at the time we (The Blues) got all the images from the heli-teli and literally hunted them down. We ended up identifying about 30 of those involved in the murders over the period of about a month. That gave us some satisfaction at least,” he said.
“We are still angry about what happened. There’s so much guilt on our minds too. If we had gone when we wanted to go at first ... we would have been there in minutes. We probably wasted about eight or nine minutes in all waiting on permission.”
Dramatic images of The Blues officers arresting Murphy and Maguire on the Andersonstown Road were captured by a photographer from the Today newspaper and appeared in the national press the following day.
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/regional/officer-tells-of-frantic-bid-to-save-corporals-1-4912475

An even more sickening video of the murders;

 

Yasser Arafat 'Was Murdered With Polonium'

• 
  Yasser Arafat 'Was Murdered With Polonium'

Forensic tests on former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's corpse have revealed he was poisoned to death with radioactive polonium, his widow has claimed.

Suha Arafat said the results of the tests in Switzerland revealed a "real crime" and a "political assassination", adding: "It's scientifically proved that he didn't die a natural death and we have scientific proof that this man was killed."
A team of experts have been examining samples taken from Mr Arafat's body since his grave was opened in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November.
The exhumation came eight years after his death at a military hospital in a suburb of Paris, France.
A post mortem revealed he died from a massive stroke but doctors said they were unable to find the origin of his illness.
French prosecutors opened a murder investigation in August 2012, after traces of polonium-210 - the same radioactive substance that killed Russian spy Alexander Litvinkenko in 2006 - were reportedly found on some of Mr Arafat's belongings.
Professor David Barclay, a British forensic scientist who has seen the results of the Swiss tests, said the findings were a "smoking gun" for those who suspect he was murdered.
"In my opinion, it is absolutely certain that the cause of his illness was polonium poisoning," he said. "The levels present in him are sufficient to have caused death."
Professor Barclay said a miniscule dose of the deadly isotope may have been slipped into Mr Arafat's drink, food, eye drops or toothpaste.
The substance must have been made in a nuclear reactor, he claimed.
Mrs Arafat did not accuse any country or person for her husband's death and acknowledged that he had many enemies.
Many Palestinians have pointed the figure at Israel, although the Israeli government has denied any role in his death, noting that he was 75 years old and had an unhealthy lifestyle.
Some experts have also questioned whether Mr Arafat could have died of polonium poisoning, given that he did not lose all his hair and made a brief recovery during his illness.

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/yasser-arafat-murdered-polonium-162313337.html#b6B4IVH

NWN: Do we need 3 guessses as to the culprits ? Or maybe only the 1 guess?

Gerry Adams -surely a case 

for bringing back the rope ?

This TV programme broadcast last night, throws new evidence of Adams complicit in murders such as Jean McConville.McConville was the single mother of 10 children who was abducted, murdered, and buried in secrecy in Eire.

This writer 'met' Adams on many occasions when Adams was in Compound 6 at the HMP Maze prison just outside Belfast in early 1974. The tall Adams always used to physically attack any British soldier he saw, and there were many of us on duty at HMP Maze at that time.

We had 'fun' with Adams, as we always knew what he would do. So we were always ready for him, and we were dressed in full riot gear ;-) .

Gerry Adams was the Belfast IRA Commander and was in the 'internment section' of Maze prison.During his internment, Ivor Bell took over as Belfast IRA leader until he was also interned. Adams re-took command when released from jail.

The film is to be broadcast on BBC Northern Ireland and RTE on Monday and BBC4 on Tuesday.
It includes a reading of the late Seamus Heaney's poem The Bog Queen, which the Nobel laureate agreed could be used in the programme to remember the plight of the "disappeared".

Golden Dawn Solidarity Demo - Saturday, 9th November - Outside Greek Embassy,London.

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Saturday, 9th November.

1:00 PM. Outside the Greek Embassy in London: 1a Holland Park, London W11 3TP United Kingdom.

The contact number for the RV details is: 07847070899 and will be operational from 6PM the day before.

 Saudis round up thousands of illegal immigrants

• A foreign worker pulls his luggage along a street in Riyadh November 4, 2013.

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi authorities rounded up thousands of illegal foreign workers at the start of a nationwide crackdown ultimately aimed at creating more jobs for locals, media reported on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of workers have already left the kingdom following a grace period of seven months during which authorities told expatriates that if they did not fix their legal status they had to leave the country or face jail.
The government hopes that reducing the number of illegal workers will create opportunities for Saudi job-seekers. The official Saudi unemployment rate is 12 percent but excludes a large number of citizens who say they are not seeking a job.
However, the majority of the kingdom's nine million foreigners are unskilled laborers or domestic workers, jobs usually shunned by Saudis.
"Since early (Monday) morning, the security campaign got off to a vigorous start as inspectors swung into action," Nawaf al-Bouq, a police spokesman, told Saudi Gazette newspaper.
Police carried out raids on businesses, markets and residential areas to catch expatriates whose visas are invalid because they are not working for the company that 'sponsored' their entry into the kingdom.
For a second day on Tuesday parts of the capital Riyadh were unusually empty as many expatriates stayed at home to avoid potential arrest.
CHALLENGE
Raising private sector employment in a country where most Saudis are in government jobs and where businesses employ more foreigners than locals is a major challenge for the kingdom.
Bouq told the paper that at least 1,899 illegal workers had been arrested in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah.
The paper also said police had arrested at least 2,200 people in the southwestern city of Samta, 379 in the Eastern Province and hundreds of others in other cities.
In Jeddah, dozens of Indonesian workers, mostly women, staged a sit-in to pressure the authorities to hasten their deportation, according to Arab News newspaper.
Many workers cannot leave the country because they lack official papers, including passports, the paper said.
The remittances sent home by expatriates in Saudi Arabia are often vital for their own nations, which include Yemen, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Egypt.
Saudi Arabia's mass expulsion of Yemeni workers in 1990 in retaliation for Sanaa's support of Iraq after it invaded Kuwait contributed to an economic collapse that accelerated the impoverished Arab country's 1994 civil war.
For decades, Saudi authorities ignored irregularities such as working for firms that had not sponsored their visas or in trades other than those listed on their immigration documents.
That spurred a black market in which foreigners overstayed visas, set up illegal businesses or took low-paid jobs in areas where authorities wanted Saudi workers hired on higher salaries.
This thwarted implementation of wide-ranging labor reforms to penalize companies for hiring more foreigners than locals.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/saudis-round-thousands-illegal-immigrants-122050465--business.html

Two members of Greece's Golden Dawn shot dead

 

 

Police secured the area round the Golden Dawn offices shortly after the shooting

Two members of Greece's far-right Golden Dawn have been killed and a third wounded in a drive-by shooting outside the party's offices in an Athens suburb, police say.

The dead men, aged 20 and 23, were guarding the office.
The attack comes weeks after several members of Golden Dawn, including the leader, were arrested on suspicion of forming a criminal organisation.
The arrests followed the killing of an anti-fascist musician.
A Golden Dawn supporter has been charged over the killing of Pavlos Fyssas, 34, whose stage name was Killah P.
His death sparked protests in Athens and across Greece.
Government vow The two men who died on Friday were shot at close range from a motorcycle carrying two men, said Golden Dawn MP Georgios Germenis.
"A man got off a motorcycle wearing a helmet and shot them,'' he said.
A third man was seriously wounded, and taken to hospital, said police.

The drive-by shooting comes a week after the Greek parliament voted to suspend state funding for Golden Dawn

Following the shooting, in the Neo Iraklio suburb of Athens, anti-terrorist police wearing riot gear cordoned off the area around the offices.
The BBC's Mark Lowen in Athens says 15 bullets were said to have been found at the scene, from 9mm handguns, and police are surveying CCTV footage from cameras at the party office.
He says the fear now is that an atmosphere of revenge could develop.
"The murderers - whoever they are - will be dealt with unsparingly by our democracy. Let everyone know this," a government spokesman, Simos Kedikoglou, told reporters.
The shooting comes after the Greek government launched a crackdown on Golden Dawn, including raids on the party's offices, followed the killing of Pavlos Fyssas on 17 September.
George Roupakias, 45, who said he was a supporter of Golden Dawn, was later charged with voluntary manslaughter and illegal possession of a weapon.
Meanwhile, the leader of Golden Dawn, Nikolaos Michaloliakos, and two other senior party MPs are currently in jail, awaiting trial on charges of forming a criminal group. They deny the charges.
Last week the Greek parliament voted to suspend state funding for Golden Dawn, which is the third most popular party in Greece.
The new law allows an indefinite freeze on funding for parties whose leadership is charged with involvement in terrorism, or a criminal group.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24780379

Was Charlene, 14, sexually abused by up to 100 men before being murdered and chopped up for kebab meat? Police reopen case of missing teenager ten years on    

• Charlene Downes, 14, disappeared in Blackpool ten years ago today
• She had been abused by up to 100 men before her death, police believe
• Paige Chivers, 15, vanished in August 2007 and was also groomed for sex
• Police relaunch inquiry and urge the public for information about them

Police have appealed again for help to solve the killings of two teenagers they believe were groomed for sex by paedophiles in the same seaside town before being murdered.
Charlene Downes, 14, disappeared in Blackpool on November 1 2003 amid claims that she was abused by up to 100 men and chopped up for kebab meat.
Today, the 10th anniversary of her disappearance, Lancashire Police announced they have relaunched the investigation led by Superintendent Andy Webster and a team of specialist officers.
The team will also concurrently investigate the disappearance of another local teenager, Paige Chivers, 15, who vanished in August 2007.

New probe: Police have relaunched investigations into the murders of Charlene Downes (left) and Paige Chivers (right) in Blackpool in the past ten years

Police suspect she was groomed for sex and believe she was murdered, but her body has never been found.
Officers have not ruled out a link between both cases with documents revealing there are around 100 'people of interest' they want to trace.
Assistant Chief Constable Andy Rhodes said Lancashire Constabulary had never given up the search for either girl, but hoped the fresh investigation would jog people's memories.
'There is nothing evidentially that links these cases at present although we would never rule it out but as with Charlene, I would also ask people to remember Paige and, again, let us know if there's anything they have been keeping to themselves about what happened to her,' he said.
Mr Rhodes said he was certain someone had information that would help solve both cases.

 

'We know that people are more confident in coming forward to report historic information nowadays and this may be the case here,' he said.
'Charlene and Paige's friends, obviously just teenagers at the time they went missing, will now be grown up and may have their own children. I would hope they may be more confident now in coming forward and telling us what they may know.
'We appreciate that a considerable amount of time has passed since both Charlene and Paige went missing but we would still encourage anyone with information to come forward and speak to us as it could assist in our inquiries, and help bring the killer or killers to justice.'

Renewed appeals: The two teenagers vanished without a trace but may have been murdered by a paedophile

Cold case: This kebab shop was at the heart of Charlene's case. Its then owner was falsely accused of killing her and chopping her up. He and another man were paid compensation after the case against them collapsed. It is believed to be under new ownership and changes its name

Lancashire police and crime commissioner Clive Grunshaw said he had seen many cases where information years later resulted in successful prosecutions.
Mr Grunshaw specifically mentioned the case of former BBC presenter Stuart Hall, who was jailed for child sexual abuse against 14 girls between 1967 and 1985.
'I hope, in the cases of both Charlene and Paige, there is someone out there who now feels comfortable enough to come forward and tell the police what they know,' he said.
'Charlene and Paige's families have a right to know what happened to their children, and I would urge anyone who thinks they might know something - no matter how small - to take this opportunity and contact the police.'
Prosecutors in the 2007 trial of takeaway owner Iyad Albattikhi, accused and later acquitted of Charlene's death, claimed her body was chopped up and had 'gone into kebabs'.
The court heard Charlene was one of a number of young white girls who gravitated to Blackpool's takeaways to have sex with older men.
Mr Albattikhi was formally cleared of Charlene's murder while co-defendant Mohammed Reveshi was acquitted of helping to dispose of her body.
Both of the accused were later reported to have received six-figure compensation sums for false imprisonment.
Paige had also been linked to sex exploitation in the area.
Over the years, police have made four arrests on suspicion of Paige's murder but all have been freed without charge.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2483351/Cherlene-Downes-missing-person-case-reopened-police.html#ixzz2jQMZbRE2

NWN: About bloody time !     We hope the Police don't cry off again, in case they might get labelled 'racist'. In the report the Police said "Assistant Chief Constable Andy Rhodes said Lancashire Constabulary had never given up the search for either girl" ......errm yes they did !

It's only because several different organizations kept having demonstrations in and around Blackpool, that they have now got this case re-opened after all these years.