Provos claiming legal aid off a state they supposedly don’t recognise.
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It wasnt provos, mate. Mostly Inner city Dublin small time crooks he made his money from … And of course It makes sense to cause financial damage to to the state you dont recognize.
cheap suits, dark sunglasses and a large collection of berets needs funding mate
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Dennis McFadden: the inside man who exposed the New IRA
Dennis McFadden has been named as the MI5 infiltrator behind a recent rash of arrests — but the Scot was not trusted by many dissidents, writes John Mooney
It is unclear if McFadden, top, was working undercover, but his disappearance was the precursor to Operation Arbacia, which led to raids all around Northern Ireland
John Mooney
Sunday August 30 2020, 12.01am BST, The Sunday Times
Dennis McFadden’s comrades in the New IRA began to worry when he vanished unexpectedly from his home in Belfast some weeks ago. The Glaswegian could not be reached by phone. Text messages sent to his mobile went unanswered.
When his fellow activists in the dissident movement and Saoradh, its political wing, heard rumours that a removal van had been seen outside his home in Glengormley, panic set in.
McFadden’s disappearance was the precursor to Operation Arbacia, a clandestine offensive mounted by the Irish and British security services against the New IRA, whose leadership had managed to unify dissident paramilitaries.
Security forces have previously used informers, including Dave Rupert who infiltrated the Real IRA in 2003
KELVIN BOYES
Ten people, including a Palestinian doctor, have already been charged with various offences in Northern Ireland. All have denied the charges and are expected to argue that they have been the victims of entrapment.
Some of the evidence used to charge those arrested was gathered by MI5, which allegedly filmed two meetings of the New IRA’s army council and executive held in Co Tyrone. McFadden had arranged the venues for both meetings, which were held at rented houses.
It is unclear whether McFadden was an undercover agent. It is more likely he was a participating informant who agreed to co-operate with the security services after being compromised. There is also the possibility he might have renounced republican violence.
Originally from Glasgow, McFadden had immersed himself in militant republicanism since moving to Belfast in the 2000s. He initially befriended Tony Catney, a former IRA gunman who was jailed for murder in the 1970s and later acted as Sinn Fein’s head of elections, before becoming involved with dissidents. Catney died in August 2014 from cancer.
Those who knew him say McFadden, aged in his late fifties, was more republican than republicans themselves. He helped set up Justice Watch Ireland in 2013, a civic organisation that promised to monitor controversial cases, though he did not provide his date of birth when registering the company — an indication that he might have been gathering evidence from the beginning.
He tried to join various republican groups, including Eirigi, but it politely declined his membership application after looking into his background. There were rumours he had previously worked as a special constable in Scotland.
McFadden was among the first to join Saoradh, the republican body that emerged in 2016, the centenary of the Easter Rising. He became its resource officer, a job that gave him access to republicans on both sides of the border.
How McFadden penetrated the higher ranks of the political and paramilitary wings of the New IRA is still unclear. “Some people trusted him but others didn’t and would not sit in the same room as him. It’s obvious now that he was a spy. He offered to pay for everything,” said one republican, who then quipped: “I knew McFadden, but thank God he didn’t know me.”
Others say McFadden always offered to collect coffee and tea cups after meetings — items that may have been gathered to obtain DNA evidence for his handlers. “He always offered to tidy up at IRA meetings. He was always offering to collect and drive people to meetings. It’s obvious now he was recording everything,” recalled another source.
Operation Arbacia is perhaps the biggest offensive yet mounted against the violent dissident republican movement, which emerged in the late 1990s when the Provisional IRA decided to move away from terrorism and support Sinn Fein’s entry into politics.
The operation involved MI5, the security and intelligence branch at Garda Headquarters, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Police Scotland. Recruiting informers and covert surveillance appears to have been central to the initiative. Such operations have significant psychological impact on terrorist groups as they sow distrust.
The security services have previously infiltrated violent dissident republican groups. An unusual aspect of these cases has been the use of non-Irish nationals to infiltrate the IRA. In 2002, MI5 recruited Robert Jardine, a British cigarette smuggler, to spy on Liam Campbell, a dissident from Louth who directed the 1998 Omagh bombing that killed 29 people and unborn twins. Campbell is currently facing extradition to Lithuania, having asked Jardine to smuggle weapons to Northern Ireland from eastern Europe.
In 2003, an American trucker called Dave Rupert infiltrated the Real IRA by posing as a republican sympathiser.
The role of an undercover agent is both difficult and challenging, said Rupert, speaking from an undisclosed location in the US last week. “If you can’t live and feel Irish republicanism, you won’t last long. If you have spent your life in IRA activities and managed to stay out of jail, you are very smart and also very street smart. If an agent looked the least bit phony, you would probably find yourself in very bad circumstances.”
His evidence resulted in the conviction of Michael McKevitt, the leader of the Real IRA, who was imprisoned for 20 years on charges of directing terrorism. “I liked McKevitt, but his republican ideas killed people,” added Rupert, who said he felt compelled to agree to testify after watching a documentary about the Omagh bombing.
“The IRA would refer to unintended victims as collateral damage, but a dead innocent is a dead innocent. If you’re responsible, you have blood on your hands and should be subject to prosecution for your involvement. I was friends with a lot of republicans. I truly liked them for the part of them that wasn’t involved in IRA activities.”
Operation Arbacia sent shock waves through the dissident republican community on both sides of the border. Prominent dissidents who appear to have confided in McFadden have gone to ground. Many fear arrest. Many are fearful that other spies remain in place.
Although the operation is likely to disrupt the activities of the New IRA in the immediate future, it is unlikely to result in its disbandment, or a cessation of its activities in the long term, if past experience is anything to go by.
“Historically, the arrest of a terrorist organisation’s leaders is rarely the crushing blow imagined,” said Professor Bruce Hoffman, an expert on terrorism at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington DC. “To be effective, it must be a complete decapitation, which is rarely attainable. Even then, the roots of a terrorist movement often run deeper than the personalities on top and, while undeniably disruptive, it is rarely lethal.
“Unfortunately, terrorists know the dangers of their vocation — especially the leaders — and therefore have succession plans in place. Indeed, the successors that emerge are frequently more militant and violent than their predecessors, since militancy and violence is the stock-in-trade of terrorism, and action is how they prove their bona fides.
“This is not to denigrate the arrest of leaders: it is effective in achieving tactical disruption of groups. One just has to be realistic about its strategic, longer-term effects, which tend to be more disappointing than the authorities initially believe.”
Jonny Byrne, a lecturer in criminology at Ulster University, agrees. “It would be naive to think this is the end of the New IRA or even republican violence. History tells us this will not be the case. It just morphs and changes into something else,” said Byrne, who noted how Belfast was disrupted by bomb alerts while the PSNI was making arrests.
To date, the violent dissident republican movement has shown itself to be highly durable and immune to public criticism. Many young people who join its ranks do so because they view it as a counter-culture that also opposes far-right extremism, globalisation and capitalism.
Byrne suggests that unemployment, disenfranchisement and other environmental issues will continue to encourage young people to join dissident groups such as Saoradh and the New IRA. “It might signal the end to this IRA, but it won’t be the end of it, as in republican violence.”
Patrick Gallagher, a spokesman for Saoradh, provided a more direct response to the unfolding events. Saoradh, he said, remained “steadfast, committed and disciplined” in light of what he described as an attack on the party. “We will not be censored, intimidated, harassed or imprisoned out of existence,” he added
Things didn’t go great for the Real IRA in Dublin yesterday
Des Dalton resigns from RSF.
There’s a minority that just want to masquerade as IRA of old but they’re just criminals or scumbags. Dalton correctly asserts that their mindless violence sets their supposed overall objective back 10 steps every time they carry out violence… I don’t think these lads are too bothered, they’re not true republicans, just fantasists or scumbags.
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All this shit stirring is very dangerous and its predominantly the British media that are leading it. It’s a blatant backhanded attempt to put pressure on the irish government over the protocol
By the time the GFA was signed, the provos were riddled from the top down with british agents.
The dissident groups south of the border are largely made up of people who have no blood ties to the republican struggle and are mostly people who join for reasons that people didn’t in the 70’s and 80’s. They’re much easier to ’turn’.
9/11 was another massive turning point. Surveillance technology made massive strides between the British and American security agencies which made trying to operate a resistance and carry out operations nigh on impossible.
I predict that public support will never return. The celtic tiger was the turning point. Prior to that, Irish people had little to lose.
Dalton was right, if I was to give a f$&k.