© Deirdre Younge.
Introduction.
‘What were they trying to do around here .. create civil war?‘ (Willie Frazer, referring to the intelligence services operating in the 1970s in Armagh. (2016))
The British Government is introducing new Legacy legislation and has reached an agreement with the Irish Government on the issue. Inquests are to restart but the same problems as before will arise – the need to hide and protect the existence of State agents at the heart of Loyalist assassination programmes.
But gradually through court actions and inquests important information is emerging.
A lot is already known about the programme – which lasted for decades – although the true depth may never be fathomed.
Part 1
1. Loyalist Resistance and Collusion.
A Loyalist paramilitary who was involved in the procurement of weapons for Ulster Resistance, in the 1980s, has provided a few clues about what happened the arms:
‘Mr X was supposed to be the one who held onto the weapons cache but the other Ulster Resistance leader had a different view. Mr X was sitting in Markethill waiting but the guy with control of them never arrived. If Mr X had got them, some would have been sold, or jarked, then given out for ops pre approved by Mr X. That plan went out the window when the weapons were diverted.
‘Where were they? They were driven into a barn in a yard near Tandragee. The barn was big enough to let a 40 foot artic containing the weapons to drive straight in. They were never at Glennane. We wouldn’t risk being stopped at an army checkpoint.
‘Later they were transferred to a TA ambulance and stored in the UDR/TA yard in Armagh. They are still in Armagh. Those weapons were meant to arrive, the problem (for MI5) is they got out of control.
‘A few years later Mr X tried to get us into the drugs trade. Where there are guns there are drugs. That was the end of him as far as we were concerned.’ (Ulster Resistance member (2016).)
[For more on this see ‘False Flags in Teesport’ in @VillageMagIRE]
In a judgement in the High Court in Belfast (10th October 2023) Mr Justice Humphreys revealed that MI5 received intelligence that an RUC Officer tipped off James Mitchell of imminent searches for weapons in January 1988. The intelligence was made available in a ‘Closed Material Procedure’ in which a third party lawyer can view secret intelligence or documents to decide on their relevance but cannot reveal their contents. The judge in this case revealed the MI5 material in an open judgement.
Occasionally, a police prosecution threatens to expose the scope of State-Loyalist collusion. The PSNI are presently prosecuting former Loyalist Lawrence Maguire after his admission in 2019 that he was part of a Loyalist gang that planned to murder members of the Cairns family in Co Down.
In October 1993 Rory (18) and Gerard (22) Cairns were murdered in their home in Bleary by members of the UVF. The murders were planned by UVF Commander Robin Jackson and carried out by a Portadown gunman Alan Oliver. The weapons used were Ulster Resistance VZ58 assault rifles.
Collusion also involved shutting down police inquiries. The inquests of Tess and Charles Fox and Kevin and Jack McKearney, shot dead by a UVF gang led by Robin Jackson and Billy Wright, in Tyrone, in 1992 were halted. The Coroner was prevented from proving a ‘gist’ of intelligence material, after an intervention by the NIO and Secretary of State. (April 2024). The inquest was then brought to a close by the Coroner who asked for a public inquiry.
The existence of State-Loyalist collusion as a tool of counterinsurgency policy is creating difficulties for the British government. The new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, is responsible for dealing with the issue. Benn met with victims’ families while deciding on a way forward.
Sean Brown was kidnapped in Bellaghy, Co Derry, shot dead and later dumped in Antrim, in 1997. MI5 are withholding intelligence which the Coroner believes should form part of his inquest which has been delayed for many years.
Collusion, to succeed, requires a long term commitment to secrecy. In recent years, according to sources, a preacher and a man claiming to be a former RUC man, who served with the late Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, came to Armagh looking for the hiding place of Ulster Resistance weapons. Over thirty years after their arrival, the location remains a closely guarded secret.
Loyalist-State collusion has a long history but the victims of the policy are determined to find as much truth as they can. From the early 1970s, Loyalist paramilitaries have been used as a proxy army by the British State. Robin Jackson, the most notorious loyalist Commander based in Armagh, took part in the Dublin/Monaghan bombing operations launched from Armagh. His actions threaten to reveal the true depth of collusion.
Operation Kenova is investigating the Dublin Monaghan bombings as part of Kenova’s critical review into the ‘Glennane Series’. All previous attempts to establish the truth of the bombings have been thwarted.
Some of those who lived by the sword of collusion, found it cost them their lives. According to British Army Intelligence sources, Robin Jackson shot William Hanna, the Commander of the UVF in Armagh and an organiser of the Dublin bombings of 1972 and 1974. Hanna had indicated he was willing to give ‘Queen’s Evidence’ about the bombings. Another Loyalist leader, Billy Mitchell, was ‘warned off’ giving information.’ The omerta surrounding the bombings continues.
2. Armagh
Despite all the efforts of the State to cover up its programme of collusion, a mountain of evidence has emerged – and continues to emerge about what happened, including events in Armagh.
Patrick Frizell, brother of Brian Frizell, one of the victims of UVF gunmen Alan Oliver, Thomas Harpur and Anthony McNeill, in 1991, obtained a civil order against the men in Belfast High Court in a landmark judgement. Oliver, Harpur and McNeill were members of ‘Commander’ Robin Jackson’s UVF. Their victims Brian Frizell (29), Eileen Duffy (19) and Catríona Rennie (16), were shot dead in an attack on a mobile shop in Craigavon, Co Armagh, in 1991. Their families are suing the NIO and the MOD. The family of Gavin McShane (17), shot dead in Armagh, are taking a civil action against the Secretary of State and the PSNI. Weapons used in these attacks – VZ58 assault rifles – were again, imported by Ulster Resistance in the late ’80s.
It is now become clear that ballistic evidence connecting many killings by Alan Oliver were suppressed by WERC the highly secret forensic laboratory which was answerable to Special Branch.
The former Chief Constable of the PSNI Simon Byrne apologised for the arrest of the producer and researcher of an investigative documentary ‘No Stone unturned’, about murders by the UVF, at the Heights Bar on Loughinisland, Co Down in 1994. No one has been charged. The weapons used in the mass shooting were VZ58 assault rifles. Alan Oliver, former UVF/ LVF gunman, is now a worker in the Elim church in Portadown. He is believed to have been the assassin behind the attack, planned by ‘Commander’ Robin Jackson and his shadowy controllers. Oliver has never been charged with or prosecuted for any of his alleged crimes.
Sources say Oliver, who has become a Christian, has privately acknowledged his involvement in such crimes but will not talk without an amnesty.
Oliver is believed to have been directed by Army Intelligence and some members of the RUC. He answered to ‘Commander’ Robin Jackson, not Billy Wright. Ironically, it’s now apparent that many of the killings attributed to Billy Wright were not carried out by him, including some he had ‘claimed’ when arrested.
Oliver was trained as an assassin in the same secret British Army ‘special forces’ training camp in Wales as was his ‘Commander’ Robin Jackson. As a Christian, he now appreciates the pointlessness of the years of violence.
None of his handlers have been called to account. Well placed Ulster Resistance sources say that ‘some of the killings’ were also directed by shadowy non-paramilitary figures. None of these civilian colluders appear to have been investigated.
Billy Wright, a UVF and later LVF Commander was shot dead in the Maze prison by an alleged MI5 agent in December 1997. According to intelligence reports, Robin Jackson, UVF Commander, made a number of accusations against Wright in 1992. Jackson claimed Wright was an RUC Special Branch informer and that his handlers had bought a house in Portadown which was fitted with bugging devices. Jackson claimed Wright was a drug dealer.
According to the reports, a UVF court marshal was set up in the Shankill Road presided over by David Ervine and others. But Jackson and another UVF man didn’t show up for the ‘trial’ and Wright was ‘acquitted’.
3. Weapons imported
A BBC NI Spotlight Programme, on October 8, 2019, focused on the arms importation instigated by Ulster Resistance (UR) leaders in late 1987 (which sources say were delivered to Tandragee near Markethill, in Armagh). The programme claimed that the late Willie Frazer, the Markethill loyalist and campaigner, was a transporter and distributor of UR weapons and supplied weapons to the UDA. Frazer drove articulated trucks for a large Northern Ireland company, so could be described as a ‘logistics’ expert. Johnny Adair, a Belfast based UDA gunman, told Spotlight that Frazer was a link to Loyalists as a member of Ulster Resistance in Armagh.
Fraser had an intimate knowledge of the ‘Resistance’ arms and their movements and had links to local UVF ‘commander’ Robin Jackson.
He gave evidence at the Smithwick Tribunal in Dublin in 2012 in relation to intelligence files asserting he had paramilitary links and to deny claims by Owen Corrigan that he had been a member of the ‘Red Hand Commandos’, a front for the UVF.
Recently an Elim Pastor and a man describing himself as a former RUC officer, were in Armagh inquiring about the whereabouts of the Ulster Resistance weapons. Reliable sources say the weapons cache is still hidden in Armagh.
Ulster Resistance was a coalition of UDA, UVF and figures allied to Ian Paisley and the DUP. The signing of the Anglo Irish agreement and the changing security environment under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had triggered a Unionist resistance movement which included police and sympathetic members of the UDR in alliance with Loyalist paramilitaries. Suspicion that at least one of the main ‘Resistance’ leaders was an MI5 agent, led to a disastrous loss of control by the Security Services and Special Branch and multiple murders.
The suspected MI5 agent was, in fact, a long time British Army Intelligence agent. One source claims he was tasked with protecting SDLP MP Séamus Mallon who lived in Markethill, Co Armagh.
The BBC programme showed images of RUC CID intelligence and collator material from RUC H Division police stations in Forkhill, Banbridge and Rathfriland that ended up in the hands of the UFF/UDA. It was used to target suspected republicans, including Loughlin Maginn, shot in Rathfriland in August in 1989.
His death sparked an investigation by Sir John Stevens into collusion between Loyalists paramilitaries and the Security forces. Stevens was initially not shown evidence of RUC collusion despite the fact that much of the leaked material was RUC material. He has been accused of ignoring evidence of RUC collusion which he denied.
De Silva was heavily critical of the fact that RUC Special Branch heads had hidden the substantial amount of intelligence from Stevens which implicated RUC officers in providing information to Loyalists and instead pointed the finger exclusively at the UDR.
The fact that the UDA, responsible for the murder of Pat Finucane in February 1989, and many others into the late ‘90s, were receiving large volumes of intelligence material from RUC sources was known to the agent Brian Nelson, his Army Intelligence handlers and MI5. That intelligence also informs the de Silva Report published in 2013, after he was given access to British Army and M15 intelligence that both high level and junior RUC officers were leaking information to Loyalists.
In part two of his report de Silva includes a memo from a senior RUC Army Intelligence officer written as a background briefing for the GOC, pointing out that FRU had consistently reported to the RUC that police montages were being passed to the UDA and other Loyalists.
The intelligence is also integrated into the Police Ombudsman’s report on the Loughinisland murders as it relates to RUC ‘tip-offs’ about surveillance operations carried out in an attempt to seize Ulster Resistance weapons in Armagh in 1987 and ‘88 as mentioned earlier.
4. Frank Murray
A senior RUC CID RUC officer believes the long-running Head of Special Branch in Armagh Chief Superintendent Frank Murray was ‘running’ senior Loyalists, most importantly the ‘Commander’ of the UVF Robin Jackson, as agents. The RUC Officer recently described how Murray retained his iron grip on his sinister agent whenever a police investigation looked like closing in on Jackson.
One former CID officer in Armagh received a sudden transfer to Belfast after assembling a substantial file in preparation for the imminent arrest of Jackson in the late ‘80s. A week after his forced ‘resettlement’, after he and his family uprooted themselves and moved to Belfast, the officer received a call from Murray and was ‘warned off’ with the sinister words: ‘that will teach you to f**k with me’. That put an end to any attempts to arrest Jackson.
Murray had been scheduled to travel to the Mull of Kintyre on the ill fated Chinook which crashed on the side of the mountainside as it made its approach to the secret Machrihanish base in June 1994 but for whatever reason he cried off the flight. Jackson died in 1996, Murray died in 1998 two years later.
Mrs Margaret Campbell whose husband Patrick was shot dead by Jackson in 1973 has been awarded substantial compensation in a case taken against the PSNI. (November 2022).
Robin Jackson UVF Commander from the early 1970s to his death in 1996. Jackson was recruited by British Army Intelligence in the early ’70s. After the Dublin Monaghan bombings UVF Commander Jim Hanna offered to turn Queen’s Evidence and give information about the bombings. Jackson was tasked to shoot Hanna by his handlers in 1974. He then became Commander of the UVF in Armagh, and retained command until he died in 1998.
After taking Command of the UVF in Armagh he was sent on special courses to Wales where he became a trained assassin. Jackson was still spoken about as the UVF ‘Commander’ among Loyalists in Armagh. According to Intelligence reports (below) Jackson controlled at least 40 weapons. In 1982 Jackson went to South Africa to escape a round up of UVF men after Clifford McKeown turned supergrass. Jackson negotiated with South African army Officers about providing weapons to Ulster Loyalists.
Part 2
5. Commissioner Harris
Drew Harris, the former Garda Commissioner, didn’t leave the ‘Troubles’ of Northern Ireland behind him on entering Garda HQ.
Former Assistant and Deputy Chief Constable of the PSNI and interface with the Security Service (UK), Harris has been accused of fighting attempts to get information about the perpetrators of atrocities like the Miami Showband murders and blocking access to files about the many murders carried out by the Mid Ulster UVF led ‘Brigadier’ Robin Jackson. In the High Court in Belfast in 2017 Judge Treacy ruled that there should be an overarching investigation into state collusion with the ‘Glenanne Gang’ and asked the PSNI to respond. In the Court of Appeal in Belfast the Lord Chief Justice ruled against an appeal and said there must be an independent investigation carried out by the PSNI.
Jon Boutcher as Head of Operation Kenova was carrying out an investigation into the series of murders carried out by the ‘Glenanne Gang’. Inevitably the role of Robert Nairac and his involvement in Armagh in the early to mid ’70s will form part of that investigation. Ian Livingston as Head of Kenova, will complete what became a Critical Review. The report is due to be published soon.
6. Capt. Robert Nairac
In an article in the Sunday Times in 1999 Willie Frazer described how his father and other UDR men who worked with Robert Nairac and Special Forces were targeted by the IRA. He described the brutal death of his friend William Meaklin in August 1975:
The late Garda Sergeant Owen Corrigan was serving in the Special Branch in Dundalk on the day that Robert Nairac was taken from the Four Steps Inn Dromintee.
His Special Branch counterpart in Newry in the search for Nairac was Brian Fitzsimons who was later to become Head of Special Branch in the RUC. Owen Corrigan told me that Terry McCormick, one of the men who kidnapped and attacked Nairac, was believed to be a ‘double agent’ and may have been the person Nairac was searching for in the pub that night. Nairac’s body has never been found. It was moved from an original burial place.
McCormick died in the United States some years ago. Nairac was believed to be a dangerous loose cannon by some SAS men who warned a youthful Willie Frazer not to get involved with him that he would end up dead or in prison.
The British Army have recently (2025) revealed that Nairac was meeting an informant in the Three Steps that night. The informant was McCormick who took part in Nairac’s abduction and brutal murder.
Appeals have been made over the years for information leading to the recovery of Robert Nairac’s body, so far they have not been successful.
A recent search on Faughart Hill appears to have failed to find any evidence of its being Nairac’s burial place.
John Weir in his statement (above) described the hostile relationship between the RUC and the British army. RUC Special Branch deeply resented British Army Intelligence’s constant attempts to poach informers. Willie Frazer described being warned by the SAS not to get involved with Robert Nairac who had asked him to gather intelligence. Frazer was a teenager at the time. His father, a UDR man, associated with Nairac, to his cost. He was shot dead, allegedly by the late IRA man Malachy McParland. Mc Parland was later believed to have been recruited by MI5. He later moved south of the Border.
Frazer was warned off by the SAS unit in the area with a warning that he would end up dead or in jail despite being assured by Nairac that he would be working for the British army.
On the night Nairac was kidnapped an SAS unit supposedly shadowing Nairac were having tea in a local RUC station.
Alan Black survivor of the brutal Kingsmills murders in 1976, has condemned the Irish Government and the Gardaí for not providing all their evidence and intelligence about the IRA men who carried out the Kingsmills atrocity, some of whom live in the Republic.
With the signing into law in Ireland of the Criminal Justice (International Cooperation) Act 2019, the Gardai can now give evidence and share intelligence with Coroners Courts in Northern Ireland. New arrangements between the British and Irish Governments will see greater cooperation and intelligence sharing according to the Secretary of State.
The Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland has released a report on Kingsmills which took 12 years to complete. It describes the RUC investigation into the murders as deeply flawed, even allowing for the pressures of the time. It queries why, despite the weapons having been involved subsequently in multiple murders, they were not connected to Kingsmills.. The full report on Kingsmills was only given to the families as private correspondence.
Read ‘Drew Drawn In’.
Read ‘How Smithwick got diverted’.
Dealing with the past caused problems for some retired RUC men – members of NIPROA. Former RUC men claimed the Ombudsman Marie Anderson precluded from directly accusing RUC men of collusion was using terms like ‘collusive behaviour’ without, they said, providing any concrete evidence of criminal acts, in reports including ‘Operation Greenwich’ and ‘Operation Boston’ which were investigating killings by the UDA. The Ombudsman is now precluded from describing police actions as ‘collusive behaviour’. by court decisions.
7. Judicial Review over the Heights Bar report.
The Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers’ Association (NIPROA) took a Judicial Review against the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland and his 2016 report on the 1994 Heights Bar murders in Loughinisland. Their affidavit was submitted in the names of Ray White and retired Chief Superintendent Thomas Hawthorne who was the former Sub Divisional Commander in Co Down and chief investigator of the 1994 killings at the Heights Bar in Loughinisland. They challenged the powers of the then Ombudsman Michael Maguire to arrive at a verdict of collusion in his report on the murders.
The report tried to establish the trail of the weapons which were used in the attack, from their importation into N.I in late 1987. Tried, because as he said in his report,
‘Throughout my investigation I have been unable to obtain key documents, including records relating to the police response to the importation of firearms in 1987..’.
The former Officers had a victory of sorts when Justice McCloskey gave judgement for the RUC officers and vindicated Hawthorne, after the Ombudsman’s QC submitted a late affidavit to the court.
The judge finally and reluctantly resiled from the case. The verdict on the remaining issues was made by another judge. As a QC, Judge McCloskey had represented ex-RUC men, including Ronnie Flanagan and Ray White, in an appeal against a previous Ombudsman’s findings in the investigation of the Omagh Bombing.
The Chief Justice in Belfast delivering a final judgement in this case said the Ombudsman’s Loughinisland report stood but that he had overstepped the mark in describing RUC actions as criminal in his finding of ‘collusion’. (Collusion per sé is not a crime).
See Village Magazine: ‘Time to redefine Collusion’
The Ombudsman’s report was damning of the RUC investigation into the murders of six men and earlier searches for weapons and concluded there was collusion from beginning to end. One of his chief criticisms centred around what he believed was an inexplicable failure to conduct a proper search for the weapons, particularly at the farm of the now notorious Glennane based farmer, Ulster Resistance supporter and UVF accomplice, the late James Mitchell. Well placed Ulster Resistance sources say the weapons were hidden near Tandragee and were never in Mitchell’s farm.
Mitchell received calls from at least one senior RUC Officer to warn about impending searches. That officer is believed to be Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, a fact that appears to influence the PONI report. However, without confirmation from the Security Service it remains open. Breen was, said to be ‘not just Commander in the RUC but also Ulster Resistance’.
8. Harry Breen Commander
The Divisional Commander in H Division, encompassing Armagh and parts of Co. Down, was Harry Breen until he was shot dead in March 1989.
His was a hugely important role with access to Special Branch intelligence and TCG briefings.
His command of the Divisional Mobile support groups based in Newry and Armagh which carried out surveillance operations as well as manning checkpoints and searches, meant he was in command of every operation carried out in his Division.
As Divisional Commander Breen was constantly on the move and his police journal shows that he regularly visited every station in the Division, from Aughnacloy to Richhill, Forkhill, Armagh, Loughgall, to Ballynahinch and Rathfriland in Co Down.
The RUC and UDR in Armagh at this time were under ferocious attack from the IRA; often shot down in front of their families, which has left a residue of bitterness to this day. But they also came under another form of attack over the constant flood of leaks from RUC stations allowing the targeting of Republican suspects or activists, by Loyalists. The Irish Government regularly protested about the leaks and threatened to stop sharing information under the structures of the Anglo Irish Agreement.
The Security Services also pointed the finger at the RUC as can be seen in documents published in the de Silva Report. A memo from the Head of the Assessment Group (MI5) to the Director and Coordinator of Intelligence ( 29th September,1989) gives a stark warning:
‘All in all the overall picture seems to be one of RUC collusion and links with the Loyalists which is similar in scale (if not greater in some respects) to that of the UDR, but the latter is much more likely to become involved in very serious crimes…‘
Pat Finucane and Loughlin McGinn were shot dead after RUC documents were leaked in February and August 1989. The UDR in Rathfriland had used RUC documents to identify targets including McGinn. BBC Spotlight showed some of the RUC collator documents used to target Republicans, originally sourced by journalist Chris Moore.
In his report on The Heights Bar (Loughinisland) the Ombudsman quotes a Special Branch officer in Co Down who kept a search of Clough Orange Hall secret for fear of leaks to Loyalists, on the 19th May 1988. He retrieved assault rifles and other weaponry. The marathon Stevens Investigations into collusion began in September 1989 as a result of the murders.
Harry Breen had been a member of a notorious SPG – Special Patrol Group in Armagh, in the 1970s which was said to be aided and abetted by the mid-Ulster UVF led by notorious Commander Robin Jackson a member of 11 UDR which had been amalgamated with 2 UDR based at Glennane. There seems no doubt Jackson was a protected agent for Special Branch and Military Intelligence but even former Senior RUC Officers say they found it hard to work out exactly which agency was running Jackson at any particular time. One concluded recently that it was probably multiple agencies at different times. John Weir a former S.P.G member in South Armagh described Breen in a statement to the Barron Investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings in 2003, as being fully aware of, and encouraging of their actions. One prominent loyalist claimed Breen wasn’t a renegade police officer but ‘he was M15’.
Weir’s statement, first made in 1999, has numerous mentions of Breen (see excerpts above and below which mentions Breen’s lifelong friend Sergeant Billy McBride and his connection to Down Orange Welfare). Some former RUC officers call into question Weir’s credibility and say his statement tries to implicates RUC men who helped bring the Glennane Gang to justice.
Weir said in a later interview that Breen wasn’t a rogue policeman but that he was ‘doing his duty’ in his dealings with Jackson and other Loyalists. Weir had been imprisoned for ten years in 1979 for for his part in a conspiracy to murder Catholic chemist William Strathearn in Aghogill in Antrim. He maintained Jackson was actually the gunman who was not charged after an ‘intervention’ by the Special Branch. Jackson only ever served one short term of imprisonment.
According to Special Branch sources, Brian Fitzsimons, former Chief Superintendent at Newry Station and in the mid to late ’80s, Deputy Head of Special Branch, as early as the mid-’70s, said that Breen was ‘gathering arms’ for Loyalists in Armagh. Ex Army Intelligence officer in Northern Ireland in the early ’70s, Colin Wallace, gave a statement to Judge Barron’s investigations into the Dublin-Monaghan bombings in 2003, which alleged that Army Intelligence believed Harry Breen and Frank Murray, who became the Head of Special Branch in Armagh, were ‘sympathetic to Loyalist paras….’. (According to one former senior RUC Officer, the ‘kill rate’ in Murray’s Special Branch, was regarded as exceptional among his RUC colleagues). As Colin Wallace concluded ‘Harry Breen was one of the key figures giving information and support for (their) operations generally‘.
However, Breen’s career proceeded apace. He became Chief Superintendent in Bessbrook and the sub divisional then Divisional Commander in H Division, containing a good deal of Armagh and part of Co Down. Breen succeeded Chief Superintendent Brian Lally as Divisional Commander in February 1988. Lally reluctantly retired aged 53 after refusing the offer of the Chief Constable Hermon to transfer to a post liasing with the new Army Battalion which policed the border; he believed the transfer was a demotion. In 1982, when he was sub divisional commander, Mr Lally was reported by the Irish News (24/4/’88) to have helped prepare the CID file after INLA men Roddy Carroll and Seamus Grew were shot dead on the outskirts of Armagh city. Mr Lally’s retirement came just after a decision by Northern Secretary Patrick Mayhew and DPP Sir Barry Shaw, not to prosecute senior RUC officers involved in the ‘shoot to kill’ incidents, who came under investigation in the Stalker-Sampson reports. ‘Reasons of State’ justified the decision according to Mayhew. The Irish Minister for Justice Gerard Collins called for Mayhew’s resignation after he announced there would be no prosecutions.
Documents in the National Archives from 1988, released in 2019 reveal the Irish Diplomatic activity over the Stalker-Sampson reports. A former senior politician said recently that the Irish Government was convinced there was a ‘shoot to kill’ policy operating in Northern Ireland.
The former UK Attorney General Michael Havers said in 1988, that he believed senior RUC officers should be prosecuted.
Breen, just over a year as Divisional Commander, was ambushed by the IRA on the Edenappa Road on the 20th March 1989. An IRA statement to Smithwick said Breen was a target after Loughgall when the East Tyrone Brigade were wiped out attempting to bomb an RUC station. Breen was believed to have been in charge of the armed RUC officers at the scene according to sources.
The actions of Breen and the RUC SPG operating in Armagh in the 1970’s will now be an integral part of an investigation into what became known as ‘The Glenanne Gang’.
As described in Village Magazine in April 2017, Breen’s Police journal described a series of weapons searches, arrests and convictions in Armagh and Down during 1988 in obvious Loyalist areas like Richhill and Hamiltonsbawn, that did not feature in the PONI report.
Sources in Armagh have also described intensive searches by the Army in 1988/89 and later and there is much information in published sources about arrests and convictions in connection with weapons finds.
Major John Potter in ‘Testimony to Courage’ described arms finds triggered by an arrest made by the UDR.
Part 3
9. Ulster Resistance
Ian Paisley, Noel Little, Peter Robinson and others, founded Ulster Resistance to resist the Anglo Irish Agreement in 1985.
There followed various Loyalist plots to import weapons.
Normally reliant on stolen weapons or weapons ‘donated’ by part time members of the Security Forces, the importation of high velocity weapons, especially VZ58s rifles in late 1987, gave the Loyalists new killing capacity. All in all the Kalashnikov type weapons killed over 70 people.
A report by the NI Ombudsman focused on Armagh, the engine room of the UR/UVF/UDA plots to import weapons. It traced the arms importation to the 1985 visit of Loyalist FRU Agent UDA intelligence officer Brian Nelson to South Africa and his dealings with the massive arms conglomerate Armscor.
John McMichael, the UDA leader, was instrumental in making the deal with the South Africans. Well informed sources say McMichael was recruited by South African intelligence and was ‘turned’ at meetings in Dublin.
The Ulster Resistance contact with Armscor, Richard Wright, who emigrated from Northern Ireland to South Africa was a director of Nimrod, the Marketing arm of Armscor, and an uncle of an Ulster Resistance founder Alan Wright. One of the UR founders, the Markethill man Noel Little, also had long standing links with Wright. (Below from The Sunday Telegraph 1989).
The Loyalist connection with the arms trade was through Shorts East Belfast factory which manufactured sophisticated ground to air missiles. (Now owned by Thales the French conglomerate) The Blowpipe and its more sophisticated successor the Starburst, were highly sought after by the South Africans for their bush wars. Shorts had long standing connections with Armscor through former workers and ex UDR members who emigrated to South Africa.
Given Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s willingness to covertly support the breaking of arms embargoes to support her allies like Pinochet’s Chile and the South African regime, it is evident that the Ulster Resistance weapons deals were covertly supported by the UK intelligence services. Brian Nelson’s visits to South Africa were known and supported by his army handlers – let run ostensibly to protect Nelson’s cover.
Israel, equally anxious to source the vital new aiming technology from Shorts, was reportedly also facilitating the weapons deals in Lebanon.
Shorts was a subsidiary of ICI, the huge British Conglomerate and willing sellers to a myriad of customers including Col Richard North involved in his nefarious schemes to arm contras in Nicaragua and exchange arms for hostages with the Iranians in the 1980’s.
Peter Kornbluh in ‘The Pinochet Files’, has some fascinating details of Col. Richard North’s relationship with Shorts –
‘Their elaborate scheme (North and fellow conspirators) called for Short Brothers, the Belfast-based manufacturer of the Blowpipe missile, to facilitate the transfer of the weapons from Chile to the contract forces through El Salvador, using falsified end-user certificates.‘
North reported to McFarlane over an encoded computer line on March 26 adding
‘The VP from Short Bros. sought me out several months ago and I met with him again…Short Bros, the manufacturer of the Blowpipe, is willing to arrange a deal, conduct the training and even send UK “tech reps” fwd if we can close the arrangement. Dick Secord has already paid 10% down on the delivery and we have a (country deleted) EUC (end user). which is applicable to Chile.‘
North had an Irish passport.
The arrangements in 1987 were facilitated by Douglas Bernhardt, an Armscor agent in Switzerland, who apparently brokered the deal with ‘Brigadier John Michael the UDA leader, murdered by a car bomb shortly before the arms arrived in 1988. After receiving the money Bernhardt bought the guns from a Lebanese middleman Joe Fawzi. Whether Fawzi was a front for the Israelis is moot. They were then shipped from Beirut to Belfast. The weapons consisted of 206 VZ58s high velocity rifles, 26 .38 Browning’s, 4 rocket launchers, plus 25,000 rounds of ammunition and grenades. Loyalist sources are convinced the entire deal happened under the eyes of the various security services. Indeed it was only through Security Service and Army agents that some weapons were seized after they had initially slipped out of Belfast port and driven to Armagh. Bernhardt was later arrested while meeting Noel Little in Paris in May 1989. Little was negotiating the sale of guidance systems which had just been developed by Shorts. Components were smuggled out of Northern Ireland according the the Sunday Telegraph, July 1989.
The deal to import weapons was made between the UVF, commanded by the ‘Brigadier’, Robin Jackson, whose enforcers lived around the UVF power base in Lurgan, Portadown, Armagh Tandragee area and Ulster Resistance, also rooted in Armagh. They were a mixture of Paisley-ites and unionists and Loyalists including Noel Little, Alan Wright, and Peter Robinson, in alliance with the UVF whose stronghold was in Mid to North Armagh. ‘Resistance’ as it became known was supported by ‘small men’ – townspeople and farmers many of whom were members of the T.A or UDR. The third party was the Belfast UDA with its informers including FRU agent Brian Nelson. Jackson himself is believed to have been an agent, probably controlled by multiple agencies at different times according to a former senior RUC officer.
The shipment came into Belfast Port in early January,1988. The weapons were transported by an Armagh man who drove articulated trucks, in a 40ft lorry to a location outside Portadown. One source connected to Ulster Resistance pointed out that the weapons stayed in the container and had to be stored in a large yard. He revealed the weapons were stored in Tandragee. Having lost track of the initial delivery, which PONI describes as a ‘major intelligence failure, it was through the UDA link that the Special Branch in Belfast picked up the trail again with the surveillance Unit E4A, on the 8th January ‘88. The Head of Belfast Special Branch at this time was Ray White who had served in The Special Branch in Lurgan in the late ’70s and had a particular knowledge of Loyalist paramilitaries in Mid-Ulster, as he told the Smithwick Tribunal in 2011.
The book ‘Phoenix: Policing the Shadows’, published in 1996, after Chief Superintendent Ian Phoenix had been killed in the Chinook crash in ‘94, describes how Phoenix, then head of an RUC Intelligence unit, responded when he learned a ‘Prod resupply was in the Province and due for dispersal tomorrow’. Phoenix described how ‘Surveillance was carried out on one of the suspects N, who met twice with the UDA leader Andy Tyrie on the date …a watch was let (sic) on B all night’.
Phoenix described how the day after the shipment arrived, two Granada cars were seen acting suspiciously in the Tandragee area. A VCP was mounted and the cars were stopped. Inside was Davey Payne. Two other men, his UDA helpers, were also arrested.
The next day follow- up searches were begun in the Tandragee area and on the 3rd of February the police uncovered a UVF arms hide containing rocket launchers, a submachine-gun, rifles, revolvers and 12,000 rounds of ammunition. Phoenix concluded that
‘The only group to successfully get it’s hand on the…weapons was Ulster Resistance. However it later reached an agreement with the other two organisations and shared it’s portion of the haul with them, ensuring a loyalist escalation of violence would take place over the coming years’.
Sources in Armagh recently gave background detail to the operation – how the UDA had been offered a delivery to Belfast but had decided to pick up their share of the weapons in Armagh. It was the main Ulster Resistance organiser in Armagh who insisted that the UDA Belfast contingent hire Ford saloon cars in Belfast, which had the effect of making them conspicuous in rural Armagh. Davey Payne the UDA ‘Brigadier’ with his two low level UDA men set off in the two Ford’s and an Austen Maestro with a prominent Ulster Resistance man’s number on his hand. Tracked by the E4a surveillance team from Belfast, Payne and co- parked in a car park in Tandragee before setting off down the B3, which is a winding road in the direction of Markethill, from which there are small roads and lanes leading off to Richhill and Hamiltonsbawn.They were making for the farm which later Intelligence said was within 4-5 miles of the town where the weapons were said to be stored, still in the original container. E4a apparently ‘became unsighted’ of the three.
Next day, in a planned operation by Tasking and Coordinating Group in Armagh, the trio were tracked from Tandragee to the Mahon Road near Portadown on their way back to Belfast laden with weapons, and were arrested outside 11 UDR barracks and RUC station. John Potter in his book says the UDR were part of this planned operation.
The three – Davey Payne, and the footsoldiers Aiken and McCullough – were arrested and brought to a magistrates court in Craigavon, remanded in custody to Belfast then taken to Castlereagh holding centre for interrogation.
That evening the UDA HQ in Gawn Street was raided, arrests followed and documents were seized. The following October, Payne was sentenced to 20, and the others 14 years, in Belfast High Court.
Despite these obvious attempts to track the weapons by Belfast Special Branch and the TCG in Armagh there was a general policy of non cooperation with PONI when they tried to investigate the arms importation. The Head of TCG South in 1989 refused to give information to the Ombudsman and all TCG records were destroyed. He did however give evidence to Smithwick under a cipher number. His only contribution was to confirm that the TCG in Armagh had no operation in place on 20th March 1989 in or around the Edenappa Road.
However as a result of the arrests and interrogations of the UDA men on the 12th of January 1988, the investigating officers obtained intelligence that the weapons were stored in a barn beside a blue coloured house within 4-5 miles of Tandragee. The main arms ‘depot’. The ombudsman is convinced this description points to James Mitchell’s farm in Glennane a few miles South of Markethill and ten miles from Tandragee. He bases this belief on the description above, on an allegation gathered by investigators, and other intelligence that he has seen. He says in his report ‘I have seen intelligence that shortly after the arrests at Mahon Road, individuals at James Mitchell’s farms were warned to remove the remaining weapons‘.
However some sources in Armagh say the arms never reached, nor were they intended for, Glennane. Not only were the small country roads full of troops and transporting large loads was dangerous, the container could only fit in a large barn, not in Mitchell’s sheds.
The PONI view, however, is understandable. Mitchell, whose farm was the meeting place for the gang formed around the SPG in Armagh in the ’70s, was involved with the UVF for decades and was involved in the U.R plot with other Markethill men. He had been arrested in 1980 and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment for the possession of arms and explosives. In 1990, as the PONI report details, there was intelligence describing meetings between Mitchell, the UR leaders and the UVF about the arms arrival.
In 1991 Mitchell’s farm was searched and ammunition seized of a different type to the imports of 1987. However the PONI Investigators also saw an entry in the RUC’s C6 (Occurrences,Reports and Complaints Book) from Markethill dated the 9th of January ’88 which describes a search by the Royal Engineers of a search of a House on the Lough Road,Glennane owned by Mitchell at which nothing was found. Sources in Armagh are adamant that a large swathe of countryside, including Glennane, was searched at this time, cattle turned out of barns grain store emptied and a ten mile cordon erected around the town of Markethill. However, they say, the arms had gone elsewhere.
‘The failure to stop or retrieve all the weapons, despite the involvement of informants in the arms importation, was a significant intelligence failure…This is particularly the case in relation to the failure to retrieve imported weapons from a farm owned by James Mitchell. The outcome of this failure was that not all the weapons were recovered by the police and many, including the VZ58 rifle used in Loughinisland, were subsequently used in a wide range of murders.’
The Ombudsman appears to conclude that the blame for the failure of the surveillance operation and loss of weapons rests with the local RUC, who by implication were colluding in covering up the weapons cache at Mitchell’s Farm.
Mitchell was described recently as a decoy – a convenient scapegoat to hide the real and often anonymous power brokers in the Loyalist paramilitary leadership in Armagh. One Loyalist recently commented that ‘everytime anything happened in Armagh the men in Portadown had a saying – “Ah, Jimmy Mitchell’s for it now”.’ The farm beside the Glennane UDR base destroyed in 1992 by an IRA bomb was a central meeting place for Loyalist gunmen and bombers.
There was a significant find of UVF weapons at Flush Road on the outskirts of Belfast on the 4th of February 1988 including a rocket launcher with 26 rockets and 25 boosters, 38 CZ58s, Browning pistols, 100 grenades,10,000 rounds of 7.62mm and 30,000 rounds of 9mm ammunition, during a ‘planned search’ as reported by the Irish Times.
Apart from 1990 intelligence that Jackson had assault rifles and a rocket launcher and that he gave weapons to the ‘Brigadier’ of East Belfast UVF, the trail of the weapons in Armagh ran cold as far as the Ombudsman is concerned.
Sources maintain that the Ulster Resistance share of the weapons was supposed to go to one of the Ulster Resistance leaders, in Markethill, about 4 miles north of Glennane, but suspicion fell on one of the leaders, believed to be working for M15 so the U.R men insisted their share be diverted from his chosen location, a property near Markethill.
The weapons, according to reliable sources, had initially been collected by an Ulster Resistance activist connected to the Portadown UVF and with Belfast UDA connections, then driven in an articulated lorry to North Armagh and stored in a container in the barn between Tandragee and Armagh.The weapons distribution remained under UVF supervision. The UR share was, eventually, loaded onto a Territorial Army ambulance and ultimately ended up in Armagh TA barracks. Where it is today, remains a closely guarded secret.
Willie Frazer from Markethill was alleged by Spotlight to be a transporter and distributor of Ulster Resistance weapons. His family has denied that assertion. However at least he had vast knowledge about events in Armagh over the years and close relationships with senior loyalists in Belfast.
Frazer was approached in recent years and asked about the location of the remaining Ulster Resistance weapons by various figures from a Preacher to a former RUC officer but he kept his secrets.
But what would have happened to the weapons if they ended up with the now suspected UR leader? According to sources they would have been sold or given out for operations ‘but would have had cameras attached or ‘jarked’ – they would have been tampered with in one way or another. It would have been a way of keeping tabs on who was using the guns.‘
10. The Armagh UVF and Jackson
The ultimate authority in the mid-Ulster UVF in Armagh was Robin Jackson. His chief enforcers were based around the Portadown, Lurgan, Armagh,Tandragee area. Davey Payne had just collected the UDA share of the weapons from a man described as ‘ Robin Jacksons muscle’ when he was arrested outside the UDR base on the Mahon Road in January, 1988. This man with a British Army Special Forces background is also believed to have links with the intelligence services. Jackson was trained and protected from the early 1970s when he was groomed as a killer in a top secret army training camp in Wales. Any time Jackson was in danger of arrest or prosecution he was protected by the RUC Special Branch. Like his successor in terror Billy Wright, Jackson had legendary status among Loyalists.
11. Searches and discoveries
It was Breen as Divisional Commander who controlled the Divisional Mobile Groups who conducted many of the roadblocks and searches for the Special Branch’s TCG. His journal has numerous references to meetings about searches with the TCG and the army.
At this time, according to Security force sources, Breen was deeply distrustful of the new security directions coming from the Security Services and the NIO. Like many RUC men, he saw it as appeasement rather than taking the fight to the IRA with a new emphasis on talks with Republicans rather than fighting terrorism. . They say Breen would never have agreed to a ‘ceasefire’ which they saw coming down the line. Loyalists in Armagh say Breen was sympathetic to ‘Resistance’. Breen was shot dead by the IRA months later in March 1989.
Harry Breen was shot dead after a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station. He had been ordered to discuss a possible operation to close down IRA leader and smuggler Slab Murphy which, it seemed, he had no intention of carrying out. Some accounts of meetings in Armagh before he went to Dundalk are fiction.
It was never explained by the IRA why Breen was not interrogated before being shot. The suggestion that the two policemen were ‘escaping’ was implausible. William Frazer at The Smithwick Tribunal said one of Breen’s last meetings was with Sergeant Billy McBride the night before he travelled to Dundalk. (See ‘Drew Harris Drawn in’ online www.villagemagazine.ie).
By mid summer of 1988 the UR weapons were on the move, as is obvious from arrests later in the year when two Armagh men one from Tandragee and the other from Poyntzpass were charged with moving the weapons and pled guilty to possessing arms and explosives with intent to endanger life between July and November 1988. In Belfast, Brian Fitzsimons Deputy Head of Special Branch, was receiving briefings about leaks from the RUC to Loyalist paras, from M15 and Army Intelligence. (See the reference to de Silva.)
In November 1988 Harry Breen had a meeting with NIO Officials in The Gosford Hotel near Markethill.
Four months later he was shot dead in South Armagh.
12. De Silva on RUC leaks.
The July 1988 date coincides with a reference in the de Silva report on the murder of Pat Finucane,to a surveillance operation, the details of which were leaked by at least one RUC officer. A reference in the PONI report allows a passage in de Silva to be contextualised and grounded in Armagh.
Concluding Part 1 of his report, dealing with the arms importation and search, the Ombudsman says
‘Given the matters I have identified in this section, I have serious concerns regarding the events which immediately followed the arrests at Mahon Road. These concerns are fuelled by the fact that a large number of weapons was not retrieved, despite a number of indicators as to where these weapons could be found…
‘And by Sir Desmond de Silva’s finding that an operation had been compromised.’
The reference to the compromised operation in mid 1988 in the de Silva report is the following:
11.65 ‘Another Security Service document referred to the ‘genuine shock and anger’ felt by the DHSB (Deputy Head of Special Branch, then, Brian Fitzsimons) and a Special Branch Chief Inspector,when they found out that a surveillance operation in the summer of 1988 had been compromised. They apparently investigated the leak but there is no record to suggest that the leak was identified.’
In his report de Silva refers to a confidential memo concerning members of the RUC giving information to Loyalists in Mid-Ulster summer ‘88:
‘Alleged ‘high-level’ leaks to Loyalists in the late 1980s.’
The FRU and Security service reports in the summer of 1988 suggested that an individual centrally involved in arms procurement in the late 1980s received assistance from contacts in the RUC and UDR. The Loyalists concerned received a tip-off, alerting him to the fact that RUC surveillance was in place against an arms movement operation
However, whilst the operation was certainly compromised, the intelligence appears to have been too generalised to enable the source of the leak to be identified,although the Service noted that they were ‘confident’ that the leak had not come from RUC SB (Special Branch.
BBC Spotlight showed RUC H Division CID intelligence/Collators documents including information on Loughlin McGinn murdered by the UFF in Sept 1989 which had been leaked to the UDA as a targeting aid. FRU agent Brian Nelson reported leaks to his FRU handlers.
According to the De Silva Report – ‘an RUC officer had been allegedly implicated in providing information to Loyalists on the murdered Loughlin McGinn..’ The Silva Report Vol 2 shows that collator intelligence from RUC H Division including Newry, Banbridge and Forkhill was part of Nelson’s ‘Intelligence’ Dump. It was seized by the Army in September 1989.
There certainly were further movements of arms and missed opportunities in mid-Summer ’88 as can be seen from the later arrests and charges for moving weapons between July and November.
That RUC CID intelligence material was leaking out of H Division police stations can be seen from intelligence material given to loyalists.
13. November weapons searches
It is obvious from Harry Breens police journal that searches were ongoing from the time of the arms delivery in Armagh and that there was a particularly significant series of finds in November ‘88 which are not in the Ombudsman’s report. This is a serious omission – as will be seen later – no sooner had the searches ended in Armagh than the killings with the Ulster Resistance weapons began.
Former UDR Major John Potter in his book on the UDR ‘Testimony to Courage’ (2002) is, strange as it may seem, one of the clearest sources for searches and finds in November 1988. He wrote that the main find of weapons, belonging to Ulster Resistance, resulted from an arrest made by a part-time patrol of 2 UDR based in Glennane and, in a strange twist, a stone’s throw from James Mitchell’s farm. By this stage 2 UDR was commanded by a senior British army officer. Potter says
‘The patrol from the Glennane company was carrying out road checks when they received a message that there had been a robbery in Markethill and that they should look out for a car driven by the son of one of their own company’s Senior NCO’s.
They found the car outside the local hotel and handed over the driver to the police…… intelligence indicated that he was involved in criminal activities on behalf of a Loyalist paramilitary organisation. Next day the police found an assault rifle in a hay barn outside the village. …early next morning the search teams had found grenades, ammunition and magazines.’
The finds were reported in national and local papers with photographs of an extensive weapons pile. The weapons haul was made up of ‘5 RPG warheads, 3 rifles, 10 hand grenades, a pistol, 12 detonators, 4 grenades and 12,000 rounds of ammunition. Equipment for booby trap devices and what the RUC said was an inoperative scrapped parts aiming unit.’ (Portadown Times 20th November 1988). The haul went on display in Armagh RUC station…Also on view said the report ‘were dozens of combat jackets and trousers, ammunition boxes with East German and Far East markings, magazine pouches and a bag of maroon berets bearing the Red Hand of Ulster with the Ulster Resistance. Most of the finds were made on Tuesday between Markethill and Hamiltonsbawn according to the RUC.’
The Irish Times reported that
‘At least ten people were being questioned by police…
Yesterday’s haul included an RPG rocket-launcher and five live warheads…There were also backpacks,radios and combat equipment as well as a map of Co Monaghan and red berets with the cap badge of Ulster Resistance…. Security sources yesterday refused to confirm if the weapons found this week were evidence of an imminent attack on Co. Monaghan, but the NIO said they could have been used for an attack on the Republic’. (November 20, 1988).
Nelson in his journal, given to journalist John Ware after his arrest by the Steven’s Inquiry investigators, referred to operation ‘Snowball’ and suggested he was being encouraged by his ‘boss’ handler to think about an attack South of the border. De Silva also mentions Nelson’s comment in his report. The Secretary of State Tom King also referred to the possibility that the weapons could have been used in the South. Sources in Armagh say there was talk of such ‘actions’ at the time.
The searches by the UDR, RUC and regular army continued for the next week over a wide area of South Armagh from Markethill to Hamiltonsbawn, Richhill and Armagh. Potter was disappointed the UDR (by now notorious for collusion with Loyalist paras) were never given credit ‘At the end of the day the RUC put the haul on display for the media….. 2 UDR was never given credit publicly for a highly successful operation against a Loyalist paramilitary organisation, an example of why the UDR felt that too often that RUC failed to give public acknowledgement of its success.’ Glenanne UDR Barracks was blown up by the IRA in 1993.
But 2 UDR also had in its ranks men who also operated under UVF Commander Robin Jackson. He had been dismissed from the UDR in the early ‘Seventies. The existence of the Regiment was the subject of constant complaint by the Irish Government, responding through the Anglo- Irish Secretariat, to the concerns of the Nationalist community.
According to his journal and in a seeming coincidence, Harry Breen was also at the Remembrance Day Services at Glenanne UDR barracks in the evening of Sunday March 13th 1988, when word came through of the arrest in Markethill. His journal reads –
‘Duty re searches with Special Branch and CID and visited scenes of finds of arms and ammunition in Loughgilly and Hamiltonsbawn areas.’
For the following week his journal had further searches in Armagh City, Hamiltonsbawn and Glennane.
Chief Superintendent Bob Buchanan,a Border Superintendent in the Division, was also at the scene of the searches according to his journal which records him being at a search and find at Loughgilly near Markethill, on the night of the 13th of November ‘88.
14. Arrests in Markethill
Sources in Armagh gave the background to the arrests which, as Potter described, were triggered when a man was arrested in a Hotel in Markethill. He had connections to the UVF and later the LVF, lived locally and had been on a ‘fundraising’ mission the same night – including the robbery on the Gosford Road. Sources in Armagh say that after arrest and interview he agreed to cooperate with the RUC and travelled around Armagh in a police vehicle identifying the houses whose occupants were likely to hold weapons. A series of arrests and convictions followed.
Among those arrested were men from Richhill, Tandragee and Armagh. Mervyn Spratt was arrested and charged after a weapon was found in his outhouse.
Spratt was a Paisley-ite and Free Presbyterian elder from the Tandragee Road outside Markethill, who was defended in the House of Commons by Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson when Seamus Mallon raised the arrests in November 1988 –
Robinson – ‘The Hon Gentleman referred to the police recently uncovering arms in Northern Ireland and said, as is widely accepted in Northern Ireland, that the weapons belonged to Ulster Resistance. The Security Forces have no evidence to substantiate that claim. The Hon gentleman suggested that the weapons were found alongside Ulster Resistance uniforms. That is not true…..‘
Mallon – In the interests of accuracy, would the Hon gentleman like to tell me the name of the person involved, whose house is exactly half a mile from where I live ? I assure the Hon gentleman that those uniforms were found with guns at that house.
Ian Paisley – ‘On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, is it in order for the house to discuss a matter that is before the Courts? The person charged was a Mr Spratt, whom I know very well. He is not charged with having guns or with being a member of the Ulster Resistance.’
Links between Paisley and some members of Ulster Resistance are also said to go back to the strange Loyalist grouping ‘TARA’ in the 1970’s.
The Portadown Times also carried details about the arrests and court appearances:
‘There was tight security at Armagh Courthouse on Saturday when four men appeared in the dock on charges resulting in the seizure of arms and ammunition in Loyalist areas of mid-Armagh. Robert Muldrew (31) of Richhill, (believed by sources to have been unlucky that someone stashed rifles under a tank on his land), David Willis (33) an engineer of Tyrone Ditches, Poyntzpass; Mervyn Spratt (41) and Robert Johnston, a builder.’
Muldrew was later sentenced to 12 years for possession of explosives, plus 5 RPG rockets and a launcher with intent to endanger life. Spratt was charged with possession of a weapon found in an outhouse and sentenced to 14 months. Ulster Resistance sources say this weapon belonged to the senior ‘organiser’ for whom Spratt was holding the weapon.
After arrest in Armagh the men were interrogated in Castlereagh holding centre in Belfast and sentenced in the High Court.
Sources in Armagh say the finds were in fact of left behinds’ that some people had tried to hold on to a few weapons, the main cache had long gone. Other arrests and convictions of the foot soldiers followed in the following months.
Soon after, the DUP or more particularly Paisley, who had already opened secret talks with the NIO, washed their hands of Ulster Resistance. By now though, the bulk of the UVF weapons were in an arms hide under the direction of the Mid-Ulster leader Jackson and other Mid-Ulster UVF men, to be used in an escalation of violence.
The search operation in Armagh for The Ulster Resistance weapons cache continued until at least the 21st of November. Despite finding a number of small weapons caches, sources say most of the weapons had already been removed and hidden away in the UDR centre in Armagh. Three days after the November searches in Armagh ended, the first killings from VZ58 serial number R18837 had begun in Tyrone with the murder of Phelim McNally in Tyrone. Using Ballistics and Forensic evidence uncovered by HET and Coroner’s courts, and other Intelligence sources, ‘Relatives for Justice’ traced the weapon’s use in a series of murders in Tyrone and Derry. The murders were believed to be carried out by the UVF and allegedly a group of UDR men in 8 UDR in Tyrone. Those shot dead and injured were –
– Phelim McNally, at Derrychrin Road on November 24, 1988.
– John Rushe was injured in a shooting at Stewartstown on January 5th 1989.
-Francis McKeown injured in a shooting in Moneymore on February 2, 1989
-Liam Ryan and Michael Devlin were shot dead in the Battery Bar, Coagh, on November 29, 1989
-Malachy McIvor shot dead at Castlefarm Road, Stewartstown, on November 8, 1990.
-Tommy Casey shot dead in Cookstown in October 1990.
-John Quinn, Dwayne O’Donnell, Thomas Armstrong and Malcolm Nugent shot dead at Boyle’s Bar, Cappagh, on the 3rd March 1991.
-Charles and Teresa Fox shot dead at Listamlet Road, Moy, September 7, 1992.
-Roseanne Mallon, shot dead at Cullenramer Road, Dungannon May 8th, 1994.
A number of UDR men from 8 UDR have been connected to the weapons by forensic and ballistics evidence. A leading member of Ulster Resistance claimed murders attributed to Billy Wright were in fact carried out by UDR men in Tyrone.
According to a report by Connla Young in The Irish News:
‘An examination of intelligence relating to several murders and attempted murders between 1988 and 1991 “highlighted concerns in relation to several members of 8 UDR – which covered parts of Co Tyrone and had bases in Aughnacloy, Dungannon, and Cookstown. Three UDR men have been arrested in connection with some murders and released without charge”.’
Files in The National Archives in Dublin reveal the reactions of politicians and churchmen to the killings in Mid-Ulster.
The Irish Government was deeply concerned about the level of criminality and links to paramilitaries in the UDR. This distrust was destroying confidence in the Anglo-Irish Agreement, as a senior official pointed out to an official in the NIO.
15. The Demarcheur in Paris
The Ulster Resistance weapons procurement operation continued after the arrivals in Armagh. In July 1989 Ulster Resistance leader and Markethill man Noel Little, and two other men were arrested in a Paris Hilton with a South African diplomat Daniel Storm and Douglas Bernhardt the arms dealer. They were apparently selling the aiming unit of a javelin missile system and also had a part of a blowpipe stolen from the TA centre in Newtownards. According to a former senior RUC officer the theft of the javelin system had been stolen from Shorts weapons factory in East Belfast in October 1988. The men were interrogated by French intelligence and later charged. The South African Minister for Defence General Malan, admitted the Government was in the market, particularly for weapons technology.
As can be seen from documents (below) released by the Irish National Archives (Jan 2020) the Crown Solicitor for Northern Ireland and the RUC, took an active interest in the case. The Irish Government was briefed on their involvement. (pic from Irish National Archives 1989.
Robin Jackson was regarded as UVF Commander until his death in 1998. The éiminence Gris of Ulster Resistance. His first British Army arrest record was obtained by Ciarán Mac Airt, author and historical investigator.
Between March 1988 and May 2005 there were at least 70 murders or attempted murders using the VZ58s. The weapons added a new edge to the Loyalist gunmen campaign which increased in intensity.
The Ombudsman rightly points out that ‘Despite being implicated by Intelligence in the importation of these weapons, senior members of the UVF, UDA and Ulster Resistance were not subject to police investigation’. The arrests and convictions that followed were of relatively minor players. The leaders of the UVF were largely untouched. The ‘small men’ of Ulster Resistance faded into the background.
By now many Loyalists in Armagh had enough of being used as the various intelligence services mudguards. As one said recently ‘what you must remember is – Loyalists hate MI5’.
In 1988 the NIO and the British Government had prepared the ‘Statement of Neutrality’ – that said the British Government had no long term strategic interest in remaining in Northern Ireland a softening, or at least a more strategic approach was being taken in Army Operations. It was registering on the ground – particularly in the ranks of the UDR and RUC.
16. UVF in Co Down
In part 2 of his report the Ombudsman describes the emergence of a UVF gang in Co Down and murders carried out from 1988 including Paddy Kielty’s father shot dead in Dundrum. They were later to carry out the murders of 6 people in Loughinisland, acting with the mid Ulster and Shankill Rd units.
The weapon used in the attack on the Heights Bar to devastating effect was one of Jackson’s VZ58’s, a rifle equivalent to the Kalashnikov or armalite. The PONI Report traced the weapon used to other crimes. Joseph Reynolds had been murdered with the same CZ58 on the 12th of October 1993 on his way to work in Shorts Aerospace in Sydenham East Belfast. On the 22nd March 1994 there was an attempted murder at a butchers in Cromac Street, Belfast, a joint effort by East-Belfast and Mid-Ulster. The gun used was a 9mm browning type pistol matched to one found at Loughinisland. Another attempted murder in Boucher Crescent in South Belfast was linked to a gun later used by the South Down unit at the Thierfurth Inn.
On Thursday 16th June 1994 four men with links to the UVF were shot by the INLA on the Shankill Road. Two died from their injuries. This was to unleash a revenge attack.
After these murders the command went out for ‘blood on the streets’ and killings followed. The ‘intelligence picture’ in relation to the South Down UVF Unit based around Newcastle indicates it took orders from Trevor King the commander of the Shankill Road unit and were supplied with weapons including a VZ58, according to PONI.
On the evening of June 18th 1994 the UVF gunmen drove to the Heights Bar, a quiet country pub near Downpatrick. They opened fire in the bar with a CZ58 and within seconds 6 people were dead and 14 injured. Ever since their grieving relatives have been trying to discover why no one has stood trial for the murders. The Ombudsman gave a damning verdict on the RUC investigation and said that there was collusion from start to finish and that the RUC was infiltrated by or had close links with the UVF. It’s obvious from evidence given to Smithwick that the RUC in the Newcastle area, involved in the investigation, were bitter about the number of murders of their colleagues by the IRA. One man presented a list to the Judge of RUC colleagues who had been shot dead while on duty. It was a long list.
In his report the Ombudsman used cyphers to identify two brothers living locally to the pub, one of whom he believes was the gunman. Alex Gibney in his powerful documentary ‘No Stone Unturned’ names two men he alleges were the gunmen based on a leaked intelligence document and a letter implicating – local man Ronald Hawthorne. Hawthorne has made complaints to the press Ombudsman North and South, about being named as one of the gunmen. Gibney’s documentary said agents were involved in the murders.
In the second edition of his book ‘The Committee’ published in 1999, a year after the original and 9 years after the eponymous Channel 4 documentary, author and producer Sean McPhilemy in a new Appendix 5, gives details of murders he alleges were arranged by or carried out by Robin Jackson. He says that a ‘serving RUC officer’ who read his book (1998) contacted him in England with information which seems to have included intelligence on Robin Jackson and Mid Ulster UVF. The later edition gives considerable details about murders allegedly committed by Jackson or planned by him, from the early ’70s onwards. The list includes the Heights Bar murders. McPhelimy alleges that the operation was planned by Robin Jackson, who provided himself with an alibi, but was carried out by 4 members of the Mid-Ulster UVF (who he names) with two locals. The names also include one well known former LVF gunman from Portadown who has privately admitted that he was involved in multiple crimes but will refuse to talk without some sort of amnesty.
McPhelimy and Channel 4 have spent over 20 years in court fighting cases over his book and documentary.
The Sunday World immediately after the attack in Loughinisland quoted sources that two notorious UVF gunmen from East Belfast were the killers working with some local UVF men.
Sources in Armagh describe Jackson’s continued power over paramilitaries in Mid-Ulster and the Portadown and Lurgan UVF with their intelligence and RUC connections seemed to act with impunity.
Robin Jackson’s arsenal of weapons was used in multiple murders. Senior Garda, and well informed loyalist sources, believe he was a highly protected agent. There were other untouchables associated with the Mid-Ulster UVF. Some of whom are influential, wealthy men unknown outside their own areas. It is now also known that the UVF in Belfast was thoroughly infiltrated. The recent trial of UVF leader ‘Brigadier’ Gary Hagarty, a Special Branch agent while he carried out numerous murders, saw him get a shockingly short sentence in the High Court in Belfast.
BBC N.I Spotlight on the Troubles (October 2019) interviewed Lawrence Maguire, a convicted UVF and LVF gunman who operated with Robin Jackson and Billy Wright in a murderous gang in mid Ulster. As mentioned earlier Alan Oliver was implicated in numerous crimes but has never been convicted. Oliver has now been found civilly liable for the killings of Katrine Rennie, Brian Frizell and Eileen Duffy in Craigavon. A hugely significant finding by the judge as Oliver failed to attend the High Court in Belfast. The allegation is that he is another protected agent. He has now become a Christian and a volunteer for the Elim Pentecostal Church in Portadown. In ‘The Committee’ Sean McPhelimy also names Alan Oliver as the gunman at The Heights Bar in Loughinisland in June 1994. Oliver has reportedly gone to ground since being named by BBC Spotlight but will no doubt ultimately have to answer his accusers.
17. Harry Breen
Harry Breen, shot dead on the Edenappa Road in South Armagh March 1989, probably knew more than anyone about the secret world of Loyalists informers. He was across every piece of intelligence that came into his division. Sources say he was one of the very few who also knew the whereabouts of the ‘Resistance’ arms cache.
Whether Breen was sympathetic to ‘Resistance’ as some believe, or acting on an intelligence agenda as is likely, it’s improbable that he reached a senior position in the RUC as a ‘rogue’ policeman.
To add to the questions about his death Harry Breens family made public his clear instructions that the Chief Constable, Jack Hermon was not to attend his funeral. According to Willie Frazer Breen had been warned through or by a senior Republican not to travel to the border. He knew he was in immediate danger.
Frazer was given the information by the late Sergeant Billy McBride who had a meeting with a very anxious Harry Breen the night before he died.
Breen’s death still causes unease among former members of the Security Forces in Armagh. One former UDR man said ‘he couldn’t have let him live. He knew too much.’
Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan were was shot by an IRA unit on the Edenappa Road in March 1989, during an ongoing operation by the Fusiliers to remove IRA bombs and incendiary devices on and around the Dublin-Belfast railway line which ran over the Kilnasaggart Bridge at the entrance to the Edenappa Road.
There was an extensive covert Army operation to search for bombs along the railway line which ran along the road leading to the entrance to the Edenappa Road and then over the Kilnasaggart Bridge. The road to the bridge had been closed to traffic. Breen was ordered to talk to the Gardai. His senior RUC officer, ACC Rural East insisted he had ordered him not to cross the border though never explained why he was so adamant.
The murder of Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan has not resulted in any convictions. Some weeks after the murder journalist Martin O’Hagan was kidnapped by the IRA in South Armagh and interrogated by the Internal Security Unit including, apparently Scappaticci. O’Hagan’s telephone number had been found in a notebook taken from the dead body of Harry Breen. He was later released.
https://villagemagazine.ie/high-steaks-the-kenova-investigation-could-nail-scappaticci-smithwicks-diverting-golden-egg/.Martin O’Hagan was shot dead in 2001 by the LVF in Lurgan while returning to his home from a local bar. According to a reliable source the LVF drug dealer and killer Lawrence ‘duffer’ Kincaid told his fellow inmates in jail in the Northwest to make sure to watch the news that night to see something interesting. The Loyalist and his gang then held a party to celebrate the shooting dead of Martin O’Hagan, Kincaid was a close friend of UDA Commander Johnnie Adair. O’Hagan and The Sunday World newspaper had revealed the extent of Loyalist drug running and dealing in heroin, between Northern Ireland and Scotland. Lawrence ‘Duffer’ Kincaid and his half brother Lawrence ‘Larry’ Kincaid were suspects in the murder of GAA official Sean Brown outside Bellaghy, GAA Club in 1996. ‘Duffer’ was shot dead in August 2006.
18. Reluctant RUC men
Why are former RUC men reluctant to talk about the searches for weapons ?.
One source in mid Ulster with an insight into events would only say ‘because the whole point of it was to put pressure on the Provos, to even up the forces’. That implies that Loyalists were used as proxy forces.
Recently a man describing himself as a former RUC officer and claiming to have worked closely with the late Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, has been in Armagh enquiring about the whereabouts of the Ulster Resistance weapons. His identity is not known but has been speculated on.
The recent court cases involving Alan Oliver and other members of Robin Jackson’s protected army, suggest the secrets of Loyalism in Armagh and mid Ulster may finally be revealed.
‘If people really knew what went on around here it would bring down the Government …it would bring them all down..it would destroy them’ – William Frazer, 2019.
William Frazer, who knew more of those secrets than anyone, died in June, 2019. Like many of his Catholic neighbours, his life was scarred by brutal murder. Frazer believed his father had been set up by Robert Nairac. As a UDR man he had carried out ‘operations’ with ‘Special Forces’. Frazer believed his father was killed because he knew too much. The IRA man who shot his father is also believed to have been one of the gunmen at Kingsmills. The murky nexus of Nairac and some members of the IRA is yet to be revealed.
Willie Frazer was buried in the hills of rural Armagh, amid the familiar townlands, the scene of many of the tragedies that shattered lives, including his own.
19. Malachy McParland
Malachy McParland, one of the gunmen at Kingsmills in 1976, died recently. McParland is believed to have fired the final fatal shots on each of the men as they lay wounded on the roadside. McParland was part of an IRA ASU led by an ex Para Paddy O’Kane which operated between Louth and South Armagh.
Willie Frazer believed McParland also shot his father, a former UDR man, who was ‘recruited’ by Nairac. Frazer confirmed to me that he believed the SAS trained undercover soldier Robert Nairac had identified his father as a target. Malachy McParland confirmed to the Gardai that Nairac was not involved in Kingsmills. The untold story is Nairac’s involvement with an IRA ASU in South Armagh.
Addendum and additional material:
The Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs received this telex from the Secretariat in Northern Ireland detailing the allegations that an ‘Inner Circle’ existed in the RUC which was colluding with Loyalists. According to the telex the Stevens Investigators had interviewed the journalist who wrote the story, Terry McLaughlin of the Irish News. He had seen what he described as ‘top secret’ documents about the group.
William Frazer whose father, uncle’s and close friends were shot dead by the IRA cast doubt on Robert Nairac – quoted in February, 1999 by Liam Clarke in the Sunday Times. (See link).
See – www. villagemagazine.ie April 2017.
For what happened next –
© Deirdre Younge 2020.
Additions June 2021
Two excerpts from John Weir’s 1999 statement mentioning Harry Breen accepted by the Barron Report as based on fact backed by intelligence.
In April 1972, ‘Dutch’ Doherty and Martin Meehan were arrested in the South after explosives connected to murdered UDR man James Elliot’s body were traced across the border and the two IRA men were discovered. In February they had been freed from Mountjoy Prison in Dublin by a judge after being held for three weeks in relation to other charges. Doherty was on the run from Northern Ireland, having been implicated in the murder of three Scottish Soldiers in Belfast in March 1971. Paddy O’Kane was named in intelligence reports as the leader of an ASU along the Armagh border. BBC Spotlight recently named him as another of the killers of the Scottish soldiers. O’Kane was implicated in the Kingsmills massacre in 1976.
