While we wait for Lisa ji to remember, I searched for all the names I mentioned and found them in a single article online : I am hopeful that we can all be enlightened about how exactly the "letter of the law" is followed by the British state and "police" when it comes to certain types of separatism:
3. The Provisional IRA
The Provisional IRA was a paramilitary organization created in 1969 with the aim of creating a United Ireland through both political and paramilitary efforts. In 1969, the IRA began to prepare for a military offensive action against the British occupation in Northern Ireland and to cause a collapse of the Northern Ireland government. Attacks were taken against British troops and economically significant targets were bombed.
Bloody Sunday
On January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland, 26 civil rights protesters were shot by the British during a civil rights march with over thirteen killed, seven of them teenagers. All those shot were unarmed. The event was known as Bloody Sunday and led to a massive increase in IRA recruitment and support.
A ceasefire was reached in 1975, however it broke down in 1976 due to internal divisions within the IRA. Gerry Adams, who became leader of the IRA, then created a new strategy called the “Long War” which organized the IRA into small cells and increased use of the Sinn Féin as a political instrument in the “propaganda war.”
Ceasefire
Between 1971 and 1994, the IRA especially targeted the British Army, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). A ceasefire was ultimately declared in 1994, temporarily breaking down between 1995 and 1997. The ceasefire was then re-instituted in 1997 and has lasted until present day, with the IRA giving up all its weapons and declaring an end to violent strategy in 2005.
4. The Stevens Report
Collusion
In 1989, the first of three official British inquiries was launched by Sir John Stevens, at the time a Deputy Chief Constable at Cambridgeshire, to investigate British intelligence and army collusion with the IRA in carrying out acts of violence, bombings and murder. The inquiry concluded that, “the conflict in Northern Ireland was needlessly intensified and prolonged by the ‘disastrous’ activities of a core of army and police officers who colluded with the terrorists responsible for dozens of murders.” The collusion “ratcheted up the hatred and bitterness” between the Irish Catholics and Protestants. Particular focus was placed on looking into the covert British army outfit, the Force Research Unit (FRU), and FRU agent Brian Nelson, who “infiltrated and effectively ran the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist terror group”. He “was responsible for at least 30 murders, and...many of the victims he helped to identify were not involved in terrorism.”
The Murder of Patrick Finucane
The inquiry’s main prerogative was investigating the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane, whose death was attributed to “loyalist terrorists guided to him by [FRU agent Brian] Nelson.”[1] The inquiry further concluded that, “a branch of British army intelligence and some police officers in Northern Ireland actively and deliberately helped a loyalist paramilitary group to murder Catholics in the late 1980s.”[2] [Lisa ji - there we go - "police officers"]
Obstruction of Investigation
Collusion was defined in the inquiry as, “the failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, withholding of intelligence and evidence and the involvement of intelligence agents in murder.” The inquiry “faced obstruction from its very first day from members of the security forces opposed to the inquiry”, and there was a “possibility” of the withholding of evidence being sanctioned by some levels of government.[3]
[Lisa ji might help us in identifying the specific laws that required such obstructions]
The inquiry also reported on some of the efforts to obstruct its investigation. One of these took place the night before the planned arrest of Nelson and other senior loyalists, when “information was leaked to the loyalist paramilitaries and the press”, resulting in the mission being aborted. Nelson’s FRU handlers had advised him to leave home the night before. A new date was set for the arrest, however the night before this next operation, the inquiry’s “Incident room was destroyed by fire,” which was said to be “a deliberate act of arson.”[4] [Again, UK laws do not rule out arson as possibility.]
The Murder of Brian Lambert
On November 9, 1987, a young Protestant student named Brian Lambert was shot and killed, “mistakenly targeted in revenge for the Remembrance Day bombing at Enniskillen the day before.” A Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) informant, William Stobie, “was recruited as an agent by RUC special branch in November 1987 following his arrest for the murder of Lambert for which he was released without charge.” In 2001, he was arrested by the Stevens Inquiry team for the murders of Finucane and Lambert and “two weeks later Stobie was shot dead.”[5] [Accidental death by unknown assailants - again not ruled out by law as a possibility]
5. The Force Research Unit (FRU)
A few months following the release of the Stevens Inquiry, it was reported that, “between 1969 and the IRA cease-fire of 1997, nearly 4,000 people were murdered in the course of ‘the Troubles,’ as the violent conflict in Northern Ireland is euphemistically called.” Furthermore, the British “fought a very dirty war” as they “didn't operate by due process. They allowed their agents on both sides, those who had infiltrated the IRA and the paramilitary groups, to engage in crimes to further their own ends.”
The FRU and the RUC had “police officers who operated under a policy through which details of suspected IRA members were passed along to Protestant paramilitary death squads, who then assassinated them.” The FRU, which was created in the 1980s, would “recruit and train double agents to work inside the paramilitary groups” and it “assisted Protestant terrorists in carrying out what were, in effect, proxy assassinations of Catholics.”[6] [Again, Lisa ji might help us with the specific provisions of the law which were used in their proper "letter"]
6. The Omagh Bombing
The Bombing
On August 15, 1998, a car bombing took place in Omagh, Northern Ireland, killing 29 people and injuring roughly 220 others. It was described as “Northern Ireland's worst single terrorist atrocity.”[7] The attack was instantly blamed by the RUC on a group called the Real IRA (RIRA). Police had been clearing the area around the courthouse prior to the bombing, having received a “telephone tip off”, however “police were pushing everyone towards the bottom end of the town not knowing the bomb was there.”[8]
Double Agent
It was revealed in 2001 that David Rupert, an American double agent working for both the FBI and MI5 had “infiltrated the core of the organisation which planted the Omagh bomb.”[9]
Whistleblower
Over the course of several years, a series of articles in the British and Irish press reported on stories told by Kevin Fulton, the pseudonym of a British double agent in the IRA. Fulton became a highly controversial whistleblower regarding collusion between the British Army and the IRA. In 2001, he spoke out about the Omagh bombing, saying that “security forces didn't intercept the Real IRA's Omagh bombing team because one of the terrorists was a British double-agent whose cover would have been blown as an informer if the operation was uncovered.” Also, he “phoned a warning to his RUC handlers 48 hours before the Omagh bombing that the Real IRA was planning an attack and gave details of one of the bombing team and his car registration.”[10] In 2006 it was reported that “the British security service, MI5, withheld vital anti-terrorism intelligence just months before the Omagh bombing in 1998.”[11]
Collusion and Investigation
In 2003, senior officials in the Irish Police were “accused of ignoring a clear warning about the Omagh bomb atrocity to protect a Real IRA informer,” and “the bomb was allowed to 'go through' to preserve [the informer’s] role in the terrorist organization.”[12] A year prior, family members of the victims of the Omagh bombing attempted to set a meeting with Prime Minister Tony Bair regarding their concerns over the police investigations into the bombing, however, Blair "angered families of the Omagh bomb victims by refusing to meet them at 10 Downing Street.”[13]
7. Fulton and Thatcher
In 2002, Fulton spoke out regarding how “he was told by his military handlers that his collusion with paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself.” Fulton had worked for the FRU while being a mole in the IRA. From 1981 until 1995, “Fulton remained on full army pay as he worked his way through the ranks of the IRA.” Fulton said that he helped mix explosives and “develop new types of bombs,” and “that some of the things [he] helped develop did kill.” He also stated that, “my handlers knew everything I did.” Fulton went on to become a member of the IRA’s torture unit, "which interrogated and executed suspected informers.”
In 1992, Fulton warned his handlers in both the FRU and MI5 that “his IRA mentor Blair was planning to use a horizontally- fired mortar for an attack on the police. His handlers did nothing. Within days, Blair fired the device at an armoured RUC Land Rover in Newry, in the process, killing policewoman Colleen McMurray. Another RUC officer lost both his legs.” Fulton split with the IRA and the FRU in the mid-90s and claimed to have been set up by the FRU to be discovered as a mole since he had “outlived his usefulness.” The idea was to have him discovered so that the IRA would “believe they were free of informers.” Meanwhile, “the army had secured a far more highly-placed mole within the IRA,” codenamed Stakeknife.[14]
8. Stakeknife
In 2003, the British mole in the high ranks of the IRA, codenamed Stakeknife, was revealed to be Alfredo Scappaticci. He headed the internal security unit [the death squad] of the IRA, “was secretly paid £80,000 a year for his role,” and “[was] also suspected of involvement in more than 40 murders. Dozens of people may have been allowed to die in order to protect his cover.” Also, “Scappaticci, a close friend of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams since they were interned together in 1971, joined the IRA in the 1970s but became an informer after a brutal beating from a fellow Provo in 1978.”[15]
Interestingly, “Scappaticci has made millions in a taxpayer-funded resettlement package which was put in place after his cover was blown,” and “has also been given a new home, a new job, a new identity and a new face, thanks to plastic surgery,” as a result of help from MI5. Even the Sunday Herald, which reported this story, “was threatened with a court gagging order when MI5 was alerted that the paper planned to tell readers about Scappaticci's new life.”[16]
[This must be by the letter of the law: so why cannot similar methods be applied on Khalistanis?]
9. Deadly Double Agents
In 2006, it surfaced that “Britain allowed two IRA informers to organise 'human bomb' attacks,” a tactic which “involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints.”[17]
Kevin Fulton also spoke out about how “MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers,” and that, “British intelligence co-operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown.” Further, “the technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops.”[18]
In 2003, it was reported that aside from Stakeknife, “four more senior Provisionals, including Stakeknife's deputy, were double agents,” and that Stakeknife “is rated as only fifth in importance.”[19]
Another leader of the IRA’s internal security unit and Stakeknife's deputy was John Joe Magee, “one of the most feared men inside the Provisional IRA” who was “trained as a member of Britain's special forces. The IRA's ‘torturer- in-chief’ was in reality one of the UK's most elite soldiers,” and “most of those he investigated were usually executed.”[20]
10. The Sinn Féin and British Intelligence
Denis Donaldson, who headed the party's administration office, “said he was a British agent for two decades.”[21] Shortly afterwards, he was expelled from the party, and less than four months later he was “found shot dead.”[22]
In 2008, it was revealed that the personal driver for Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, Roy ‘The Rat’ McShane, “was an informer in the pay of MI5.” On top of this, Sean O’Callaghan, a member of Sinn Fein’s ruling council, also happened to be “working for the Irish police.”[23]
Bill Clinton and Gerry Adams
In 1998, a former US Ambassador to the UK claimed that the Clinton Administration “leaked British intelligence on Northern Ireland to the Irish Republican Army,” and that in 1994, “President Clinton approved the United States visa application of Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political wing.”[24]
11. FRU Back in Action
In 2007, it was reported that the FRU had changed its name to the Joint Support Group (JSG) and was active in Iraq since the US-UK invasion in 2003. JSG agents “are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents.”[25] Interestingly, in 2003, the former head of the FRU in Northern Ireland throughout the Troubles, Brigadier Gordon Kerr, had “been sent to the Gulf to head up British spying activities in the Middle East”[26] and went on to head the JSG in Iraq after the occupation.[27]
[So the methods remain applicable]
Those who have studied the British trials of Indian freedom fighters or insurgent groups - should not be surprised by the methods indicated. But it might be surprising for those who do not have the benefit of the Indian prism.
