FREE Eddie McGarrigle
Posted on IPSC November 2, 2010 at 10:36:16 AM by IPSC (American Branch)
(Note: Eddie's mother has recently died, so any cards or letters would be greatly appreciated)
FREE Eddie Mcgarrigle!
The forgotten victims of the Troubles
(by Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune)
(Excerpt)
Eddie McGarrigle, 40, ex-INLA member
It was raining and he was running – big, long strides – to open the back door so his girlfriend wouldn't have to hang outside getting wet. She was a real looker, a former Miss Strabane. They'd been walking home from a date when the heavens opened. He gave her his coat, before darting ahead.
The gunman was waiting in the doorway. Eighteen-year-old Eddie McGarrigle saw a figure in the darkness point what looked like a rifle at him but he couldn't take it in. Thinking a friend was "acting the eejit", he shouted "f**k off!'. When he realised, it was too late. He started to run away but the gunman shot him in the back.
"I crawled along the street, calling him a bastard. My girlfriend arrived and started screaming. I thought I was dying. I told the ambulance driver not to tell my mother." McGarrigle lost consciousness and woke up, three days later, in hospital. "Nobody ever told me I was paralysed from the waist down – I just sort of found out."
Twenty-two years on, it's hard catching up with him. One evening, he's playing basketball "and I'm not stopping when I'm winning!" Next, he's on a hunger-strike march in the Bogside. Then, he's out with his dog, Troy. Never mind the raft of First Communions, odd for a self-proclaimed Marxist.
But McGarrigle confounds stereotypes. When he was an INLA prisoner in Long Kesh, comrades who didn't know him, presumed he'd been shot by the security forces. They didn't realise it was his own organisation, the INLA, which had put him in a wheelchair.
He became an "active republican" during the hunger-strike. In 1983, a woman told him a man had sexually abused her daughter. Another INLA member warned the man McGarrigle was asking questions. The man stole an IRA gun, shot McGarrigle, and the INLA claimed responsibility.
The man was later convicted of sex abuse. The INLA apologised to McGarrigle. "It was hard but I accepted the apology. The INLA had been in disarray at the time. I wasn't about to change my politics because I personally had a rough deal.
"The Brits were my enemy. I wouldn't be distracted from that. I'd loved sport. I was a big lad, 6"1. I was Tyrone boxing champion, I played hand-ball, I ran cross-country. All that stopped but self-pity is a waste of time. Too many people in the Troubles wrapped victimhood around themselves. I was just glad to be alive."
Out of hospital, the security forces "tortured" him. "I was arrested every few weeks. They thought the wheelchair was my weak spot. They'd sing 'You'll never walk alone' at me. They'd stop my car and open the boot and bonnet, knowing I'd struggle to get out and close them, and then they'd walk off.
"One day, the Brits demanded I get out of the car and open the bonnet. I refused. I told them I'd give them five minutes if they genuinely wanted to search the car, otherwise I was off. They stood laughing at me. So when the five minutes were up, I just started the car and drove at them." McGarrigle was convicted of knocking down a soldier.
For legal reasons, the extent of his "republican socialist activities" can't be disclosed: "I'm not saying I was Dan Breen but I played a full and active role. I wasn't restricted to sitting at home planning things. In terms of disability, the INLA was an equal opportunities employer."
Being a paraplegic didn't destroy his personal life: "I pushed my girlfriend away emotionally because I reckoned everybody thought, 'He'll have to marry her. He won't get anybody else now'. But I didn't love her and wouldn't have married her anyway. I'd no trouble getting women. I'd be on the dance floor, wheelchair spinning – though now I'm older, they'd have to forcibly push me out there!"
In 1990, McGarrigle was arrested following the attempted murder of a UDR man. "At night, the cops carried me to the cell bed. But, on the last three nights, one cop abused me, talking about the need to "cook you vegetables". I wouldn't let him touch me. I sat in the wheelchair, three days and nights. I fainted during interrogation.
"The doctor told me to say I was unfit for questioning. I refused. That would have been crying for special treatment. I was convicted of conspiracy to murder. I should have got 10 years but the judge took a year off because I was in a wheelchair. I was raging at the old c**t for making a big deal about that."
Belfast's Victorian Crumlin Road jail was an inhospitable place. "They held me in the cell for infected diseases, the only cell wide enough to take a wheelchair. It was 24-hour lock-up, solitary confinement.
"The toilet and shower room wasn't wide enough either. They said they'd carry me into it. I refused so for two years I'd no washing facilities and a newspaper on top of the bed became my toilet. It was hard. I wrote poetry about drowning and coming up for air. After the Crum, Long Kesh was heaven – a modern building and all on the flat!"
McGarrigle supports the ceasefire but is anti-Belfast Agreement. "The war's over; republicans lost. Adams and McGuinness settled for what could have been achieved in 1974."
He's married with two children, Liam, 9, and six-week old Paiti. "I can't play football with Liam so I take him to see Celtic instead. I don't want to burden him with politics. He thinks I fell off a motorbike. My wife's a special person. She says I'm softer and more compassionate than most men. I'm the best vacuum cleaner in Strabane. Anything like putting up shelves, or cutting the grass, her brother does."
McGarrigle met disabled ex-security force members during treatment in the spinal unit. "On a human level, I feel for them, but we've nothing in common. The reality is I'd have put them in a wheelchair, and they'd have put me in a wheelchair if they'd had the chance. It was a war. We were on different sides."
He never fought his disability, "just tried to get on with life" as best he could. Sometimes, though, things are different: "When I'm dreaming, whatever I'm doing, I'm never in a wheelchair."
Eddie Mcgarrigle: political prisoner !
By iskra1916
An Irish Republican Socialist Party member, Mr Eddie McGarrigle is today beginning a 3 year prison prison term in grim Portlaoise prison based entirely on the "opinion evidence" of a secret policeman!
This was not Burma or Tibet but Ireland in the year 2010 !
Outrageously there exists in Irish law a peice of so-called 'emergency legislation' which allows the 'opinion' of a member of Ireland's political police to effectively convict a person he suspects of being a member of a proscribed organisation. In effect due process does not exist & any semblance of a 'trial' is a mere formality! If this were happening in Tibet or Burma there would be celebrities lining up to support a campaign against this outrage but because this is in a Western country the chattering classes are deafeningly silent!
Mr McGarrigle who hails from Strabane in the North-West of Ireland would have been sentenced earlier with other accused but he had been extremely ill with an infection following a broken leg which coupled with the fact that he is confined to a wheelchair resulted in him being held on strict House-Arrest for 11 months prior to sentencing!
It is worth noting that despite having a disability Mr McGarrigle has been an active campaigner for the rights of Irish political prisoners held in British & Irish gaols and has been a tireless worker on issues effecting the Irish working-class including conflict resolution in the North of Ireland.
Portlaoise prison is a grim antiquated Victorian-era prison with no interior sanitation in the Irish midlands that is ill-equipped for the needs of able-bodied prisoners let alone a wheelchair-bound person! (Who would have thought that a prison which was built conforming to Utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon design would still be holding prisoners in the 21st Century!)
Ironically, the "proscribed organisation" that it was the secret policeman's "opinion" Mr McGarrigle belonged to, reportedly no longer exists! There is no doubt that there has been an outrage committed today when an activist can be imprisoned entirely on the word of a Special branch spook & it remains to be seen whether this piece of archaic draconian legislation will be rightfully thrown into the dustbin of history as an affront to modernity.
Meanwhile Mr McGarrigle's young family will be struggling to come to terms with the fact that their Daddy has been taken away from them for 3 years & held in the most grim conditions miles from home soley based on the opinion of a secret policeman!
If you are concerned about the plight of Mr McGarrigle or would like to show your solidarity or support it would be advised to contact Teach na Failte which campaigns on behalf of Republican Socialist prisoners.
His Address:
Castlerea Prison,
The Grove, Castlerea town,
Co Roscommon,
Ireland
Showing posts with label INLA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label INLA. Show all posts
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
Sunday, 11 October 2009
'Armed struggle is over' - INLA
Both the BBC and RTE have reported a significant development in the history of the Irish National Liberation Army. This weblog recognises the importance role of Ireland's Republican Socialist Movement towards peace and an end to sectarianism. For improved communities and an end to the drugs problem in society.
The Scottish Republican Socialist Newsletter salute the INLA and RSM for this brave decision.
BBC Report below:
'Armed struggle is over' - INLA
INLA men at funeral in 1996
The INLA has been on ceasefire for 11 years
An Irish republican paramilitary group responsible for dozens of murders during Northern Ireland's Troubles has renounced violence.
The Irish National Liberation Army said its "armed struggle is over".
The INLA said it would pursue its objectives from now on by "exclusively peaceful political struggle".
Its statement did not mention weapons decommissioning, but it is understood talks have begun and the government hopes the process will begin in months.
A small group which proved itself to be ruthless during the Troubles, it has been on ceasefire for 11 years.
The statement was issued through its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, at an event in Bray, County Wicklow on Sunday.
"The republican socialist movement has been informed by the INLA that following a process of serious debate, consultation and analysis, it has concluded that the armed struggle is over," it said.
"The objective of a 32-county socialist republic will be best achieved through exclusively peaceful political struggle."
'Deadline'
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward said he welcomed the INLA's statement but "it is essential that words are matched to deeds".
Mr Woodward urged the INLA to destroy its weapons before the deadline in February when the decommissioning body is due to be wound up.
Established in 1975, many of its recruits were former members of the Official IRA.
They murdered Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave in 1979 by leaving a bomb under his car at Westminster.
The organisation was also responsible for one of Northern Ireland's worst atrocities.
In 1982 it killed 17 people in a bomb attack on the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly, County Londonderry.
INLA KILLINGS 1975 - 2001
Scene of Droppin' Well bombing
42 civilians
46 UK security forces
16 republican paramilitaries
Seven loyalist paramilitary
Two Irish security forces
Total: 113
Republican figures includes 10 INLA members killed in feuds
*Source: CAIN Troubles archive
Who are the INLA?
In pictures: INLA history
Political reaction
The INLA also murdered loyalist LVF leader Billy Wright at the Maze prison.
Three members of the INLA died in the jail while on hunger strike in the 1980s.
Despite being on ceasefire since 1998, it has carried out a number of shootings and engaged in a wide range of criminal activity.
The group has regularly indulged in bouts of bloody infighting.
In February this year, the INLA claimed responsibility for the murder of a drug dealer in Londonderry.
It is mainly involved in organised crime, such as extortion and robbery.
Last year police investigating the INLA and associates in County Londonderry seized controlled drugs with an estimated value of £10,000.
The INLA has been talking to intermediaries representing the British and Irish governments for several months.
The group is also believed to be engaged in talks with the head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, General John de Chastelain about putting its weapons beyond use.
RTE Report:
INLA ends campaign of violence
Sunday, 11 October 2009 16:17
The INLA has announced that it is to end its armed struggle.
In a statement read out at the commemoration of its founding member, a spokesperson said that it would continue its campaign for a 32 County Socialist Republic through peaceful and political means.
This afternoon in Bray, Co Wicklow, around 60 republicans and socialists gathered for their annual commemoration of Seamus Costello.
Advertisement
He was the man who, 35 years ago, founded the Irish National Liberation Army.
After the traditional wreath -laying ceremony, a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the INLA, announced that the organisation had decided to end its armed struggle.
He said that the group had concluded that its objective of a 32 County Socialist Republic was best achieved through peaceful and political means.
The announcement brings to an end a 35 year campaign which has claimed around 150 lives.
After the IRA called its ceasefires in the 90s and eventually ended its campaign, the INLA remained in existence.
The INLA was notorious for the ruthless nature of its attacks and today's decision is both a significant and welcome development.
In recent years it was involved in several murders and has remained active in Derry, Strabane, parts of Belfast and in Dublin.
The PSNI and gardaí often linked it to racketeering and drugs related businesses.
The Scottish Republican Socialist Newsletter salute the INLA and RSM for this brave decision.
BBC Report below:
'Armed struggle is over' - INLA
INLA men at funeral in 1996
The INLA has been on ceasefire for 11 years
An Irish republican paramilitary group responsible for dozens of murders during Northern Ireland's Troubles has renounced violence.
The Irish National Liberation Army said its "armed struggle is over".
The INLA said it would pursue its objectives from now on by "exclusively peaceful political struggle".
Its statement did not mention weapons decommissioning, but it is understood talks have begun and the government hopes the process will begin in months.
A small group which proved itself to be ruthless during the Troubles, it has been on ceasefire for 11 years.
The statement was issued through its political wing, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, at an event in Bray, County Wicklow on Sunday.
"The republican socialist movement has been informed by the INLA that following a process of serious debate, consultation and analysis, it has concluded that the armed struggle is over," it said.
"The objective of a 32-county socialist republic will be best achieved through exclusively peaceful political struggle."
'Deadline'
Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward said he welcomed the INLA's statement but "it is essential that words are matched to deeds".
Mr Woodward urged the INLA to destroy its weapons before the deadline in February when the decommissioning body is due to be wound up.
Established in 1975, many of its recruits were former members of the Official IRA.
They murdered Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave in 1979 by leaving a bomb under his car at Westminster.
The organisation was also responsible for one of Northern Ireland's worst atrocities.
In 1982 it killed 17 people in a bomb attack on the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly, County Londonderry.
INLA KILLINGS 1975 - 2001
Scene of Droppin' Well bombing
42 civilians
46 UK security forces
16 republican paramilitaries
Seven loyalist paramilitary
Two Irish security forces
Total: 113
Republican figures includes 10 INLA members killed in feuds
*Source: CAIN Troubles archive
Who are the INLA?
In pictures: INLA history
Political reaction
The INLA also murdered loyalist LVF leader Billy Wright at the Maze prison.
Three members of the INLA died in the jail while on hunger strike in the 1980s.
Despite being on ceasefire since 1998, it has carried out a number of shootings and engaged in a wide range of criminal activity.
The group has regularly indulged in bouts of bloody infighting.
In February this year, the INLA claimed responsibility for the murder of a drug dealer in Londonderry.
It is mainly involved in organised crime, such as extortion and robbery.
Last year police investigating the INLA and associates in County Londonderry seized controlled drugs with an estimated value of £10,000.
The INLA has been talking to intermediaries representing the British and Irish governments for several months.
The group is also believed to be engaged in talks with the head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, General John de Chastelain about putting its weapons beyond use.
RTE Report:
INLA ends campaign of violence
Sunday, 11 October 2009 16:17
The INLA has announced that it is to end its armed struggle.
In a statement read out at the commemoration of its founding member, a spokesperson said that it would continue its campaign for a 32 County Socialist Republic through peaceful and political means.
This afternoon in Bray, Co Wicklow, around 60 republicans and socialists gathered for their annual commemoration of Seamus Costello.
Advertisement
He was the man who, 35 years ago, founded the Irish National Liberation Army.
After the traditional wreath -laying ceremony, a member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party, the political wing of the INLA, announced that the organisation had decided to end its armed struggle.
He said that the group had concluded that its objective of a 32 County Socialist Republic was best achieved through peaceful and political means.
The announcement brings to an end a 35 year campaign which has claimed around 150 lives.
After the IRA called its ceasefires in the 90s and eventually ended its campaign, the INLA remained in existence.
The INLA was notorious for the ruthless nature of its attacks and today's decision is both a significant and welcome development.
In recent years it was involved in several murders and has remained active in Derry, Strabane, parts of Belfast and in Dublin.
The PSNI and gardaí often linked it to racketeering and drugs related businesses.
INLA in BBC report
The BBC have reported that the INLA are to renounce violence. The BBC bourgeois media reports:
Click here for BBC report
An Irish republican paramilitary group responsible for hundreds of murders during Northern Ireland's troubles is to announce it is renouncing violence.
It is expected that the Irish National Liberation Army will say on Sunday afternoon that in future it will pursue exclusively peaceful means.
The INLA is a small but ruthless group that murdered more than 150 people, but has been on ceasefire for 11 years.
The group is expected to decommission its weapons within months.
The INLA was established in 1975, with many recruits being former members of the Official IRA.
They murdered Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave in 1979 by leaving a bomb under his car at Westminster.
The organisation was also responsible for one of Northern Ireland's worst atrocities.
In 1982 it killed 17 people in a bomb attack on the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly, County Londonderry.
The INLA also murdered loyalist LVF leader Billy Wright at the Maze prison. Three members of the INLA died in the jail while on hunger strike in the 1980s.
Despite being on ceasefire since 1998 it has carried out a number of shootings and engaged in a wide range of criminal activity.
The group has regularly indulged in bouts of bloody infighting.
In February this year, the INLA claimed responsibility for the murder of a drug dealer in Londonderry.
It is mainly involved in organised crime, such as extortion and robbery.
Last year police investigating the INLA and associates in County Londonderry seized controlled drugs with an estimated value of £10,000.
The INLA has been taking with intermediaries representing the British and Irish governments for several months.
The group is also believed to be engaged in talks with the head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, General John de Chastelain about putting its weapons beyond use.
My own view is that it is to their credit for holding to their ceasefire for 11 years. The IRSP/INLA have done a lot of good work against drug barons and improving the community particularly in Strabane.
It could be supposition from the bourgeois media. I rather wait for a statement from them.
Larry
Click here for BBC report
An Irish republican paramilitary group responsible for hundreds of murders during Northern Ireland's troubles is to announce it is renouncing violence.
It is expected that the Irish National Liberation Army will say on Sunday afternoon that in future it will pursue exclusively peaceful means.
The INLA is a small but ruthless group that murdered more than 150 people, but has been on ceasefire for 11 years.
The group is expected to decommission its weapons within months.
The INLA was established in 1975, with many recruits being former members of the Official IRA.
They murdered Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Airey Neave in 1979 by leaving a bomb under his car at Westminster.
The organisation was also responsible for one of Northern Ireland's worst atrocities.
In 1982 it killed 17 people in a bomb attack on the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly, County Londonderry.
The INLA also murdered loyalist LVF leader Billy Wright at the Maze prison. Three members of the INLA died in the jail while on hunger strike in the 1980s.
Despite being on ceasefire since 1998 it has carried out a number of shootings and engaged in a wide range of criminal activity.
The group has regularly indulged in bouts of bloody infighting.
In February this year, the INLA claimed responsibility for the murder of a drug dealer in Londonderry.
It is mainly involved in organised crime, such as extortion and robbery.
Last year police investigating the INLA and associates in County Londonderry seized controlled drugs with an estimated value of £10,000.
The INLA has been taking with intermediaries representing the British and Irish governments for several months.
The group is also believed to be engaged in talks with the head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning, General John de Chastelain about putting its weapons beyond use.
My own view is that it is to their credit for holding to their ceasefire for 11 years. The IRSP/INLA have done a lot of good work against drug barons and improving the community particularly in Strabane.
It could be supposition from the bourgeois media. I rather wait for a statement from them.
Larry
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