[ad_1]
Taoiseach Micheál Martin has told Dáil that he will pursue both British and Northern Irish authorities in connection with the unwarned car bomb attack in Belturbet, Co Cavan, in which two teenage civilians were killed in 1972.
Loyalist paramilitaries were responsible for the bombing that killed Geraldine O’Reilly, 15, and Paddy Stanley, 16. However, there have also been reports of collusion by British security forces in the attack.
Mr Martin told Dáil that he would pursue the matter “with the British authorities and the Northern Irish authorities” because the families involved have been left “without answers” or without a lockdown.
He described the bombing on Belturbet’s main street as “egregious” and stated that he would “do what he could” to get answers for the families.
He told Cavan-Monaghan’s Fianna Fáil TD, Brendan Smith, that the Garda investigation into the killings was “still an open investigation.”
Smith also described the attack as a “heinous crime.”
He told Dáil that the attack emanated from Co Fermanagh, but claimed that “there has never been a proper or thorough investigation” by the Northern Irish authorities into what happened.
Smith said he presented new evidence to the Dáil last September regarding collusion between British state forces and loyalist paramilitaries regarding the bombings in the southern border counties.
He said this information comes from research from the University of Nottingham.
Rep. Smith said: “The least that these families, the O’Reilly and Stanley families, deserve is the truth.”
His electoral colleague, Congressman Niamh Smyth, said the RTE Investigates program last night on the attacks showed the “horror, trauma and tragedy of the case.”
Read more:
The Belturbet bomb: an atrocity that time forgot
He said he was “totally wrong” that 48 years after the attack, the families had not seen the Garda files on the bomb attack because their investigation was considered live.
Representative Smyth called for a “proper and full investigation into this atrocity.”
In the RTE Investigates program, it was revealed that a military commander of British Army forces in West Fermanagh admitted to cooperating with loyalist paramilitaries in the 1972 bombing of a bridge across the border between Co Cavan and Co Fermanagh.
The Aghalane Bridge had been used by IRA units in a series of raids in 1972 in south Fermanagh that targeted security forces, particularly local members of the Ulster Defense Regiment.
In a 2005 oral history interview with the Imperial War Museum, retired Major Vernon Rees described being approached by Jack Leahy, a Unionist councilman from Lisnaskea.
Amid growing fears by unionists about weak security along the southern side of the border, Leahy hinted that loyalist paramilitaries wanted to blow up the bridge.
According to Major Rees’ account in the recording, which was obtained by RTÉ Investigates, Leahy asked him if “he would feel better if that bridge wasn’t there.”
“Yes, of course he would, but there’s no way we can do anything about it,” Major Rees recalled saying in response.
Leahy suggested that Major Rees keep his soldiers away from patrolling the bridge for four hours.
Major Rees said in the 2005 interview that he found himself contemplating whether he should “cooperate … in destroying a main road in the UK”.
While British security forces, the Royal Ulster Police and the Northern Ireland Office had concluded that closing the bridge could alleviate security concerns, the Irish state was not prepared to close an approved road that it served as the main route between Dublin and Co Donegal. via Enniskillen.
Tensions in the area escalated in September 1972 after the murder on an IRA farm of UDR member Tom Bullock and his wife, Emily.
“I thought it would be wonderful if that bridge was down,” Major Rees recalled thinking. “So I leaked again through Special Section that there would be no soldiers on that bridge between eight o’clock … and midnight.”
At the agreed time, loyal paramilitaries planted an explosive charge on the old stone bridge.
After the explosion, Major Rees, then a Captain in the British Army, examined the bridge and found that the gang had not disabled it.
Instead of rounding up those who caused the explosion, Major Rees ordered an ammunition expert from his own unit to finish the job.
Major Rees said that destroying the bridge “saved dozens of lives.”
Against strong opposition from the trade union-dominated Fermanagh County Council, the Cavan County Council took steps to repair the bridge and reestablish direct links between Dublin and Co Donegal.
On December 24, 1972, cross-border traffic returned to Aghalane, using a temporary bailey bridge installed by Irish Army engineers.
Just four days later, loyalist paramilitaries drove a car bomb across the bridge into Belturbet in Co Cavan, detonating it on Main Street without warning.
[ad_2]