A new Irish Republican Army faction in Northern Ireland claimed responsibility Monday for its first killing and defended the bloodshed as a necessary act of vengeance.
The group, a merger of factions that brands itself as simply the IRA, said in a statement to the Irish News in Belfast its members shot to death David Black this month because he worked as a guardat Northern Ireland's top-security Maghaberry prison.
About 40 members ofIRA factions are imprisoned there. The inmates have protested for more than a year against a policy of strip-searching them in search of weapons, drugs and cellphones.They have previously threatened to kill off-duty guards.
Black, 52, was shot ashe drove to work on Nov. 1. He had worked as a guard for three decades and expected to retire soon.
He was the first prison officer killed in Northern Ireland since 1993, the year before the dominant anti-British paramilitary group, the Provisional IRA, began an open-ended truce that inspired Northern Ireland's peace process. The Provisionals renounced violence and disarmed in 2005.
The group that claimed Black's killing was formed in July by the merger of three anti-British splinter groups led byformer Provisionals who still pursue violence in Northern Ireland. The merger represented an effortby breakaway IRA members to mount a more coherent campaign, given thatmost of their bombings and shootings fail because of faulty equipment or British intelligence tipoffs.
In the latest such episode, British Armyexperts dismantled a bomb Monday that had been found in the middle of a road near an elementary school in north Belfast. Police said the bomb had been attached to the underside of the intended victim's car but failed to detonate and insteadfell off.
The new group's statement said it had"a responsibility to protect and defend" its imprisoned members. It described the Black killing as a direct response to "the degradation" of prison strip-searching.
The three groups that now constitute the self-styled IRA faction are the Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs and Oglaigh na hEireann, the Gaelic equivalent of "IRA."
The Real IRA was responsible for the deadliest bombing inNorthern Ireland history: the 1998 car-bomb attack on the town of Omagh that killed 29, mostly women and children. The other factions are of more recent vintage, with the RAAD group focused on targeting criminalrivals in Northern Ireland's second-largest city, Londonderry.
A fourth faction also still committed to violence, the Continuity IRA, has declined to merge.
Sinn Fein, the Irish nationalist party thatdelivered the Provisionals' disbandment, said today's IRA remnant had no coherent political strategy and should abandon violence too.
Gerry Kelly, a senior Sinn Fein politician and convicted Provisional IRA car bomber, said any fringe IRA factions"cannot deliver a united Ireland," the traditional IRA goal of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom and into the Republic of Ireland.
"These groups need to realize that they cannot derail the peace process and their actions will not resolve anything within the jail or in wider society. They are killing for the sake of killing and should stop immediately," he said.
Black's family barred Sinn Fein politicians from attending his funeral. Like most prison officers, he came from the province's British Protestant majority and also was a member of the Orange Order, a conservative Protestant brotherhood that is despised by many Irish Catholics.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/11/12/new-ira-faction-claims-northern-ireland-killing-says-guard-slain-as-part-prison/
2 IRA Suspects Arrested over Prison Guard Killing
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/125669

Interesting....

Sinn Fein is the political arm of the IRA and most older Sinn Fein members were IRA militants\terrorists at one point in their life and some still are!

Just thugs! Omagh was a disgusting act.

A new dissident IRA group has expelled scores of members ina crackdown on informers.
The Sunday Times reports that the umbrella group for Republican terrorists is taking stern action.
The paper’s crime correspondent John Mooney claims that the new IRA group has stood down certain active-service units as part of a purge against suspected informers.
He says that command of the organisation has been transferred to republican hard-liners based in Northern Ireland ahead of a new reignof terror.
The new grouping has brought togetherthe Real IRA, Republican Action Against Drugs, and former members of the Provisional IRA.
The report says that more than 100 key members have been expelled in recent weeks in a purge against those it suspects of secretly working as informers.
Dissidents involved in organised crime and those who were involved in failed terrorist organisations have been dismissed.
The paper also says that former associates of dissident leader Alan Ryan, who was shot dead close to his home in Dublin in September, have alsobeen stood down.
The paper says that the new terrorist group has banned members from using mobile phones or discussing IRA business while indoors or travelling in cars.
One source told the Sunday Times: “They have learnt from their mistakes made in allowing telephone calls to be intercepted or cars tobe bugged.
“They are communicating without speaking over a phone. They are using every conceivable method to make contact without speaking directly to one another.”
The paper also says that the group now represents the biggest threat to police, prison officersand soldiers based in Northern Ireland.
They believe this new IRA was responsible for the murder of prison officer David Black in Antrim earlier this month.
The source added: “Black’s murder has been a morale booster for terrorists.They managed to target a prison officer without beingdetected, they managed to follow him home, shoot himdead as he drove to work and get away with it. They are feeling confident.”
Terry Spence, chairman of the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, told the paper that the British and Irish governments urgently need to take decisive action to thwart the group.
He said: “This new IRA group has consolidated its position. They have access to explosives and very sophisticated weapons. It is quite obvious that the degree of decommissioning of IRA weapons was never 100%, and the evidence that there is still Semtex available in some quantity is extremelydisconcerting.”