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SECOND UPDATE: Kincora boy abused by Mountbatten committed suicide months later. By David Burke.

by admin 26 August, 2019

This article was updated on 20 December 2019 with additional information about the ongoing refusal of the Gardai to release the log of a visit by the Warden of Kincora Boys’ Home to Mountbatten’s home in the Republic of Ireland (See section 2) and further evidence of a link between Mountbatten and the abuse of boys at Portora Royal School (See section 13). It has long been rumoured in Britain that Lord Louis Mountbatten was a paedophile. A book now on sale has dug up impressive new evidence confirming what Irish sources – including the Provisional IRA – have known for decades about his sexual predilections. So impressive is the new evidence that mainstream British media outlets such as The Mail on Sunday, The Sunday Times and The Sun are covering the story. The book contains sensational new information about Kincora Boys’ Home in Belfast. Curiously, while the British media are happy to report on Mountbatten’s abuse of boys generally, the sections in the book about Kincora are being ignored. The book is called The Mountbattens: their Lives & Loves, and is written by Andrew Lownie. The author is a respected and serious historian who was once a Conservative Party Westminster election candidate. He is still friendly with many Tory MPs including one recently retired Cabinet minister. Lownie is also author of a book on Guy Burgess entitled Stalin’s Englishman which had many interesting Irish angles to it. 1. LOWNIE WAS DENIED ACCESS TO CERTAIN IRISH STATE FILES ON MOUNTBATTEN During his research for the biography, Lownie tried to gain access to certain Irish State files including Garda files about Mountbatten only to be rebuffed. They may contain some interesting material. A Deputy Garda Commissioner who is now dead told Village a number of years ago that he had heard disturbing rumours about Mountbatten sexual activities before he was killed. Another Garda intelligence source says that he had heard stories that while Mountbatten had been living in India, he had had access to a 14 year old boy. If Garda Intelligence, led by Larry Wren, the Head of C3 during the 1970s, knew anything about Mountbatten’s predilections, or the presence of cars with Northern Ireland registration plates, or of teenage boys visiting his property at Classiebawn in the company of older men, he did nothing about any of it. The Gardai had a security at Mountbatten’s estate and must have noted the registration plates of visitors. This means that the Gardai should have logs for August 1977 which noted the arrival of the car belonging to Joe Mains, the Warden of the notorious Kincora Boys’ Home because he trafficked at least two boys to Classiebawn that month. If the logs still exist, will Garda Commissioner Drew Harris (ex-RUC and ex-PSNI link man to MI5) see to it that they are released and prove once and for all that an Anglo-Irish Vice Ring ring existed and it involved Joe Mains? While the Kincora scandal was exposed in 1980, it was not until 1982 that allegations about MI5 and MI6 involvement in the affair began to appear in the press. Wren became Garda Commissioner in early 1983. He had developed exceptionally close links with British Intelligence during his tenure at C3. If the logs of cars visiting Classiebawn prove to be missing, an inquiry should be held to see if they were destroyed under Wren’s watch. For further information about Wren’s strange career at C3 please visit https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2019/06/16570/ ‎ Hopefully the car registration logs still exists. Will the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) in London which is probing the existence of VIP child sex abuse request Drew Harris and the Irish Government to release the relevant logs for August 1977, and indeed for all of the summers Mountbatten stayed at Classiebawn? Mountbatten’s movements were of enormous importance to the Gardai in the 1970s. Typically, the first they would hear about his pending arrival in the country was a frantic call from MI5 in London to alert them that he had boarded the Hollyhead car ferry en route to Dublin. Mountbatten’s reputation inside the Garda was that of a man who was reckless about his safety. He often gave them a security headache. On one occasion he managed to disembark before the Gardai could reach the ferry and provide him with an escort. However, on this occasion his car broke down and they rushed to his aid inland. His vehicle was towed back to Garda HQ at the Phoenix Park in Dublin where it was repaired by the fleet service department. While the repairs were taking place, Mountbatten was given a tour of the HQ which had originally been built as a Royal Irish Constabulary complex. The Gardai who dealt with him found him to have been ‘a most charming man’. 2.UPDATE: LOGS NOT MISSING BUT DISCLOSURE CONTINUES TO BE DENIED BY THE GARDAI Since this story first appeared, the Gardai have persisted in their refusal to allow Andrew Lownie gain access to their Classiebawn car registration logs. They emailed Lownie on 7 October 2019 stating that files ‘generated during the course of a criminal investigation’ are considered confidential and hence they would not be releasing them. It is significant that they did not deny that the logs still exist. Lownie responded to this by writing back pointing out that the logs he was looking for related to August 1977, i.e. two years prior to Mountbatten’s assassination. There could have been no investigation of a ‘criminal’ nature in 1977 to an assassination that did not take place until 1979. The head of the Irish police, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris is a former RUC Special Branch officer who worked extensively with MI5. To date, he has not intervened to have the logs of Mains’ visit in August of 1977 extracted from the main file, copied and sent to Lownie. Instead, on 7 November the Gardai reverted to Lownie saying: ‘I wish to inform you that all such security logs form part of the Garda Investigation File, and for the reasons outlined in email

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Does ‘Nick’s’ conviction mean Jimmy Savile and Ted Heath are innocent? Yes, if you work for the British tabloid press. By Joseph de Búrca

by Joseph de Búrca 22 July, 2019

The more excitable elements of the British media are in something of a frenzy after the conviction by a Newcastle jury of Carl Beech, 51, a former NHS manager, for perverting the course of justice, i.e. telling the police a pack of lies. He has been sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. Beech’s deceit relates to the existence of an alleged murderous VIP paedophile ring based around Westminster involving Jimmy Savile, the former British prime minister Ted Heath, 1970-74, and others. Beech’s allegations prompted a £2million-pound Scotland Yard inquiry. Beech claimed he was a survivor of an “establishment group” which including politicians, military figures and spies. Absurdly, he claimed the group kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered boys in the 1970s and 1980s. This triggered an ill-fated probe that ended without a single arrest being made. Beech was found guilty after a ten-week trial at Newcastle Crown Court of 12 counts of perverting the course of justice and one count of fraud over a £22,000 criminal compensation pay-out he received for the alleged abuse he suffered. ‘Nick’ also known as (aka) Carl Beech aka Stephen Anderson aka Carl Anderson aka Samuel Karlsson. That Beech would be exposed as a liar amid a blaze of publicity was predicted by Village years ago. Village readers will be more familiar with Carl Beech as ‘Nick’. In the past he was a figure of anonymity merely referred to as ‘Nick’ in the UK press. His real name only emerged at the trial. Beech or someone acting in concert with him concocted a series of grotesque lies about a VIP paedophile ring which murdered boys. An array of gullible hacks in the British media initially lapped up the claims and splashed them all over the pages of their newspapers. They have now flipped and are in a frenzy of condemnation after his conviction on 22 July 2019 for deceit. No one, we are now told, can now believe a word Nick/Beech has ever said. Accounts of child abuse perpetrated by the likes of Ted Heath can now be dismissed as nonsense according to the former PM’s supporters because Nick made allegations about him. What next? Jimmy Savile is innocent too. Sir Cyril Smith was a paragon of virtue? Is there more to Nick the Deceiver than meets the eye, a lot more perhaps? RICHARD KERR SPOTTED ‘NICK’ AS A FRAUD FROM THE OUTSET Richard Kerr, who was a genuine victim of sex abuse, concluded Beech was a fraud years ago. When Beech made efforts to contact him, he was rebuffed by Kerr. Had Kerr fallen for Beech’s lies, he would now probably be the victim of tabloid derision. Instead Kerr was subjected to intimidation to get him to shut up. In December 2017 Village reported that a letter purporting to come from the Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) had been sent to him. The UFF had nothing to do with the letter so we instead referred to the authors as the “Paedophile Protection League (PPL)”. The letter was sent to Kerr in 2016. Kerr, who lives in Dallas, Texas, was a resident at Williamson House in the early and mid-1970s, and later at Kincora (1975-77). He was abused at both homes. He was later abused in England by various highborn lowlifes, including Sir Peter Hayman, the former Deputy Chief of MI6, who infamously left paedophile material on a London bus whence it was picked up by the police; and a senior and highly influential member of Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet. Before we turn to the so-called ‘UFF’ threatening letter, a little additional context will assist in explicating the underlying menace of it: Richard Kerr was a close friend of Steven Waring who was also a resident at Kincora. He committed suicide by plunging into the sea from the Belfast-Liverpool Monarch Ferry in 1977 rather than suffer any further abuse. Kerr has been haunted by his death ever since. Like Kerr, Waring had been taken out of Kincora and subjected to vile abuse on both sides of the Irish Sea. In November 2016 Kerr received the following anonymous letter: “DEAR RICHARD, HAVING READ AN ONLINE ARTICLE ABOUT YOU TODAY CONCERNING YOUR BEHAVIOUR IN LONDON IN 2015, A GROUP OF SURVIVORS HAVE RESEARCHED AND DISCUSSED YOUR ALLEGATIONS. IT IS OF MANY UK-BASED SURVIVORS OPINION THAT YOU ARE PLAYING A GAME AND WORKING FOR THE ABUSERS STILL. THERE ARE FIRST HAND ACCOUNTS OF YOUR BEHAVIOUR IN DOLPHIN SQUARE AND IN KINCORA INCLUDING ACCOUNTS OF YOU ACTING AS FACILITATOR FOR ABUSERS. THERE ARE ALSO ALLEGATIONS AND ACCOUNTS OF YOU ACTIVELY TRYING TO DISCREDIT OTHER SURVIVORS INCLUDING THE SUSPICION THAT YOU IN FACT KILLED STEVEN ON THE BOAT, RATHER THAN THE STORY YOU TELL OF HIM COMMITTING SUICIDE. WE DO NOT HAVE ANYONE IN TEXAS TO ACT AGAINST YOU. YOU HAVE BEEN DISCUSSED AT A VERY HIGH LEVEL AND ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT A THREAT, AS A GROUP WE WOULD LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU ARE NO LONGER WELCOME IN THE UK OR IN NORTHERN IRELAND AND IF YOU ARE SEEN, ACTIVE SERVICE UNITS OF THE ULSTER FREEDOM FIGHTERS AND THEIR FRIENDS WILL FORCIBLY REMOVE YOU TO AN AIRPORT. YOU ARE OBVIOUSLY A SURVIVOR OF ABUSE SO BY OUR OWN CODE WE CANNOT ORDER ANYTHING MORE; HOWEVER FEELINGS ARE RUNNING SO HIGH ABOUT YOU THAT WE CANNOT GUARANTEE YOUR SAFETY AND WELLBEING IN THE UK OR NORTHERN IRELAND”. The anonymous letter was posted from south East Anglia. There is, however, little or no mystery about the identity of its true author. Richard Kerr had made a number of trips to Ireland and the UK before he received the letter. During these trips he was – as he puts it himself – “hijacked” by some very unsavoury characters whom he instinctively distrusted and to whom he decided not to provide his address in Texas. This group pretended they were interested in exposing the VIP paedophile ring but in reality wanted to find out what Kerr was going to say about it and discredit him. They

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Robert Bradford MP murdered weeks before McGrath trial. By Joseph de Burca

by Joseph de Búrca 14 June, 2019

Lyra McKee’s book ‘Angels With Blue Faces’ is the result of a five-year investigation into what Robert Bradford MP was digging into before he was murdered. It is quite possible that she uncovered one of – if not – the most putrid British Intelligence dirty-tricks operations of the entire Troubles. If not for her, the truth about this grotesque event might have remained buried forever. Bradford, a Unionist MP, had campaigned against child pornography. What was going on at Kincora Boys’ Home clearly appalled him. He was ideally placed to inquire into the shadowy world that lurked behind Kincora as he was not merely a senior Unionist politician but also a British Israelite. The paedophile ring that preyed on the boys at Kincora – and other homes – included William McGrath, an Orangeman, friend of James Molyneaux MP, Ian Paisley MP, and other political figures. More importantly, McGrath was also a British Israelite. Once McGrath was arrested by the RUC’s Criminal Investigation Division, Bradford was in a pole position to pick up on the decades of gossip which had surrounded McGrath in Unionist political circles. The UVF, UDA, Red Hand Commando and other paramilitary groups also knew of his links to British Intelligence. The UDA even had Kincora under surveillance, an easy task as it was located at a cross roads. McGrath had also dug a hole for himself by boasting of his links to Britain’s spy agencies. By late 1981 hundreds if not thousands of Loyalists knew of McGrath’s bragging. In the very early 1970s the UVF had been allied to McGrath’s paramilitary organisation Tara but had distanced themselves precisely because of McGrath’s links to Britain’s spy agencies. Publicly, they walked out as a group from a Tara meeting on the basis that McGrath was a homosexual not a British asset because they did not want to highlight the intelligence connection. (See ‘Her Majesty’s Hatchetman’ on this website for the wider story of the UDA’s knowledge of Kincora.) Bradford and thousands of others knew all of this. Would MI5 possibly have deployed its Provisional IRA agent to murder him merely because of this? Hardly. Did they do so because as a sitting Westminster MP he could raise the issue in the House of Commons and had discovered a lot more? McGrath’s trial was set for December 1981 along with that of two other Kincora staff members. Bradford was clearly not going to interfere with a looming trial. But after it, the gloves would come off. Bradford was rubbed out a few weeks before the trial commenced. Lyra McKee’s investigation will add greatly to our knowledge of these murky events and uniquely, what Bradford was probing. Her book is now available for pre-purchase from Excalibur. —

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LYRA McKEE'S BOOK By Joseph de Burca.

by Joseph de Búrca 13 June, 2019

EXPOSING THE MOST SINISTER AND HITHERTO SUPPRESSED SCANDAL OF THE TROUBLES Lyra McKee’s book on the murder of Robert Bradford MP is to be published shortly. Copies of it can be pre-booked by visiting the website of her publishers, Excalibur. The book is called ‘Angels with Blue Faces’. Those interested would be well advised to pre-book it as it is sure to sell out quickly when it reaches the bookshops. Bradford was shot by an IRA unit in public in broad daylight in front of multiple witnesses. The faces of the hit squad were neither disguised nor concealed. They clearly believed they had little to fear from the RUC. They were never apprehended. One of the assassins has since been identified by a witness as a notorious British agent. Lyra McKee’s book will undoubtedly flesh all this out. The date upon which Bradford was murdered is crucial: 14 November 1981. At that time MI5 and MI6’s involvement in the intelligence cesspit that swirled around Kincora Boys Home, Williamson House and other tortured children’s homes in NI was still a secret, at least insofar as the public was concerned. In the background the Kincora cover-up was firing on all four cylinders. The trial of three of the staff at Kincora took place the following month. MI5 and the RUC were determined to control the evidence so that it would appear that the only abuse that had taken place was that perpetrated by the staff at the home. One key RUC Kincora investigator assaulted at least one former Kincora boy, Richard Kerr. He did so in Preston, England. Kerr had been abused by politicians, paramilitaries and others. The RUC officer told Kerr to keep away from the trial in Belfast and even threatened to arrest him for engaging in homosexual acts. Pause and think about that for a moment: the boy had been abandoned by his parents; raped by an adult male at Williamson House as an 8-year-old while clutching a soft toy, and then pimped out for the next decade to Loyalist terrorists, a high profile and still popular British TV star, a number of Tory MPs among many, many others. The RUC officer who assaulted him is alive and well. He can rely on the RUC/PSNI and MI5 to safeguard him from inquiry in return for keeping their most vile secrets under wraps. (See also ‘Kincora Survivor’ and ‘How the Anglo-Irish Vice Ring Operated’ and ‘Suffer Little Children’ on this website.) The TV star has been involved in a child charity in recent years. Richard Kerr is prepared to name him and identify the address in London where he was abused by him, to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse. So far, it does not appear interested. Also in the months in the run up to the trial, William McGrath, the sadistic ‘Beast’ of Kincora prowled around Belfast hunting his former victims down in a vehicle driven by a group of hoods. They menaced and threatened at least one of the boys to stay silent. That victim told his story to Chris Moore who published it in his book on Kincora. The thugs were probably Tommy Lyttle’s UDA henchmen. (See ‘Her Majesty’s Hatchetman’ on this website for further details about Lyttle and MI5.) As part of the Kincora cover-up, McGrath’s friend and supporter, the Reverend Ian Paisley descended upon the Cumberland Hotel in London to bully Richard Kerr into keeping quiet. He warned him not to tell anyone about the ‘Englishmen’ who had abused the boys he knew. (See ‘Blackmailed’ on this website.) Two Englishmen, Peter England and Robert Imrie from the Northern Ireland Office were named in the House of Commons by Ken Livingstone in respect of Kincora a few years later. (See ‘MI5’s Flasher-General’ on this website.) The RUC also forged at least one witness statement purporting to be that of an Englishman with access to files on McGrath who was stationed at Lisburn Barracks where Britain’s military and civilian services were based. Village will be reporting on this in the near future. One of the most depressing Kincora stories is that of Stephen Waring. The RUC did not need to threaten him for he had committed suicide by jumping from the Monarch Belfast-Liverpool car ferry in 1977 rather than suffer any more rape. Crucially, the RUC only interviewed boys who had been abused inside the home by the staff. Richard Kerr, the boy assaulted in Preston by the RUC officer, had been one of a smaller sub group taken to the Park Avenue Hotel, the Europa Hotel, a hotel in Bangor and other venues to be abused by paramilitaries such as John McKeague and also a senior DUP figure. Stephen Waring was also part of this group. It was a quite small one. A number of them have since died – apparently by suicide – but at least two are alive. The key point of this article is that by November 1981 MI5 and the RUC’s multifaceted cover-up of Kincora was holding fast. Robert Bradford MP may have been on the verge of exposing it. Then, he was killed by the MI5-controlled hit team, the Kincora trial proceeded without exposing the MI5 dimension to the scandal. When John McKeague – the most important Loyalist terrorist of the late 1960s and early 1970s – threatened to expose what he knew shortly after the trial if he was to be arrested, he was shot dead by MI5 agents in the INLA. His death occurred in February 1982. (For more information on McKeague see ‘Profiled, The Men Who Tried to Kill Haughey’ on this website.) Joss Cardwell, the senior Unionist politician who ran Belfast’s children’s homes, committed suicide a few weeks later (or so we are led to believe) when the Kincora focus fell on him. He was a key figure in trafficking Kincora boys such as Kerr and Waring to London. It was on one such trip that the flamboyant TV star abused Kerr. The media, however, were onto the

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Lyra McKee’s forthcoming book may raise questions of the State-sponsored assassination of a sitting Westminster MP by an MI5 agent inside the Provisional IRA.

by Joseph de Búrca 12 June, 2019

The British Establishment transformed itself into a lightning conductor to harness the visceral anger generated by the senseless killing of Lyra McKee in Derry on 18 April. It then redirected that energy as a debilitating shock into the heart of the New IRA. No less a figure than Britain’s PM Theresa May turned up for Lyra McKee’s funeral in Derry to highlight the disgust felt by the UK. Leo Varadkar performed the same task for the people of the Republic. Arlene Foster and Michelle O’Neill were given a dressing down from the pulpit for not getting together, before shuffling up next to each other on a pew at the funeral and a new lease of life was injected into the talks to reinstate powersharing at Stormont. The much derided Secretary of State for NI must have thought all her birthdays had come as one. Lyra’s courageous friends took up her cause and were much admired on TV screens around the world as they daubed the walls of the political offices associated with the New IRA in Derry with blood red palm prints. An anti-paramilitary slogan was sprayed across the famous Free Derry mural. ‘Not in our name. RIP Lyra’, it read. While the New IRA reeled in shock, the PSNI and MI5 reaped a propaganda windfall they could never have dreamt of. All told, the riot on the night of 18 April not only failed to goad the Northern State into an overaction likely to alienate Nationalists in Derry as the New IRA hoped, it resulted in the latter organisation shooting itself in the foot. The fact that Lyra McKee was a LGTB campaigner hoping to marry her partner was seized upon by the mainstream media, and raised her international profile to higher levels. The fact she came from a state where gay marriage is not permitted, generated more headlines. No one anywhere had a single bad word to say about her. Her friends have kept her LGBT flag flying. They recently appeared on Channel 4 News where they criticised the failures of the NI state to do anything to advance LGBT rights (aside from spend a miserable few hundred pounds). On a professional level McKee was deservedly lauded on all sides for her journalistic instincts. She was described as an award-winning writer chosen as one of Forbes 30-under-30 most promising young journalists. It couldn’t have looked better from an anti-paramilitary propaganda perspective for the Establishment until suddenly this week news of the content of her book began to leak out. While no one at Village has seen it yet, it looks very much like it is going to open a door on the clandestine links between the Robert Bradford MP murder and the Kincora child sex abuse scandal. What an irony therefore that the British Establishment is going to have to tear Lyra McKee’s reputation apart or weather the fallout from her book. It is sure to become a bestseller. Will the Tory yeomanry who came out to defend Ted Heath after the Wiltshire police exposed him as a child abuser in 2018 now form up to villify Lyra as a gullible conspiracy theorist? The Bradford murder may yet prove to be every bit as egregious as the infamous State sponsored murder of the solicitor Patrick Finucane in February 1989. Why was Bradford really murdered? Lyra McKee’s book may be about to shine a light over British State involvement in the killing and add a gruesome new chapter to the Kincora scandal. Kincora is arguably the most atrocious British excess of the Troubles. It is a hydra-headed monster that incorporates a multitude of crimes including decades of child abuse, blackmail, proxy terrorism and the perversion of justice. In more recent times MI5 and MI6 have lied to the Hart Inquiry (which swallowed the lies whole). Kincora is a scandal that will not go away. Will Lyra McKee’s forthcoming book raise uncomfortable questions of the State-sponsored assassination of a sitting Westminster MP by an MI5 agent inside the Provisional IRA? We have only weeks left to find out precisely what Lyra McKee discovered, or more precisely what she unravelled about the lines of inquiry Bradford was probing. What was it he found out that led to his death? All of the plaudits heaped on Lyra McKee may soon turn out to be an underestimation of her talent.

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Lyra McKee to expose Kincora-driven murder. By Joseph de Burca

by Joseph de Búrca 11 June, 2019

Lyra McKee’s book on the assassination of Robert Bradford MP is to be released within a matter of weeks. The book will explore the deeply sinister links between the slaying of Bradford and the Kincora Boys Home scandal. Village readers will be familiar with the scandal on account of the reports we have been publishing about it since 2017. While we await the publication of the book, readers are invited to scour our archive to view our revelations about Kincora. The archives of Ed Moloney’s ‘Broken Elbow’ blog are also well worth a visit. Moloney was crucial in breaking a series of revelations about Kincora in the 1980s and has never lost interest in the scandal. A recent entry in his blog concerns the death of Valerie Shaw who tried to end the suffering of the children at Kincora by telling Ian Paisley about it. Paisley did nothing for the boys and lied about his knowledge of Kincora to his last breath. The work of the late Liam Clarke in the Belfast Telegraph provides further insights and is readily available online. Further details about Kincora can be found in the following books: Who Framed Colin Wallace by Paul Foot The Kincora Scandal by Chris Moore Also of note is Martin Dillon. He is the author of a series of books which are worth their weight in gold for anyone who wants to learn about what really happened in the shadows during the Troubles including Kincora. His book, The Dirty War, is essential reading. Village will be posting further short articles on the ramifications of Lyra McKee’s book, ‘Angels with Blue Faces’ over the next few weeks.

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Politics

Special Advocates and the murky role of MI5 at the expense of former Republican prisoners in Northern Ireland

by Dieter Reinisch 9 May, 2019

I HAVE KNOWN Ciaran Collins for several years. Days before we first met at a political meeting in Dublin, Ciaran had attended the funeral of Michael Lutton in Lurgan, Co Armagh. Lutton was a member of the Continuity IRA (CIRA) who died on 1 November 2010 and received a military funeral. I had never heard the name Michael Lutton before, but Ciaran, still mesmerised by the atmosphere of the funeral kept on talking about him. It was, coincidentally, Michael Lutton’s anniversary when I met Ciaran on a chilly All Hallows 2018: I had just arrived in Belfast from Vienna. It was almost 6:30 pm when I reached Ciaran’s house on the outskirts of West Belfast, and I was looking forward to the cup of tea in his kitchen that is usually the first thing I do in Belfast. The kettle was puffing nicely when suddenly he jumps up, throws the tea in the sink and shouts: “I haven’t produced myself today”. Before I understand, Ciaran is in his car on his way to the PSNI police station. Ciaran is a former Republican prisoner. After four years in HMP Maghaberry, he was released on licence in September 2016 under strict terms. Although his sentence was over in 2017, he got handed an extra two years for “national security” reasons. Every single day since his release he has had to produce himself before 7 pm at the PSNI police station, he is not allowed to leave Northern Ireland, he has a list of ten people he shall not have any contact with, and he is not allowed to reside in the Greater Craigavon area. Ciaran is originally from Craigavon, his 72-year-old father, his relatives, and his partner with their three children aged one, six, and ten, all live there. His legal representative, Darragh Mackin of Phoenix Law in Belfast says: “Ciaran is subject to the most restrictive conditions in the constituency. He has been deprived of his liberty and forced to live in isolation away from his family”. “The Governor just came to me and said: That’s it, you are out of here”, remembers Ciaran of the day he was released from prison: “So I went to the reception desk to collect my stuff, and they told me that I could not go home. I went to my aunt in Belfast and stayed there for a while”. Ciaran is one of many former Republican prisoners with particularly harsh conditions imposed upon them. There are currently about a dozen Republican prisoners held in Roe, the separate area for Republicans in HMP Maghaberry. There are dozens who have served their sentences but face strict licence conditions. However, Ciaran’s case is different from other cases. On 7 October 2014, Megan Lindsay wrote in a letter to the Offender Management Unit HMP Maghaberry on behalf of the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) that “the PSNI has confirmed that it does not hold any information indicating that Kieran [sic] Collins is involved in terrorism or linked to a terrorist organisation, or any information which if disclosed would be damaging to national security” (emphasis in original). The only security information provided about Ciaran in a security report dated 25 June 2014 is that he took part in an “ongoing protest/issues with Dissident Republican Prisoners in Roe”. This line refers to his participation in a series of protests by Republican prisoners demanding the implementation of an agreement reached between the prisoners and the Northern Ireland Prison Service in August 2010. This on its own would not have affected his release terms. Based on this report from the NIO, Ciaran and his legal representatives expected his release in 2015. However, Ciaran was not released, and in autumn 2015 closed material procedures (CMP) were initiated. In CMP, also known as “secret courts”, the evidence is withheld from the accused and his legal team for “national security reasons”. Instead, a Special Advocate represents the accused during closed hearings. This Special Advocate is not allowed to provide any information from the closed evidence to the accused and his legal team. “I was supposed to be out the previous year”, Ciaran remembers. He only met his Special Advocate twice: “That was a guy from England. He said to me: In there, I am your eyes and your ears, you need to trust me. But I said I don’t know who you are. I never met you before’. His legal representative was told not to contact the Special Advocate. He points out that “I have never seen the full evidence against me”. As of today, Ciaran still does not know why he was not released in 2015 despite a favourable report from the NIO the previous year. He also does not know why his release on the licence was extended for another two years despite his having served his full sentence. In addition, he does not know why the evidence was withheld from him and his legal time. In other words, he is not aware of all the allegations being made. In this way, Ciaran’s legal representatives were kept in limbo, unable to defend Ciaran. hy did Ciaran get a Special Advocate appointed after a favourable report from the NIO was issued? Special Advocates are used sparsely in the UK justice system. In Northern Ireland, they are merely used for high-profile Republican and Loyalist cases. The use of a Special Advocate in the case of Ciaran indicates that his case is of particular interest to the Security Service. Ciaran was convicted of unlawful possession of a gun. On 20 September 2012, he travelled in a convoy with two other men. Both cars were stopped and searched. The statement of evidence says that the “two other men were assessed by the Security Service (MI5) to be CIRA members”. However, solely Ciaran was charged and eventually pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon in suspicious circumstances. In prison, Ciaran disassociated from his former comrades, leaving the prisoners’ support group Cabhair which supports CIRA prisoners, and became a