A PEACE STEEPED IN BLOOD 

KILLING FIELDS: Five years after Ulster terrorists pledged to end the violence, they still rule with brutality and fear
by Ted Oliver


TRAPPED in a high-rise lift, soaked in his own blood, Andrew Kearney died one year to the day after the IRA ceasefire.

Around 10 Provisionals - men and women - burst into his flat as he lay on the sofa watching TV with his two-week-old daughter Caitlin Rose resting on his chest.

One of the gang lifted the child and handed her to Andrew's partner Lisa, warning both that any noise would be met with gunfire.

They then dragged the big 33-year-old, wearing only his boxer shorts, into the lift, disabled it, then shot Andrew in both legs through the arteries.

Why did these people, from an organisation that had declared a ceasefire 12 months before, put him in the lift?

Experience told them bullets fired through his legs into the stone stairwell floor were likely to ricochet and injure the gunmen.

They went back into the flat and ripped out the phone.

When they left, Lisa ran down eight floors, banging on doors for help, but everyone was too afraid to open up.

By the time she summoned help from a public phone, it was too late. Andrew was dead.

The IRA "ceasefire" was five years old yesterday but it is soiled in blood, terror and tears.

Ceasefires by various Loyalist factions which followed have been equally marred by beatings, shootings, bombings and murder.

Official figures from the Police Service of Northern Ireland show that since 1997 101 people have been murdered by terrorists, all but one civilians.

In the same time, more than 1000 people have been subjected to so-called "punishment" beatings and shootings.

The IRA's targets - at least 12 men dead and 440 shot or beaten - are mostly youngsters in the Catholic ghettos of west Belfast, where the only rule of law is the Provo's self-declared justice.

Some victims were car thieves or joy-riders. Some were vandals or burglars. Some threatened the terrorists' monopoly on drugs.

One west Belfast girl, trying to escape to a new life through further education, says: "You can always tell the drugs dealers in our area. They're the ones in wheelchairs using their mobile phones on the way to pick up unemployment benefits."

But some, like Andrew Kearney, would simply not bow to the bullying godfathers.

Andrew's mother Maureen, a retired nurse with, ironically, impeccable IRA credentials, died just under three years ago from a broken heart.

All who knew her remember her as one of the most courageous women they had ever met.

Her father had been an IRA man in the 1950s and 1960s. Her uncle was one of the first IRA suspects to be interned in 1971. Her cousin was Bobby Sands, the first hunger striker to die.

Just after Andrew was killed, she told me: "He was a gentle giant. He could handle himself but never picked a fight.

"One night he was in a local pub and the area IRA commander was giving a young lad a hard time, really bullying him.

"Andrew went up and told him to lay off, and it finished in a fist fight, which Andrew won easily, putting the guy flat on his back.

"That was enough for this man to order Andrew's death."

After the murder, Maureen became an outspoken critic of the IRA's beatings and shootings. She was on TV and radio and was never afraid to confront them.

She said: "I always carried a photo of Andrew and one day I saw the man who ordered his murder in the supermarket.

"I waved the photo in his face at the checkout and said, 'This is my son you had murdered.'

"Everyone started to move away. They all knew who he was. He just laughed in my face and said 'F... off' and walked out."

That same man was seen last week negotiating with senior police officers as a controversial Orange march passed through the republican Ardoyne area.

The same man organised a massive attack on security forces and, after the police exposed the plot, was spotted chasing off stone-throwers who might have damaged the image of the IRA and Sinn Fein in the world's press.

He is a major player in the peace process, despite being a man who orders a murder by proxy because he is not tough enough to do it himself.

He is just one of those Provos who rule the roost in their own areas and who are now accepted as macabre players in a bloody re-run of old Mafia-ruled Chicago.

The political opposition to police reforms from both sides of the divide has been ferocious.

The Unionists saw the old, mostly Protestant, Royal Ulster Constabulary as their last bastion against a resurgent IRA.

The IRA see the newly-named and reformed Police Service of Northern Ireland - recruits must be equally divided between Catholics and Protestants - as their rivals.

They want no interference in the protection rackets, smuggling, drug-running and prostitution which bring them millions of pounds in revenue each year and allow them to rule their own little, terrified kingdoms.

In adjoining areas of Belfast and in their own strongholds like Portadown, Loyalist terrorists try to fill the vacuum with their own degenerate violence and crime.

Loyalist terror leaders such as Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair are feted as heroes while ruling through fear and intimidation.

Just last week, Adair's UDA shot four men in punishment attacks within 30 minutes.

The sinister sectarianism is also still present. On Friday, two Catholic priests were lucky to escape when Loyalists threw four petrol bombs into their house in Newcastle, Co. Down.

And while the thugs rule their own fiefdoms, the warlords of the IRA Army Council, including three men who won seats at Westminster, continues its plans for war while pledging peace.

The IRA's "apology" to the civilian victims is being seen in Northern Ireland as yet another attempt to deflect attention away from its criminal activities. Two alleged acts of decommissioning have been heralded as a major change in policy but there is no visible evidence that anything serious has been disarmed.

And through all their peace proclamations, the IRA's top bomb makers were training the feared FARC killers in Colombia, swapping expertise in blasting police and army bases in Ulster for drugs and cash to boost their international terrorist street cred.

On the home front, brutality continues without mercy. Last year, Republicans carried out 65 punishment shootings and, in the first four months of this year, 34.

Muffled gunshots in the alleyways of Ulster may not have the same impact as bombs in Britain, but the screams of the victims are just the same.

By TED OLIVER: has reported on the Ulster troubles for more than 30 years