Dissident republican Mr Bobby Tohill has stated that he will not be taking a case against an alleged Provisional IRA gang accused of trying to abduct him from a Belfast city centre bar on Friday night.
Mr Tohill told yesterday's Andersonstown News that he had refused to make a statement to the Police Service of Northern Ireland about the beating he received in Kelly's Cellars bar on Friday. Four men face charges in connection with the incident and while the PSNI chief constable Mr Hugh Orde has insisted the Provisional IRA was involved, Mr Tohill now says he was not "kidnapped".
He said his recollection of events were unclear. "What I can remember is arguing and then fighting in Kelly's Cellars. I have not and will not be making any complaint to the PSNI about this so-called kidnapping affair. I will sign an affidavit confirming this was not a kidnapping." he said.
"The PSNI have been hassling me to make a statement, but the only one I'll be giving is to my solicitor saying I will not press charges," added Mr Tohill, who is a "Real IRA" supporter and previously was involved with the IRA and INLA. He said that a report in the Sunday World and other weekend newspapers that the foiled abduction was carried out by the IRA were wrong.
"A newspaper photographer gained access to my (hospital) room on Saturday and took my picture while I was drugged," he said. "This is the first full interview I have given to any newspaper after the incident. All I want is to be left in peace and get on with a normal life - something that I haven't had since first getting caught up in the conflict as a 12-year-old boy."
Some of his comments appear to contradict what he told the Sunday World and what he said in an earlier Andersonstown News interview given two hours before he was attacked in Kelly's Cellars.
Mr Jim McDowell, editor of the Sunday World, said that Mr Tohill gave an interview on Saturday and that at the time he was "lucid, if in an emotional state".
In that interview Mr Tohill said his abductors told him, "We're taking you to the Border. We're going to torture you and then we are going to execute you." In September Mr Tohill told the Sunday World that the IRA was planning to kill him. On Friday night, two hours before the attack, he told the Andersonstown News that "certain elements" in the IRA were conspiring with loyalists to have him murdered.
