DISSIDENT REPUBLICAN paramilitary groups remain highly active and dangerous but are still politically “marginal”, according to the 23rd report of the Independent Monitoring Commission.
The commission said in its last report that the dissident threat was at its highest level since the monitoring body first met in late 2003.
Yesterday it said the threat had not diminished. Commission member Joe Brosnan said dissidents were highly dangerous with the Real IRA responsible for most of the violence.
It killed one of its own members, Kieran Doherty, in Derry in February, alleging that he was involved in drug dealing – a claim rejected by his family – and was particularly focused on attacking members of the PSNI.
“The range and nature of RIRA’s activities were by any yardstick a very serious matter,” according to the commission. “It constituted much the most serious threat.” Over the six months under review the Real IRA, which murdered two British soldiers in March last year in Antrim, carried out 16 attacks against the PSNI, its premises and those associated with the police.
Since then, although not covered in the report, the Real IRA was also active, most notably carrying out a car bomb attack close to MI5’s HQ in Holywood, Co Down, last month. The commission said the Real IRA was in a state of “heightened activity”, was determined to kill and was committed to “undermining the peace process”. It was also involved in serious crime. “However, it is important to point out that this is no way the reappearance of something comparable to the Provisional IRA’s campaign of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s,” said Mr Brosnan.
“Operationally, RIRA does not have comparable resources in terms of personnel, money, organisation and cohesion, or range of weaponry and expertise; and it has not matched the range and tempo of PIRA’s activities.”
It was also important neither to overestimate nor underestimate the dissident threat, added Mr Brosnan. “While the threat from RIRA is dangerously lethal it is also politically marginal.”
The IMC said the Continuity IRA, which murdered PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, Co Armagh, in March last year, also remained a “major threat”, although it was not as active as the Real IRA.
“It was bent on improving its terrorist capability through recruitment, training and the acquisition of weapons. It undertook a number of shootings and other violent incidents, instigated public disorder and its members remained heavily engaged in a wide range of serious crime, some of it involving violence,” the commission reported.
It also referred to some reports suggesting that a considerable number of former Provisional IRA members were working with and providing bomb-making and other expertise to the dissidents.
“On assistance from former republican terrorists the issue is not a drift of significant numbers of people, which we do not believe has happened, but the provision of developed skills by a few people.”
The commission was satisfied the UDA and the UVF were honouring their commitments to end paramilitary actions. While both groups declared they had decommissioned the commission expressed suspicions that some members retained arms.
It said that while the INLA had also said it decommissioned there was no “evidence of a reduction in the involvement of members in non-terrorist criminal activity”.
On the Provisional IRA the commission said: “Our assessment is unchanged. We remain of the view we expressed six months ago and previously that PIRA has maintained its political course in the period under review and that it will continue to do so.”