THE IRISH National Liberation Army (INLA) is today expected to state it has decommissioned its weapons, an announcement that is also due to be confirmed by General John de Chastelain’s Independent International Commission on Decommissioning.
It comes just a day before a deadline for paramilitary decommissioning set by Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward.
Tomorrow’s deadline means that legislation will end which allows paramilitaries to move weapons without fear of prosecution if it is for the purpose of decommissioning.
Weapons recovered after tomorrow will be subjected to ballistic and forensic tests and people found with them or hiding or transporting them or linked to their use could face lengthy jail sentences.
There was an expectation of such a move from the INLA which over the course of the Troubles was responsible for some 120 murders including the killing in 1979 of Conservative MP Airey Neave, a friend of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
In October it was announced in Bray, Co Wicklow, that the INLA was ending its armed struggle and while there was no commitment to decommissioning at the time it was expected before the deadline.
The Bray announcement was made by Martin McMonagle, a member of the executive of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, political wing of the INLA.
He said future struggles would be political. “We urge all comrades, members, volunteers and supporters to join the political struggle ahead with the same vigour, commitment and courage that was evident in our armed struggle against the British state,” he added.
The INLA is believed to have been responsible for 111 murders from its formation in 1975 to its “complete ceasefire” in 1998 shortly after the Real IRA Omagh bombing, although it was involved in a number of killings since then. In Derry in June 2008 the INLA was blamed for the murder of pizza delivery man Emmet Shiels, shot dead when he intervened on behalf of another man who was being threatened by a suspected INLA gang.
The organisation is said by security sources and the Independent Monitoring Commission to be heavily involved in drugs dealing and other forms of criminality.
Over the years it has been involved in some bloody internal feuds and in feuds with other republican groups. Some of its most notorious members included Dominic McGlinchey and Dessie O’Hare. Its worst atrocity was the Droppin’ Well pub bombing in Ballykelly, Co Derry in 1982 which killed 11 British soldiers and six civilians. Three INLA members: Patsy O’Hara, Kevin Lynch and Michael Devine along with seven Provisional IRA members died during the 1981 hunger strikes.