Bloody Sunday, election, Irish, Ireland, British, Ulster, Unionist, Sinn Féin, SDLP, Ahern, Blair, Irish America

(by Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune)

A volley of shots was fired by several gunmen at a ceremony in west Belfast yesterday attended by a 200-strong crowd which included prominent Sinn Féin members.

The shots were fired beside the IRA garden of remembrance on the Falls Road where the ashes of former Belfast Brigade OC (officer commanding), Brendan Hughes, were being scattered.

Among those in the crowd as the shots were fired were Bobby Storey, who was appointed head of Sinn Féin operations in Belfast last November, and west Belfast councillor, Fra McCann.

The shots were dispensed from an alleyway, just yards from the monument. Sources said several gunmen were involved.

Brendan Hughes, known as 'the Dark', spent 13 years in jail and 53 days on hunger strike. His gun battles with the British Army were legendary. People who attended the ceremony claimed the volley of shots was "a fitting tribute" to him.

The scattering of his ashes was organised by his old lower Falls, 'D Company'. Bobby Storey has been named in the House of Commons as the Provisional IRA's director of intelligence and has been allegedly linked to the £26.5 million Northern Bank robbery, the Stormont spy-ring, and the Castlereagh break-in.

Speaking last November, he said: "The conditions that produced the armed struggle are not the conditions that exist today." He added that he had "no qualms about moving things forward in the challenge to find acceptable policing and justice".

This article appeared in the February 24, 2008 edition of the Sunday Tribune.

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