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(by Henry McDonald, The Observer)
THE Irish National Liberation Army will maintain its ceasefire even if the Irish government suspends prisoner releases in response to the terror group avenging the death of one of its members in Dublin.In an exclusive interview with The Observer, the INLA’s leadership also confirmed that it rejected overtures from republican dissidents such as the Real IRA to restart the armed struggle. It described attempts to resume violence in Northern Ireland as "completely futile."
The INLA said it intended to kill members of a west Dublin criminal gang who murdered 22 year old Patrick Campbell in the city on October 6th. Campbell, an INLA volunteer, was buried in his native west Belfast on Thursday.
The republican terror group, which killed Margaret Thatcher’s close aide Airey Neave in 1979, said there would be "no bloodbath on the streets of Dublin" to avenge Campbell’s murder. An INLA leader said that the gang responsible would be "surgically sought out and executed" over a period of months.
Asked if the INLA was concerned that violence in Dublin would prompt the Irish government to freeze the early release of their prisoners - a deal worked out after the ceasefire last year - one of the terrorist leaders said:
"We will have to take that on the chin and even if they go ahead and suspend the releases I can assure you this will not break the INLA ceasefire. The ceasefire remains in tact because it is only option open at this time. There is no justification now for armed struggle in Ireland in the present circumstances."The INLA leadership denied that their dispute with the Dublin criminals was over drugs and said any member of their organisation involved in the drugs trade "would be dealt with in the severest of terms."
Shedding new light on the Campbell murder, the INLA leaders said the criminals killed him during a botched operation against drug dealers in Dublin. He said the INLA had initially surrounded the gang in a warehouse on the Ballymount industrial estate. Just as they were about to abduct the gang members, shoot them in the legs and leave them strategically placed around different parts of Dublin, a van pulled up outside. The INLA terrorists thought the van contained members of the gardai’s Emergency Response Unit who had shot dead one of their fellow members in Tallaght last year. Fearing they were trapped in a police ambush the INLA unit fled the scene. In fact inside the van were other members of the Dublin criminal gang, who caught up with Patrick Campbell, brought him back to the warehouse and beat him savagely. They then cut the tendons in Campbell’s legs and stabbed him several times.
The INLA leaders said they were caught in a dilemma not of their own making. "We did not want to take the guns out again but we reserve the right to defend our members. No organisation could tolerate what happened to Patrick Campbell. If it takes six months we will find the people responsible."
They also rejected reports that the criminals had no knowledge they were dealing with the INLA when they tortured and killed Patrick Campbell.
On the wider political front, the INLA said the new coalition of Real and Continuity IRA would achieve nothing by launching a fresh terror offensive.
"Where are they (the Real and Continuity IRA) going? What are they going to achieve? Even if they put 40 bombs in Belfast and the Brits agreed eventually to talk to them what would be the end product? Everyone knows it will still be something on the lines of the Good Friday Agreement with an Assembly at Stormont. The INLA told these people we were not interested at all in re-launching the war, that there is no need for it at this time," one INLA leader said.
The INLA repeated its offer of a "non-aggression pact" between them and their loyalist enemies in the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force. So far the loyalist terror groups have not responded to the INLA’s initiative.
"The idea of a non-aggression pact with the loyalists came out of what we saw happening in places like north Belfast where community workers and ex-prisoners on both sides were working to reduce sectarian tensions on the ground. We wanted to broaden that out to the armed groups, to ensure there was no sectarian violence in places like north Belfast, to make it more formal."
The terror group accused the Irish government of "double-standards" in the treatment of their prisoners compared to IRA inmates. They claimed INLA prisoners were denied parole and released much later than IRA members. The organisation also expressed concern over Dublin’s handling of the Seamus Ruddy issue - a murdered INLA member whose body was secretly buried in Paris by the organisation. The INLA said they had located the exact spot where Ruddy’s body was buried last July but so far the Irish authorities have been unable to exhume his remains.
"It is either incompetence on the Irish government’s part or else they are holding back in order not to embarrass the Provos because there has been no more progress in finding their ‘Disappeared’. "
The INLA has six prisoners in Portlaoise prison in the Republic and 18 in the Maze including Christopher "Crip" McWilliams who shot dead LVF leader Billy Wright outside H-block 6 in December 1997.