THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY....... Twenty-six men were convicted on the word of Harry Kirkpatrick. On their appeal against those convictions could well rest the future of the 'Anglo-Irish Agreement'
('The Hillsborough Treaty') . Based on a full transcript of the Kirkpatrick trials , the story of how these convictions were obtained shows why the 'Supergrass System' is a pale shadow of justice.
By Derek Dunne. From 'MAGILL' magazine, February 1986.
One strange aspect of the Kirkpatrick case is what happened between the end of the trial and the judgement. There was a gap of five weeks and in the interim , two other people were arrested.
Liz Le Guria is currently on bail awaiting trial on the 'word' of Harry Kirkpatrick - lawyers involved are puzzled as to why the RUC waited so long to pick her up . She was living openly in Belfast , paying rent to the local authority and collecting some social welfare payments , and her address and whereabouts would have been known.
She was also 'P-checked' (stopped on the street , questioned, searched and patted down) , and told her details will be entered into a computer and held on file : this was done once to her whilst she was in the company of an American lawyer . Now she has been charged with "conspiring to murder".......
(MORE LATER).
WHERE DO THE DRUGS GO ?
The official line is that the evidence is finally taken under guard to a certain multinational chemical-processing company that is under contract to the State Department of Justice to dispose of the substances and the packaging.......
From 'MAGILL' magazine , March 1988. By Marguerite Barry.
The State gardaí are becoming quite successful not only at making drug seizures * but also at publicising them , giving journalists and television crews unprecedented and punctual access to the details of their investigations and the results.
Freshly seized contraband is displayed with freak-show glory , and we are treated to graphic and not always entirely accurate descriptions of size , weight , 'street' value and the potential havoc to society that has been so narrowly averted etc. Then the audience claps and the show is over. But where do those drugs go ?
Who takes them away ? How many more hands do they go through ? And where is the final resting place ? The concerned citizen may ask if there is a guarantee that the capture so proudly displayed will never re-enter the market. Others may say - "Who cares...."
(* '1169...' Comment : as happens world-wide, the 'cops' will turn a blind eye to drug pushers who have been bullied into operating as their 'eyes and ears' in the community , to the mutual benefit of both: the pusher informs on his 'competition' , thus enlarging his/her own 'market' , and the 'cops' make propaganda out of 'doing such a good job'.)
(MORE LATER).
THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HEROIN IN DUBLIN....... The drugs crisis is one of the major problems facing young people in Dublin today. In large areas of the city it has now reached massive proportions , while in the inner city there is estimated to be a higher percentage of drug addicts and drug abusers than in Harlem in New York . But it has been only recently - 5 years after this epidemic began in earnest - that any notice has been paid to the problem. And even now the Free State government has failed to confront the crisis in a meaningful way . Tony Barry of Na Fianna Eireann has been looking at the issues for 'IRIS' magazine.From 'IRIS' magazine, December 1984.
Tony Barry : " And was there any violence from the drug pushers against the people on the committee and the other locals ? "
Noel Sillery : " Yes , well at the start , as I was saying, there was a formal committee set up. The drug pushers and their fellow-travellers tried to threaten each of the members of that committee individually . So what happened was that, at our next meeting. we decided that there wouldn't be a committee as such , but that every single person in the flats who was anti-drugs would be a member of a community 'committee' ."
(MORE LATER).
