VICTIMS OF A POINTLESS WAR

Three men are murdered in horrific circumstances in the seaside town of
Scheveningen in Holland. The descriptions of the torture inflicted on them,
and of the final brutal manner of their murder, are harrowing in the
extreme. Putty or plaster of some kind, it is reported, had been rammed into
the orifices of at least one of them. All three were dowsed in inflammable
material and set alight. The bodies are so badly disfigured that they are
unidentifiable. To contemplate it, even in the abstract, is enough to stop
you in your tracks, to render you speechless at people's unbelievable
capacity for evil.

However, this grievous atrocity is less abstract for Irish people than
might, at first, have been imagined. The word seeps into the news media that
Irish passports have been found at the scene of the crime. Three Irishmen
were staying at the apartment in which the killings took place. The bodies
will not be easily identified - at the time of going to press, their
identity hasn't yet been conclusively confirmed. But there seems to be
little doubt that two of the murder victims are brothers, both in their 20s,
from the small town of Bansha in Co Tipperary. The other is a young man,
also in his 20s, from Ennis in Co. Clare. Suddenly, this is no remote
gangland slaying involving Eastern Europeans or North African drugs gangs,
on which we can look down with a disdain bordering on racism. No longer is
it one of those bizarre outbursts of bloody mayhem that take place at a
distance - usually in the US - and about which we can speculate in a way
that flirts with the academic. These were Irish country boys - nice lads,
from what you read, who wouldn't have been associated with crime in local
peoples minds. And they are dead. Very fucking dead indeed.

The newshounds gather. They talk to Dutch cops and Irish cops. Where
possible, they hook up with underworld contacts. Maybe someone will cast
some useful light on the circumstances of these sickening deaths. Maybe not.
Either way, it's chastening to read the reports and to observe the conflicts
of evidence. "This was small-time stuff. People in Holland have hardly
noticed" one informed source states. "It seems to be serious shit. with
serious people involved," another one testifies.

We are also treated to extraordinary statistics about the number of gangs
involved in the drugs trade in Holland, which are contradictory to the
extent that you wonder are the reporters inhabiting the same planet or
time-zone? The Irish Times claims that there are almost 400 gangs in the
drugs trade in Holland, among them 255 gangs of Dutch origin. "Up to 10
drugs gangs control the trade in the Netherlands." The Sunday Tribune tells
us, in contrast, quoting the investigative journalist Dan Van Hout, who is a
recognised authority on the subject.

Reading the reports, you get the sense that even a terrible incident like
this is seen as just another potential weapon in an ideological campaign
being waged on the issue of drugs. Maybe Holland is the greatest cesspit
imaginable, with gangs of mad psychos from all over Turkey, Surinam, Morocco
and Colombia - shooting one another in an orgy of ongoing violence and
blood. And maybe their vicious efforts are currently being amplified by the
arrival of a new breed of ruthless assassins from Serbia, Montenegro and
Albania. This is, more or less, what the reports in The Irish Times suggest.
But why, then, were there - reportedly - just 16 murders in the Hague area
of Holland in the whole of 1999, of which only a few may have been
drug-related?

Too often in this kind of situation, statistics are rolled out that read as
if they've come directly from police sources. Too often they conform to
apocalyptic stereotypes: law and order is breaking down, the very civilised
world we inhabit is about to come undone at the seams - every man to the
barricades before the heathen hordes have us all destroyed! Just think how
sweet a sound it must be, to honchos in the Department of Justice who want
to see a purge of 'rogue' asylum seekers, to hear dire tales of gangs in
Holland from Eastern Europe and Africa who are running amok, sufficient to
bring the place to its knees.

But is Holland any more lawless than Ireland, or Dublin in particular, where
there have been five verified gangland drug-related murders so far this
year? It would serve the interests of those who are ideologically opposed to
Holland's more liberal regimes in relation to drugs and prostitution to have
us believe that this is so - but in fact, on a per capita basis,
demonstrably it is not.

So what is really to be learnt from the gruesome murder of three relatively
ordinary Irish lads who were clearly well down the ranks, where drug dealing
is concerned? The first thing to acknowledge is that as long as drugs are
illegal, this trade will continue as a major area of criminal activity. And
in that context, rough injustice of this kind will inevitably be meted out
to those who - whether by accident or design - break the rules. In
particular, if police use informers, then we must recognise that there is a
very strong possibility that those informers are being induced to sign their
own death warrants.

Gardai will probably know the full story behind the double killing of Damien
Carey and Patrick Murray in Dublin in January of this year. Both had been
arrested at Dublin airport, carrying heroin, in the weeks before they were
savagely murdered. Is this why they were stiffed?

In the Patrick 'Dutchy' Holland case, a precedent was set when the court
accepted the uncorroborated evidence of a self-confessed accomplice turned
State witness, Charles Bowden, that Holland was involved in the importation
and distribution of cannabis. Uncorroborated evidence was accepted, again
from Charles Bowden, in the trial of Patrick Meehan for the murder of
Veronica Guerin.

For the criminal 'community' this is a watershed: all it takes is for some
underling to sing and you could be doing a life stretch. So what happens? If
you suspect they've turned State's evidence, underlings are dispensable. You
plug them.

Far from controlling crime. there is a convincing case to be made that the
War On Drugs promotes it. The rate of drug use and abuse remains constant.
The extent, and the brutality, of drug-related crime, meanwhile, gets worse
in Ireland as well as Holland. More essentially ordinary Irish boys will, in
the not too distant future, find themselves six feet under. It's just the
way that it is.

Of course you could take the drugs trade cannabis, ecstasy, heroin, speed,
cocaine, the lot - out of the hands of criminal gangs by legalising it. But
that would be just too logical, wouldn't it? Much better, it seems, to let
the murder and the mayhem continue.