IRA VIGILANTES TELL PROTESTANT TO LEAVE OR DIE

Direct Action Against Drugs, the ruthless alias operated by the Provisional
IRA, re-emerged this week after nearly two years to order nine people to
leave South Armagh or face death. The group was responsible for nine murders
before the 1997 ceasefire.

Danny Kennedy, the local Assembly member for David Trimble's Ulster Unionist
Party, said that the threats raised serious new questions about the validity
of the IRA ceasefire, already being challenged in the courts. One of those
threatened was a 23-year-old Protestant single mother with a child aged
three who was now living in "abject fear".

Mr Kennedy, who has verified the existence of the new death-list with the
Royal Ulster Constabulary, said: "For the first time to my knowledge since
the 1997 ceasefire was called, the IRA, using a flag of convenience well
known to all, has threatened a member of our community rather than sticking
to 'internal housekeeping' like the recent murder of the alleged Belfast
Roman Catholic informer Charles Bennett."

Speaking at his house in the small town of Bessbrook, the home of most of
those on the list, Mr Kennedy said that a number of the targets had already
fled after the RUC visited each address to pass on details of the threats
contained in a letter sent to the offices of the Northern Ireland Housing
Executive in nearby Newry, one of the centres of Ulster's flourishing drugs
trade.

"This action is extremely serious as it is being taken as a sign that the
republican movement, or a faction within it, is flexing its muscles prior to
resuming its campaign of violence on a wider scale," the 40-year-old
Assembly member added. "How can we be expected to take seriously the Sinn
Fein claim that violence has been renounced when this sort of thing is going on?

"Even if there are drug problems in the area, we cannot have self-appointed
groups of thugs going around dealing with them in this way. The only
organisation that should be dealing with the issue is the RUC, though
obviously elements in the nationalist community are bypassing them."

The one Protestant on the list telephoned Mr Kennedy from her house, seeking
advice after the RUC's visit. "She was petrified, as this group is known to
have no hesitation in carrying out its threats. What is more sinister, I
have no reason to believe that she personally has any involvement in drugs."
he said. "She is now alone in her house with her child wondering whether to
flee and fearing any knock at the door."

The last known victim of the killer squads, who in the words of one
republican sympathiser, delivered with a wink, "use the same weapons and the
same personnel as the IRA", was Brendan "Bap" Campbell, 30, a notorious
Belfast drugs dealer shot as he left Planks restaurant opposite the city's
Lisburn Road RUC station in February, 1998.

The shadowy group emerged during the IRA's 1995 ceasefire and its
activities, mainly concentrated in and around Belfast, were seen by security
experts as a means for the IRA to remind the nationalist community that it
remained a force to be reckoned with, although its units were no longer
targeting loyalists or the security forces.

The only victim murdered outside Belfast was Ian Lyons, 31, shot dead on New
Year's Day, 1996, while sitting in his girlfriend's car in Lurgan, Co Armagh.

"Drug dealers were a convenient target because they were seen as scum by
most ordinary people, especially parents of children who got hooked," one
resident of a republican area of West Belfast said. "It was only when the
political heat was turned up on the IRA as a result of Unionist pressure
over the ceasefire that the group disappeared as mysteriously as it had
arrived."

Yesterday, fearing renewed political pressure, Conor Murphy, 37, the local
Sinn Fein Assemblyman, said in his heavily protected office near Bessbrook:
"I have been telephoned by five people on the list and have told them all
that the republican movement denies all knowedge of these threats. This
looks to us like a dirty tricks operation mounted by those most opposed to
the peace deal, anti-agreement Unionists."