DRUGS CRISIS: The Northern Scene

IRA MAY ALLOW DRUGS IF IT GIVEN A CUT OF PROFITS

Irish paramilitary groups are following the pattern across the globe of
armed groups graduating from political struggle into crime and
drug-trafficking, writes JIM CUSACK, Security Correspondent

In the weeks before he was shot dead by the IRA on February 11th last, the
Belfast drug-dealer Brendan Campbell had told anyone prepared to listen to
him that the IRA was out to get him because he would not pay it protection
money.

He insisted IRA figures in Belfast were allowing other drug-dealers to
operate in the city so long as the IRA got a cut.

While his story could be interpreted as an attempt to damage the
Provisional IRA, which has always maintained it never dabbles in drugs,
there is circumstantial evidence to support his claim. Campbell was the
ninth drug-dealer to be shot dead in Belfast by the IRA since it called its
first ceasefire in 1994.

While the IRA has taken stern action against certain dealers, a number of
Catholic drug-dealers appear to have been operating with immunity in
Belfast and in the Border area. While it might seem a suicidal prospect to
peddle drugs in nationalist areas of Belfast, the amount of drugs coming
into the North appears to be rising annually.

Moreover, a number of these dealers also appear to have a doubly charmed
life in that they also have a remarkable ability to avoid arrest and
imprisonment while operating almost openly.

There are strong indications that some drug-dealers are escaping arrest by
providing the Special Branches on either side of the Border with
information about paramilitaries. To stay alive, the dealers also pay for
"protection" from paramilitaries. The act of paying protection money is
also a good way of compromising paramilitary figures and could be a way of
eliciting information which would, in turn, by useful to the police.

According to Garda sources there are long-standing suspicions that a number
of the leading drug dealers in the Republic are double agents working as
police informants while buying off and compromising leading paramilitaries.

Clearly most paramilitary organisations have been heavily infiltrated in
recent years. The extent to which this is due to the use of
drug-dealers/agents has yet to emerge.

One major drug-dealing figure who seemed to lead a charmed life was Patrick
Farrell, was shot dead by a girlfriend in Drogheda last September. Farrell,
from Newry, Co Down, had built up a major operation, shipping large
quantities of cannabis in both directions across the Border.

He moved his drugs through the staunch Provisional IRA strongholds of north
Louth, Monaghan and south Armagh. He had an ostentatious lifestyle, and his
drugs activities were widely known. Yet he was never touched. Sources say
there was no doubt Farrell was paying off someone big in the IRA.

Another Border area drug-trafficker is a man in his mid-20s from Newry who
was closely associated with the Dublin gang which shot dead Veronica
Guerin. This gang had close connections with Dublin members of the Irish
National Liberation Army (INLA) and the young Newry man has family ties
with this group.

Gardai investigating Ms Guerin's murder arrested this man in February last
year in a flat where he had been taking cocaine with the girlfriend of one
of the murder suspects. He was taken into custody but released a short time
later. It is understood the RUC requested he be freed.

The INLA has probably had the most involvement in drugs-trafficking. Its
members always had a lax attitude to drugs as many of its members,
particularly in Belfast and Dublin, were "soft" drug users. From the late
1970s to the early 1980s close links between drug-dealers and INLA figures
began to emerge.

Two Dublin INLA figures, both from north Dublin and with reputations for
violence, more or less assumed control of the supply of cannabis to the
outer north Dublin suburbs from Finglas to Coolock and out to Swords. A
number of murders occurred in this period as other drug-dealers were forced
off the INLA men's territory.

One of the two is thought to have based himself in Amsterdam in the
mid-1980s and built up links with continental suppliers. In recent years he
is understood to have established links with Russian traffickers.

The two men dropped their INLA membership as their drugs trade grew but are
believed to have helped finance the paramilitary group which, in turn,
provided protection in Ireland.

In the late 1980s the men also began supplying INLA figures with ecstasy.
However, internal INLA disputes and arguments over missing money led to the
series of feuds from 1992 which more or less wiped out the paramilitary group.

Its foremost thinker, Jimmy Brown, was shot dead in one such feud,
depriving the organisation of anything approaching leadership. Although on
the surface Brown appeared a committed republican socialist, he was
actively involved in the organisation's drug activities. Sources recall how
he tried to justify the INLA's drug involvement because, he said, the money
it supplied could be used to sustain its "military" campaign.

There appears to have been a close relationship between the INLA and the
Dublin gang which killed Veronica Guerin as she threatened to expose their
massive cannabis network.