Did IRA splinter group attack Adams’ home?
THE Northern Ireland peace process has come under renewed threat after a fireworks attack on Gerry Adams’ home that was blamed on an IRA splinter group.
CCTV footage shows a car driving slowly past the former Sinn Fein president’s home as a bundle of fireworks is hurled on to his drive.
The device hit the windscreen of a car, exploding feet from where Mr Adams’s young grandchildren had been standing minutes earlier and sending smoke billowing towards his home in west Belfast.
At the same time on Friday night, another firework device was thrown at the west Belfast home of his close ally Bobby Storey, a prominent Sinn Fein leader who is head of the party in Belfast. Police said there were no reports of any injuries in either attack.
Suspicion immediately fell on the dissident Republican group the ‘New IRA’ after a week of violence in Londonderry which culminated in 70 petrol bombs being thrown at police officers.
Dissident republicans are hostile to Sinn Fein, and in particular Mr Adams and Mr Storey, for having led the IRA away from violence and into supporting the party’s entry into mainstream politics.
Mr Adams, 69, has long been accused of being on the IRA’s ruling army council at the height of the Troubles, during which 3,600 died including soldiers, police officers and civilians. Although he attended the funerals of IRA terrorists, he has always denied being a member of the IRA.
He led Sinn Fein from 1983 until February this year, and helped negotiate the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which led to the IRA laying down its arms.
Mr Storey was involved in the Maze Prison breakout in 1983, in which 38 IRA prisoners escaped from the maximum security jail.
Hours before the two attacks, Northern Ireland’s police chief, George Hamilton, had blamed the New IRA for a surge in violence in Londonderry. The chief constable said: ‘We believe there are members of a variety of dissident groupings in this disorder. The New IRA is probably the primary grouping behind this disorder and behind these threats to police and these murderous attacks on police.’ On Saturday Mr Adams appeared to draw a link to the same group as he issued a personal challenge to his attackers to have the ‘guts’ to talk to him.
He said: ‘I am very thankful that no-one was hurt. Two of our grandchildren were in the driveway of my home ten minutes before the attack. For those who were involved in the attack if they have the gumption to sneak up on our homes I think they or their representatives should come and meet me. I would like them to have the guts and the gumption to sit down and tell what this is about.’
Mr Adams added: ‘ Those who are away from the peace process see us as the enemy and have made threats against us in the past. Martin McGuinness was under a live threat.
‘This was a serious attack. Had a child or anyone else been caught up in that blast, it would have injured or perhaps killed a child.’
Local reports have also raised the possibility that the attacks could have been the work of criminal elements hostile to Sinn Fein and seeking to capitalise on the tense atmosphere in Belfast during the July 12 loyalist commemorations. But there has been no claim of responsibility.
It comes at a sensitive time for Northern Ireland, following the collapse of power sharing between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein at Stormont last year and the repeated failure to restore devolved government.
A fifth of organised crime groups in Northern Ireland now have links to either loyalist or republican paramilitary groups, according to the National Crime Agency.