PRIEST OFFERS TO MEET WITH CITY GUNMEN

Cleric’s bid to stop paramilitary attacks

A PRIEST has offered to meet the gunmen behind a recent series of brutal paramilitary-style shootings.

Two men were shot in Ballymurphy, West Belfast, while a third was attacked in the New Lodge area in the north of the city.

Fr Martin Magill, of St John’s on the Falls Road, is part of the Stop Attacks forum and has offered to intervene in a bid to end the assaults.

He said: “Ulster University academic Duncan Morrow will talk about the societal shrug.

“But this is not part of a normal civilised society. In April we’re heading on 20 years from the Good Friday Agreement, it’s time paramilitaries leave the stage. It’s time we as a community deal with this in a civilised way. This is a brutalising, traumatising way of dealing with issues.

“I would be coming in with an agenda that these must stop. But at the same time there would be a sense to at least listen and try and understand where they’re coming from. “Obviously disagreeing, being in a very different mindset to them. And yet at the same time I’m still very keen to understand why they would want to do it.

“This must be traumatic. What must it be like for someone who has been involved in a shooting to actually go home at night, to go back to a family, I wonder. How does he sleep?

“I suspect some of the ones involved over the years in these types of attacks must have difficulty living with their conscience.” BORDER Force have intercepted a haul of 8 million smuggled cigarettes.

The contraband was seized after officers searched a container that arrived at Belfast Port on a ship from Singapore on Saturday.

It’s the biggest haul at the port in six years and would have cost the Treasury £2.6million in unpaid duty and VAT.

Border Force spokesman John Oldham said: “The black market cheats honest traders and steals from the public purse.”

HAUL The cigs were stopped at Belfast Port UP IN SMOKE Cigarettes arrived from Singapore

TALKS Fr Martin Magill