Six Held in N.Ireland Over IRA Florida Gun Case

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (Reuters) - Police in Northern Ireland arrested six people Tuesday as part of a long-running investigation into an Irish Republican Army plot to smuggle guns into the province from the United States.

The arrests, linked to an international police operation which has already led to convictions in the United States and Ireland, come at a sensitive time for the province's peace process, with the IRA under heavy political pressure to disarm.

"Four men and two women have been arrested in Belfast and North Antrim and are helping police with their investigations into the planned illegal importation of firearms into Northern Ireland by republican terrorists," said a police spokesman.

The arrests are part of a criminal inquiry involving police in Northern Ireland, Britain the Irish Republic and the FBI which began when postal staff in England found a large number of firearms and component parts in boxes mailed from the U.S.

In 2000, four people were jailed by a Florida court for terms of between 20 and 56 months for buying and illegally shipping weapons through the U.S. mail.

They were acquitted of more serious charges of conspiring to aid terrorists and to murder or maim people in Northern Ireland.

Earlier this year, another four were convicted of firearms offences in the Irish Republic in connection with the same case.

The arms, mailed from Fort Lauderdale in packages disguised as toys and electronic equipment, included around 100 handguns, rifles and shotguns, as well as armor-piercing ammunition.

Although the investigation is long-standing, the new arrests will again focus attention on the IRA after allegations it was spying on British ministers in the province prompted Britain to suspend the home rule government.

Protestant politicians have refused to re-enter government with the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein until the Catholic backed guerrilla group proves its long war against British rule in Northern Ireland is over for good.

America:From behind the Mask - the IRA and Sinn Fein by Peter Taylor

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ira/readings/america.html

In 1981, following the slow and agonizing deaths of ten men during the IRA hunger strike at the Maze prison in Belfast, recruits flocked to the 'Provos', determined to strike back at the government of the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, whom they accused of murdering their comrades. Now more than ever, the IRA needed not only guns to arm the hundreds of new Volunteers but also heavy weaponry to level the playing field and take on the British army. It was to America that the IRA's General Headquarters' Staff (GHQ) - the people who run the IRA's 'war' - turned for help. Across the Atlantic, the IRA's arms-buying network was overhauled and streamlined. A senior IRA figure came over from Ireland and told veteran arms supplier, George Harrison, that he was being stood down. Harrison had been diligent in his job. Throughout the seventies, he had shipped over 2,500 weapons and a million rounds of ammunition to Ireland. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) believe that this figure is a 'conservative estimate'.

Harrison was telephoned and told, to his dismay, that 'Skinny Legs' would be taking over. 'Skinny Legs' was Gabriel Megahey, a Belfast republican who had joined the IRA after the upheavals of August 1969 and had later gone to England and taken a job in Southampton. He was now being sent to America to put George Harrison out of business. I met Megahey in New York, where he is currently fighting deportation, and asked him what his role had been. 'The Federal Government would deem me to have been the Officer Commanding (OC) of America and Canada.' I asked him if this was true but he would not elaborate. 'That's what they have on record,'

My job at that time was to do something to save the hunger strikers. We had men dying and I felt it was a moral duty to do something about it. Specifically, I knew Brendan Hughes very well. [Hughes was on hunger strike for fifry-three days.] I'd been a good friend of his for many years and it hurt me deeply that Brendan was lying on a death bed.

What Megahey did not know was that the FBI knew he was coming. In the wake of the IRA's assassination of Lord Mounbatten and the killing of eiighteen British soldiers at Warrenpoint on the same day in 1979, the FBI had reorganized to combat the growing threat from the ERA's procurement operations in America. The British were delighted that at long last the United States Govenunent, now under President Reagan, had grasped the fact that much of the blood being spilled on Irish soil was the result of American arms and money. In May 1980, an FBI 'PIRA Squad' (Provisional IRA) was set up in New York under Agent Lou Stephens, a veteran of anti-IRA operations in the seventies. At its height, Lou Stephens' 'PIRA Squad' was running around seven hundred wire taps. One of them was on George Harrison's phone.

At first the FBI did not know who 'Skinny Legs' was. It was only some time later, whilst carrying out surveillance on another IRA suspect's house on a hot summces day that they saw the suspect talking to a man on the veranda in shorts, who had'very thin legs'. Stephens and his unit put two and two together, got in touch with their British counterparts, and found that Gabriel Megahey emerged from the files, Megahey was placed under FBI surveillance. To Stephens and his team, he became known as 'Panicky' because he was clearly so surveillance conscious. Another suspect, Gerry McGeough then appeared in the frame. McGeough came from County Tyrone, had joined the Provisional IRA in 1975, been active during the hunger strike and then gone on the run following an alleged murder attempt on an off-duty part-time soldier who was working as a postman. It was decided that McGeough's considerable talents as an Volunteer would best be used in America so he was sent over to join Megahey's arms procurement operation. 'The hunger strike had the effect of re-awakening an Irish American giant,' he told me. 'An Anglophobic one.'

Irish America fulfilled certain functions. They supplied guns, weapons, war material and financial and moral support. It was obvious to me personally that if we were going to prosecute a war, we would have to have the right weaponry with which to do it and I saw my role as helping to get that in place.

McGeough started work in Florida, travelling the state with a young American woman whose driving licence was used to buy dozens of sophisticated assault rifles from gun shops and arms dealers. Buying weapons across the counter in America posed no problem as all citizens have the constitutional right to bear arms and McGeough had the ready cash to pay for them. They were stored in a camper van and driven to the North-Eastern seaboard for shipment to Ireland by IRA sympathizers who worked in the docks and elsewhere. I asked McGeough what sort of quantities he was assembling. He said the last consignment consisted of somewhere in the region of maybe forty or fifty weapons, that's Armalite AR 15 assault rifles, Heckler and Koch HK 91 s. McGeough ensured that the arsenal reached New York docks. Impressed by McGeough's cool efficiency, Megahey asked him to supervise the most important arms procurement operation ever undertaken by the IRA in America. Word had come from a senior IRA figure at GHQ, who today is believed to be one of the most uncompromising members of the IRA's ruling Army Council, that the men on the ground, in particular in operational areas like South Armagh, needed missiles to shoot down British army helicopters and deny the enemy their dominance of the sides. Megahey needed to be told no more.

We felt that if we could nullify the helicopter, we would be well on the way to winning the war. A surface to air missile (SAM) or a Red-Eye missile will zero in on the heat of the helicopter motor and bring it down and you don't need too much knowledge to know how to use it.

Gerry McGeough's role was to acquire the missiles, do the negotiations and basically to oversee with me the whole operation in America.

McGeough was enthusiastic.

Taking out British army helicopters would have worked wonders for morale and boosted our ability to prosecute the war on a wider level. It would also have had a corresponding effect on the British, not just operationally but in terms of undermining their morale and weakening their resolve.

Megahey and McGeough were no strangers to the shady world of arms dealing. The missiles they sought were there to be had if they made the right contacts. At the time, with wars raging in Nicaragua and Honduras in Central America, some of which were financed and supported by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), any weapon could be had with no questions asked if the buyers were prepared to pay the price.

Megahey says he had $80,000 on hand to finance the missile deal. Neither man was surprised to be told that negotiations had to be conducted in New Orleans, a jumping-off point for the arms supply route to Latin America. Megahey told McGeough to check that missiles were on offer. The rendezvous was a shabby office on the upper floor of a waterfront warehouse in New Orleans. Megahey had told McGeough to observe, say nothing and let the man who went with him do all the talking. In the room were a group of men, some obviously Latinos others 'regular Americans'. The two IRA men were asked who they were and what they wantsed 'D'ye ever hear tell of the Provisionals?' said McGeough's accomplice. 'Well, that who we are. What we want are SAM missiles.' Did they have the money? Yes. How many did they want? Five. That would be $50,000-$10,000 each. The deal was agreed and another meeting arranged for two weeks later at a New York hotel, when details were to be finalized. McGeough then reported back to Megahey.

Gerry felt that it was 'a go' and that it was what it seemed to be. We just had to come up with the money.

Megahey decided to go the meeting himself to make sure the IRA was not being ripped off and there were no hitches. The meeting was held in a room at the St Regis hotel. This time, only one arms dealer was present, whom Megahey assumed to be the arms' nerwork's 'Mr Big'. Megahey introduced himself as the IRA's 'Number One man in the USA' and was surprised to find that before business began, he was given an intensive interrogation by the arms supplier. 'Panicky''s suspicions were aroused when the man said delivery of the missiles would be handled by the dealers. Megahey would have none of it. 'You're gone. The truck's hit. Money's gone. Missiles gone. I'm gone. The only one to lose is us.' Megahey suggested that they both offer themselves as hostages to secure the deal. 'I myself will personally go as the hostage,' he said. 'Wherever you want. I'll sit with whoever you want me to sit with. If I'm going to gaol, somebody's going down the hole. I know one thing for sure, if any of my men get nicked, you're dead!' But Megahey also offered a sweetener. 'What we're dealing with here moneywise is chicken shit,' he said. 'If this goes OK, then we're prepared to come in with a lotta big money.' It seemed the missiles were almost home and dry and Megahey and McGeough had pulled off the most important arms deal in the IRA's history.

Gabriel Megahey left home at 10 o'clock on the moniing of 21 June 1982 to begin work on a construction site in Manhattan where he worked as a crane and elevator operator. As he walked off the site, the FBI swooped. 'Federal agents threw me over a car with a barrage of guns in my ears and took me down to the FBI's Central Headquarters.' It was the culmination of the PIRA Units' 'Operation Hit and Win'. The arms consignment at New York docks that Gerry McGeough had helped put together was also hit to reveal around sixty high velocity rifles and dozens of timer devices destined for the IRA's bombs which enabled them to be triggered up to a mile away. 'It was better than sex,' remembers Agent Lou Stephens, 'Three times better. We really saved a lot of lives.' Megahey was sentenced to seven years. The evidence was incontrovertible. The FBI had recruited an informer from within Megahey's unit and secretly videoed the meetings in New Orleans and New York. The arms dealers were FBI agents posing as gun runners. Stephens had even ordered the missiles from the Brooklyn Navy Yard with strict orders to de-activate them first. But Gerry McGeough escaped the FBI's net, and went on the run in America before returning to Ireland and the 'war'. He was due to return to Northern Ireland when it was decided that his talents, proven even more in America, would be better employed in Europe where the IRA was about to reopen the Third Front in its campaign. On 31 August 1988, McGeough was arrested on the Dutch-German border in a car in which two AK 47 assault rifles and three handguns were concealed. It was to be almost four years before his case was resolved, not by the German courts but by the American authorities who sought his extradition to stand trial for his gun-running activities. The German authorities suspended the case before a verdict was reached and agreed to his extradition. On return to the United States McGeough stood trial in Louisiana and was sentenced to three years. He was released in 1996 and returned to Ireland. I asked him if he had any regrets. He said he had none and had only fulfilled what he considered to be his 'patriotic duty'.

Tuesday, 26 November, 2002, 18:16 GMT Six arrested over 'IRA gun-running' About 100 weapons were transferred to the PSNI   Police involved in a long-running investigation into IRA gun smuggling from the United States have arrested four men and two women in Northern Ireland. The police said the arrests in Belfast and north Antrim were connected to a continuing inquiry which began in 1999 when guns were intercepted en route from Florida to the United Kingdom. At the time of the 1999 sting the IRA did not deny involvement, but said its army council had not sanctioned any arms importation. The investigation, involving the FBI, Scotland Yard and police in Republic of Ireland, established a gun-running link between Florida and the IRA. Ammunition was part of the haul Four people were imprisoned in Florida in 2000 for illegally sending guns to Northern Ireland. And in October this year, four people were imprisoned in the Republic of Ireland on similar offences. Three years after the first arms seizures, the investigation has moved to Northern Ireland and the PSNI has taken over. Security sources have said there is nothing to suggest fresh evidence of IRA gun running. But in a statement, the PSNI said some of the guns bought in Florida and smuggled to Northern Ireland still have not been recovered - including shotguns, rifles and handguns. UUP's Michael McGimpsey: "Confidence in republican intentions further undermined" Although the latest developments are part of the lengthy investigation dating back to 1999, they are likely to have an impact on the current political situation. Following the suspension of Northern Ireland's political institutions over allegations of IRA activity, including spying at Stormont, last month, both unionists and the British Government have been calling on the IRA to cease its activities and disband. Reacting to the latest arrests, Ulster Unionist assembly member Michael McGimpsey said they would further damage confidence in the political process. He said the government should re-establish the devolved government without Sinn Fein. DUP assembly member Ian Paisley junior said the Ulster Unionists were now moving towards his party's position on the issue. But Sinn Fein assembly member Conor Murphy accused police special branch of engaging in a planned effort to undermine the peace process. Sinn Fein's Conor Murphy: "Special branch is trying to undermine peace process" He said the latest arrests would further undermine nationalist confidence in the police. A police spokesman said after the major inquiry in the US, England and Northern Ireland, the PSNI had now taken the lead role in the investigation. About 100 weapons and ammunition have been transferred by law enforcement agencies in America to the PSNI as part of the investigation. Convictions Siobhan Browne, from Dublin, who admitted smuggling guns to the IRA from Florida was sentenced to 20 months imprisonment by a US court in August 2000. She was arrested along with three others in July 1999 when federal investigators in Fort Lauderdale discovered weapons in packages posted to UK airports. After a five-week trial, the other defendants, Anthony Smyth, Martin Mullan, and Conor Claxton, were found guilty of buying and illegally shipping weapons from Florida through the US mail. But they were cleared of the more serious charges of conspiracy to commit murder and to maim in Northern Ireland and providing material support to terrorists. During the arrests, federal agents uncovered more than 90 weapons mailed from Fort Lauderdale in packages disguised as toys and electronic equipment. Most of the weapons were handguns, although investigators also uncovered shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including 50-caliber armour-piercing bullets used by snipers. A number of the weapons acquired by the gang were intercepted by police at Birmingham airport and by Gardai in the Republic of Ireland. Tuesday, 13 June, 2000, 22:29 GMT 23:29 UK Convictions for IRA gun smuggling Weapons Weapons were sent through the post A United States jury has found three men guilty of buying and smuggling weapons for use by the IRA. However, the court sitting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, cleared them on more serious charges of conspiracy to aid terrorists and to commit murder. Defendants Conor Claxton, from west Belfast and Martin Mullan and Anthony Smyth, both US residents, but originally from Ireland, were charged last year in a 59-count indictment that alleged they bought guns in Florida to help arm the IRA. Prosecutors said the three were opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process and had sent dozens of high-powered weapons hidden inside toys, video recorders and computers through the post. Police intercepted 23 packages containing 122 guns and other weapons allegedly posted by the group in New York, at Coventry Airport in England and in the Republic of Ireland. Accused could have faced life The police replaced the guns with fakes and followed their progress through the post. Claxton, 27, Mullan, a 30-year-old Philadelphia handyman, and Smyth, a 43-year-old car salesman from Weston, Fort Lauderdale, were arrested last July. If they had been convicted of the terrorist conspiracy charges, they could have faced up to life in prison. The IRA denied involvement in any attempt to smuggle arms into Northern Ireland when the guns were found, at a time which could have jeopardised the position of Sinn Fein - which has links with the paramilitary organisation - in the peace process. 'Fears for safety of Catholics' During the month-long trial, Claxton insisted that only he knew about the gun smuggling and that he did not know it was illegal. He told the court that militant Irish-Americans had pushed him to buy weapons because they feared Catholics in Northern Ireland would be in danger from loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces because of the IRA ceasefire and republican involvement in the Good Friday Agreement peace accord. The defence said the purchases could be considered self-defence, given the years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland. Mullan did not know the packages he posted for Claxton during a family holiday contained weapons, defence counsel said. Smyth thought he was acting as a middleman for legitimate gun deals, his lawyer said. 'IRA peace commitment doubt' After the verdict was read, Claxton turned to his family and supporters in the court and smiled, gave a thumbs up and hugged his attorney, Fred Haddad. Claxton, Mullan and Smyth are to be sentenced on 18 August. Siobhan Brown, Smyth's fiancée, was also arrested and pleaded guilty to one of 33 counts against her. She is to be sentenced later this month. Northern Ireland social affairs minister Nigel Dodds of the anti-agreement Democratic Unionist Party said the convictions were "a vindication for those who had called into question the IRA's commitment to peace". Tuesday, 15 August, 2000, 10:21 GMT 11:21 UK Woman jailed for IRA gun-running   Some of the weapons recovered by UK officials   A woman who admitted smuggling guns to the IRA from Florida has been sentenced to 20 months imprisoment by a US court. Siobhan Browne, who is from Dublin, was arrested along with three others in July last years when federal investigators in Fort Lauderdale discovered weapons in packages posted to UK airports. She will also have to pay a fine of more than $25,000 and three years parole following her release.   Judge sentenced Siobhan Browne to 20 months imprisonment   After a five-week trial, the other defendants, Anthony Smyth, Martin Mullan, and Conor Claxton, were found guilty of buying and illegally shipping weapons from Florida through the US mail. But they were cleared of the more serious charges of conspiracy to commit murder and to maim in Northern Ireland and providing material support to terrorists. A Miami district attorney's office spokesperson said the men faced jail terms of five to ten years when sentence is imposed on Friday. During the arrests, federal agents uncovered more than 90 weapons mailed from Fort Lauderdale in packages disguised as toys and electronic equipment. Most of the weapons were handguns, although investigators also uncovered shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including .50-caliber armor-piercing bullets used by snipers. A number of the weapons acquired by the gang were intercepted by police at Birmingham airport and by Gardai in the Republic of Ireland.   Special Report Three in court over arms charges The packages were stopped at Coventry Airport Thursday, July 29, 1999 Published at 08:39 GMT 09:39 UK Two men and a women from Ireland are expected to appear in court in Florida in connection with a transatlantic arms smuggling investigation. Conor Claxton, 26, Anthony Smyth, 42, and Siobhan Browne, 34, were arrested earlier this week and charged with various offences under America's Arms Export Control Act. They are expected to appear in Miami Federal Court on Thursday afternoon for formal arraignment. A fourth person, Martin Mullan, who was arrested in Philadelphia on Tuesday, is expected to be taken to Miami later. Ms Browne and Mr Claxton were born in the Irish Republic. Mr Smyth was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. The four face prison sentences of 20 years if convicted. The arrests follow the interception of eight packages containing guns by UK airport authorities. They were stopped at Coventry airport. Illegal export charges The case has raised fears that republicans in Northern Ireland are attempting to start a new campaign of violence by securing weapons in the United States. The parcels had labels on them which falsely stated they contained toys, video cassette players, stereo equipment, computers, baby clothes, radios and other items. All the packages were posted in south Florida and addressed to various individuals in Ireland, according to an FBI affidavit. FBI agents traced one gun, a .357 Magnum revolver, to a gun dealership in Boynton Beach, Florida, and the dealer is said to have identified Siobhan Browne as the purchaser. Ms Browne and Anthony Smyth are alleged to have originally approached the dealer at a gun show and after buying six guns inquired about buying a large consignment.