Real IRA in terror threat to Scotland
SECURITY fears in Scotland were raised yesterday after the Real IRA issued a chilling threat to resume terror attacks on the British mainland.
The dissident republican group issued an Easter statement threatening to kill Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and resume terrorist attacks on Britain.
At a rally in Londonderry yesterday a hooded Real IRA spokesman claimed responsibility for the murder in 2006 of Denis Donaldson.
The former head of Sinn Fein’s administration at Stormont was shot in a remote cottage in County Donegal four months after confessing to having spied for the British. The spokesman threatened attacks on the mainland “when it becomes opportune” and said high-profile targets would be sought out.
The IRA never carried out an attack on Scottish soil during the 21-year conflict. But yesterday Professor David Capitanchik, an expert in terrorism, warned the Real IRA may change tactics, and high-profile events including the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow could become targets.
He said: “It might be easier for the Real IRA to carry out an attack in Scotland than in the rest of the UK.
“Since 2001, all efforts have been directed to Al Qaeda. Security forces in Scotland will have to look again at the situation in Ireland and this will divert efforts.” Yesterday the Real IRA branded Mr McGuinness, a former Provisional IRA commander, a traitor for holding the position of deputy First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Mr McGuinness last month denounced the hardliners as “traitors to the people of Northern Ireland” after members of the group murdered two British soldiers outside the Massereene barracks in Armagh. Sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, were the first troops to die in Northern Ireland since the IRA’s 1997 ceasefire.
Yesterday, warning Mr McGuinness he would share Mr Donaldson’s fate, the Real IRA spokesman said: “No traitor will escape justice … The republican movement has a long memory.”
Last night, Mr McGuinness had not responded to the threat but Sinn Fein’s president, Gerry Adams, told republicans at Belfast’s Milltown cemetery that there would be no return to the days of “sectarian domination and two-tier citizenship”.
