Ten-Thirty-Three by Nicholas Davies

Author:Nicholas Davies
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2011-05-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Shoot to Kill

At about the same time as the Force Research Unit was established, 14th Intelligence Company (often called ‘Det’ because its volunteers were Detached from their regiments for a two-year tour of duty in the Province) was also being set up to carry out dangerous undercover surveillance operations. Originally, the recruits brought in to staff the Det were all SAS personnel but their work became so vital and efficient, as well as highly successful, that the SAS were unable to provide enough personnel so volunteers were recruited from other army units. To this day, however, the Det is still under the control and command of the SAS.

Throughout the thirty years of the troubles, drastic action, euphemistically called ‘Executive Action’ in official security circles, had resulted in a number of IRA and Sinn Fein personnel being killed by members of the security forces. Secret but officially sanctioned killings of Provisional IRA members, in which the security forces were directly or indirectly involved, had been suspected throughout the on-going war with the Provos. Firstly, there were the MRF ‘cowboys’ who took the law into their own hands in the 1970s but who were disbanded after protestations from senior RUC officers that MRF personnel risked facing murder charges. Then, in the early 1980s, a series of questionable killings, which became known as the RUC’s ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy, caused serious political repercussions in Northern Ireland and the House of Commons. Allegations were made against members of the RUC’s shady Headquarters Mobile Support Unit (HMSU) that young IRA gunmen had been shot dead on occasions when they could just as easily have been arrested.

The series of killings – which Republicans described as ‘cold-blooded murders’ – began in early October 1982. Officers from E4A – the plain-clothes, surveillance wing of the RUC – had been tipped off that a large consignment of home-made explosives was to be shipped into the North. The lorry, which E4A knew contained the explosives, was tracked from south of the border to a hayshed off the Ballynery road, outside Lurgan. The shed, known as Kitty’s Barn, was a ramshackle building made of breeze-blocks and corrugated iron and was owned by Kitty Kearns, a woman in her seventies, who looked after retired greyhounds. The farmhouse and barn lay close to a staunchly Republican housing estate on the outskirts of Lurgan. Kitty Kearns was a local character, the widow of an old-time Republican who had died a few years years earlier.

Some nights later, E4A officers watched from a distance as six men took a total of seven hours to unload the hay lorry. When the men had finished their task and gone home, RUC explosives experts examined the barn and found 1,000lbs of explosives and some old-fashioned guns hidden behind the hay stacks. Officers from MI5, trained in counter-terrorist operations, were called to the scene and installed sophisticated listening devices in the roof of the barn. These were programmed to pick up not only conversations but also any noises suggesting the explosives or arms were being removed.

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