A senior police officer has repeated his belief that the dissident republican New IRA carried out a gun attack on an off-duty detective in Northern Ireland.
PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Mark McEwan made the remarks to the Northern Ireland Policing Board after being questioned over the possibility of loyalist involvement in the attack on Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell.
Mr Caldwell was shot several times in Omagh last week and is still critically ill in hospital. Police have made a number of arrests and three men remain in custody.
Sinn Féin board member Gerry Kelly asked Mr McEwan for an update on the investigation, saying there it had been a “bit confusing” as there had been reports of arrests across the community. He said it was believed that four of the people who had been arrested were from a loyalist background and asked if there was a loyalist connection to the shooting.
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“We know there is speculation about the motivation behind the shooting incident because of the community background of some of the people who have been arrested,” Mr McEwan replied. “We are very clear that this is still assessed as being an attack carried out by the New IRA and that is where the primary focus of the investigation is.”
Mr McEwan said people should not get “confused” with titles such as loyalism. “We still assess that this has been an attack carried out by the New IRA who have very explicitly stated that they wish to carry out attacks on police officers and John has been the target on this occasion.”
Chief Constable Simon Byrne thanked board members and the public for their messages of support, which he said had been relayed to the immediate family of Mr Caldwell.
Post-Brexit deal disorder
Meanwhile, police in Northern Ireland have the resources to deal with any loyalist disorder in the wake of a new post-Brexit deal, PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne has said.
Mr Byrne told the Policing Board that his assessment is that loyalism “remains calm” following the unveiling of the Windsor Framework earlier this week.
He was asked about a report in a Sunday newspaper which suggested loyalist paramilitaries could cause widespread disorder if any EU-UK deal did not scrap the so-called Irish Sea border.
The Windsor Framework was announced on Monday in an effort to remove post-Brexit trade barriers, creating a new system for the flow of goods into Northern Ireland.
In late 2021, two buses in loyalist areas were hijacked and burnt amid rising tensions over opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol.
“There have been some questions raised in the margins about the revisions to the protocol arrangements and the effect on loyalism,” Mr Byrne said. “At the moment, in the midst of everything else, we assess that loyalism remains calm in terms of the chatter, but we will keep that perspective under clear and careful review.”