THE REAL IRA has claimed responsibility for the murder of key Sinn Féin member turned British informer Denis Donaldson in Co Donegal three years ago.
An Easter commemoration statement issued by the 32-County Sovereignty Movement to be read in Derry today claims it carried out the killing.
It also pledges the organisation to its struggle against “British occupation forces, the administrative arm of the British government in Ireland – be they in the RUC/PSNI, the Northern Ireland Office or the quislings in Stormont”.
The statement, which appeared in yesterday’s Sunday Tribune, denounced Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness who had, while standing alongside chief constable Sir Hugh Orde and First Minister Peter Robinson, branded dissident republican groups as “traitors”.
“A former comrade has come full circle and, with a knight of the British realm at his shoulder, he has labelled our gallant volunteers as traitors to justify his Redmonite stance and home rule politics,” the statement said.
The organisation likened Mr McGuinness to Mr Donaldson who, it said, the Real IRA shot dead at his remote cottage near Glenties.
“It fell to the volunteers of Óglaigh na hÉireann to carry out the sentence in our Army Orders and by the wider republican family. No traitor will escape justice regardless of time, rank or past actions. The republican movement has a long memory,” it said.
Turning to the murders of the two British soldiers at the gates of Massereene barracks in Antrim last month, the statement said the “tactical use of armed struggle can and does bring results”.
It warned that soldiers and police officers would continue to be targeted. “Óglaigh na hÉireann will continue to strike at the British occupation forces wherever and whenever we decide.” Anyone providing services to what it called the occupiers “have placed themselves in harm’s way”, the statement said, and it warned against joining the PSNI.
“Any young person fool enough to join the colonial police in the belief that the leadership of the Provisional movement will protect them, or give them cover, is sadly mistaken.” It accused the PSNI of being used “to spy, arrest, interrogate, brutalise and uphold foreign laws against fellow Irishmen”.
Republican Sinn Féin also criticised Mr McGuinness in its Easter statement.
Des Dalton told a commemoration in Ardagh, Co Longford: “In his rush to condemn a new generation of Irish people prepared to take on in arms the forces of the British Crown Provo British Crown Minister Martin McGuinness described them as ‘traitors’.
“He did so while standing in front of Stormont Castle – the seat of British rule in Ireland – flanked by the head of the British Colonial police in Ireland and the leader of the DUP.”
He dismissed Sinn Féin at Stormont, accusing them of failing to produce an Irish Language Act while claiming it would bring about Irish unity by 2016.