ANGUISH IN NORTHERN IRELAND

...The next big thing is the use of supergrasses...

...Roisin was calm even when Black linked her husband to the murder of an Ulster Defense Regiment soldier...

...There has always been a tendency in security policy to use methods that are illegal or are on the border of legality," he says...

...Bit by bit we completely discredited all of Black's statements," Roisin says...

...Politicians boast of a renaissance in Belfast, where forty new restaurants have opened in the last eighteen months...

...This is not England...

...They are protesting the use of uncorroborated supergrass testimony in trials against loyalists-supporters of Northern Ireland's union with Britain...

...The witness on the stand, supergrass informant Harry Kirkpatrick from the Irish National Liberation Army, averts his eyes from the dock as he accuses the defendants...

...Black's final testimony described in elaborate detail the hallway in the Loughlin home where the damning conversation ostensibly took place...

...They say it's okay taking terrorists off the streets, but the thought of one innocent man, even one, going down with a dozen terrorists would scare the living daylights out of anybody...

...One of the successful Sinn Fein candidates, Gerry Doherty, was convicted of bombing the Guildhall in Derry for the IRA nearly eight years ago...

...Roisin was then pregnant with their second child...

...In all likelihood, the man wielding the gavel is an Orangeman—a member, as are most Establishment figures in Northern Ireland, of the Protestant supremacist Orange Order...

...What they'll say is, 'We'll not charge you with stealing a car or breaking into a house if you keep a watch and report bac to us.'" About seventy-five demonstrator have gathered outside the Wood bourne police barracks...

...No forensic evidence or any other corroborating proof was introduced against Gerald...

...In 1922, most of Ireland declared itself independent, but the predominantly Protestant northeast section remained linked with Great Britain...

...The police in Northern Ireland are the first army of the State, really," he says...

...The Royal Ulster Constabulary's job from the beginning was to secure the boundaries of the State rather than to do ordinary police work...

...This is Northern Ireland, and as far as Britain's concerned, Northern Ireland has always had its own system, which is not justice...

...Those in the blue and green uniforms far outnumber the fifty or so spectators who watch from above behind the plexiglass window of the public gallery...

...Solicitor Paddy McGrory has worked on many supergrass defense cases over the past few years...

...Her husband, Gerald, is locked up in Long Kesh prison on the word of republican supergrass Christopher Black...

...The only defense possible in such a case is an attack on the character and credibility of the supergrass...

...Po lice are supposed to use those oversizec projectiles only as riot-control weapons never firing them directly at individuals Needless to say, there was no riot going on in Emma Grove's living room...

...From 1971 to 1975, you had internment without trial...

...This offends nationalists who are neither IRA members nor supporters wJK/I^F^* Ulster authorities, like their British counterparts, treat IRA violence simply as a criminal matter, not as a political issue...

...Roisin Loughlin knows that fear better than most...

...These developments, however, are only skin deep...

...For a brief time, the British army remained neutral and held the warring communities apart...

...John Mullen, a New York State judge from Suffolk County, observed Northern Ireland's criminal justice system in action...

...Grove was blinded by a plastic bulle shot through her living-room window...

...There, in the Crown Court, they are tried by a judge without a jury...

...This stance offends nationalists who are neither members nor supporters of the IRA...

...Britain sent troops into Northern Ireland as "peacekeepers" sixteen years ago...

...What will come after supergrasses...

...To make matters worse, the Unionist political parties fear that the recent Anglo-Irish summits are "paving the road to a united Ireland...

...Recent opinion polls in Northern Ireland show that 75 per cent of the population opposes the present use of supergrasses...

...Between 1975 and 1979, 85 per cent of all "terrorist" convictions were based on prisoner confessions made after detention for three to seven days at the Castlereagh or Gough interrogation centers...

...Still, Caroline Newell feels for "what the Catholic women are going through...

...Increasingly, people regard the courts with cynicism—as instruments of the police, not as dispensers of justice...

...She knows Gerald is innocent...

...The effect of this "Ul-sterization" policy is to drive the already bitterly divided communities even further apart...

...peaceful demands of the predominantly Catholic civil-rights movement: one person-one vote and an end to discrimination in employment and housing...

...Some have been waiting in this prison for as long as three years...

...There seems to me an increase in blackmailing people at a low level to keep the flow of information and intelligence going...

...Many of the charges in these cases are conspiracy charges," says barrister Ailish Kelly...

...McGrory detects signs of another change...

...This system would not be accepted in England," Roisin says...

...But every time we defended Gerald, Black just remembered something different...

...Gerald Loughlin's case and others like it are fueling criticism of the legal system...

...Certainly not to the families of the Royal Ulster Constables, who are considered "legitimate military targets" by the IRA...

...More police and spies delivering your milk and newspapers," he suggests...

...A lot of people here in Northern Ireland still believe this is a form of British justice putting IRA [Irish Republican Army] terrorists down," says Caroline Newell, one of those protesting...

...With the end of internment, you see a rise in more illegal methods of obtaining confessions...

...For now, of course, the Conservative Party holds 10 Downing Street...

...We didn't even know Black," she says...

...Efforts were made to reform the Constabulary, and the notoriously sectarian B Special Reserve Force was disbanded...

...Thirteen years ago I made a political statement by carrying a bomb into this building," says Doherty...

...the absence of a jury—when all that is put together, you have a system which is very, very far from anything that would be acceptable within our conception of due process...

...Barristers and solicitors are concerned about the long remands that keep accused persons in prison, on average, for two years prior to trial...

...British and Northern Ireland officials say use of supergrasses is bringing violence to an "acceptable level...

...In the courtroom, thirty-eight nationalist suspects are in the dock, surrounded by prison guards and policemen carrying submachine guns or other automatic weapons...

...What's more, Black named Gerald Loughran of 118 New Lodge Road...

...Although Thatcher and Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald promise more talks, Northern Ireland's nationalists hold out little hope that the summits will produce an acceptable solution...

...Roisin says Black "was paid money to tell lies...

...They know the IRA is central to Northern Ireland's conflict, but continue to ostracize the only political vehicle with influence over the outlawed organization...

...For example, there might be a conspiracy to cause an explosion...

...In our area, it's very common for completely innocent people to be lifted for no reason, just because the police want information...

...Claire Reilly can already see the blackmail operating in her Turf Lodge neighborhood...

...This scene is mirrored in the chamber across the hall, where loyalist supergrass William Budgie Allen fixes his gaze on the judge and names twenty-two defendants as terrorists...

...Although both governments permit Sinn Fein to contest elections in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, they refuse to include the party in discussions of national issues...

...We demand British justice," they shout...

...the length of time covered by the indictment...

...The loyalist families are saying, 'We want British justice.' What they don't seem to realize is that this is British justice...

...But acceptable to whom...

...I think this is a trial system to see how it operates, and people in Britain even now are starting to realize that the system isn't going to work...

...Competing for local offices for the first time, Sinn Fein took 40 per cent of the nationalist vote in May's elections...

...Antiterrorist policies seldom affected loyalists until the recent move toward a more "even-handed" approach...

...Replacing British troops with locally recruited police and army forces just means that Ulster Protestants suffer an increasing proportion of the casualties...

...The police are more interested in getting them to become informers...

...Despite occasional rumors of a diplomatic breakthrough, Prime Minister Margarei Thatcher hasn't endorsed a political solution to the Ulster conflict...

...They ar protesting the use of plastic bullets by po lice, and their ranks include relatives o plastic bullet victims...

...They worry, too, that police officers coach supergrasses, rehearsing testimony with them during the long pretrial periods...

...There, persons accused of "terrorist" offenses are held for trial on the uncorroborated word of "supergrasses"—convicted criminals pardoned in exchange for testimony...

...The number of loyalist defendants in the supergrass trials is unprecedented, and many of Northern Ireland's Protestants are outraged, particularly since they have always assumed the British were on their side...

...Rather than bringing them into court as supergrasses, they just leave them as sleepers and expose them to the risk that the IRA will catch on and kill them...

...But forging a lasting bond proved too difficult...

...For a short time, the resulting upswing in loyalist defendants led to small gestures of support and cooperation between loyalist and republican women...

...In their paranoia, the police treat the 40 per cent Catholic population as uniformly subversive...

...Now, he serves as a city councillor in the very building he had wanted to destroy...

...Under the Emergency Provisions Act, for example, an individual may be held for up to seven days for questioning without a showing of reasonable suspicion...

...Using a bullhorn, Short tells the demonstrators that Labour wants plastic bullets abolished, and she promises that it will happen as soon as her party takes power...

...Violence had erupted among loyalist Protestants who resisted the Donna DeCesare is a free-lance writer and photographer based in New York City...

...Young lads of maybe sixteen or so who steal cars for joy-riding or are involved in other antisocial behavior are not being charged even when they're literally caught redhanded...

...lis Ulster authorities, like their British counterparts, treat IRA violence simply as a criminal matter, not as a political issue...

...In Catholic working-class areas, residents see voting for Sinn Fein as a way of fighting back...

...Special legislation gave the police extraordinary powers of arrest and detention—first the Special Powers Act, then the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which applies to the entire United Kingdom, and the Emergency Provisions Act, which applies to Northern Ireland alone...

...The unemployment rate in Catholic areas far exceeds the 21 per cent national average and continues to grow...

...When you add the number of defendants on trial at one time...

...Outside the courthouse, members of Families for Legal Rights, a loyalist support group, have gathered...

...The judge said that while Black had perjured himself in the past, his statements about Gerald Loughlin had the "clear ring of truth...

...And the decrease in bombings may have more to do with changes in IRA strategy than with the number of "terrorists" now in jail...

...Amnesty International investigated this again in 1978, and the ill-treatment was curtailed," McGrory notes...

...Yet after a year in custody and a 117-day trial, he was sentenced to life in prison for murder...

...ANGUISH in Northern Ireland BLOOD in the streets TYRANNY in court BY DONNA DeCESARE On Belfast's Crumlin Road, a surveillance tower rises above black corrugated iron and barriers of wire mesh...

...Her own husband, George, was jailed on the word of a supergrass, but then released after the informant's testimony was ruled inadmissible...

...McGrory predicts intensified surveillance...

...As long as Thatcher and FitzGerald refuse to acknowledge the political nature of violence in Northern Ireland, they are destined to pursue politics in the twilight zone...

...The British imposed direct rule over Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s, and since then, British troops have become zealots in a campaign against "terrorism...

...What that really means is that the supergrass says that at sometime during year X, A said to B that they should take a bomb and bring it to C. There is no forensic evidence or, indeed, any independent evidence, since no actual explosion occurred...

...Claire Reilly is here guiding Emma Grove on her arm...

...the fact that it's made up of large numbers of seemingly unconnected episodes, the only common element being that it's the same witness testifying about all of them...

...Today, a group of defendants is herded across the street into an elaborate Victorian structure painted several shades of orange...

...Loyalists are shocked that Britain and some of their own politicians have abandoned them...

...Use of uncorroborated testimony is not foreign to our system in America," he says...

...Today's policy buzzword is "normalization...

...The acceptable level of violence was apparently found when the IRA began targeting soldiers instead of civilians...

...Mostly, Caroline wonders whether the British government "even cares about the Protestant people anymore...

...Supergrasses have fingered 450 persons altogether, with fewer than one-third of those loyalists...

...The whole place could be covered with a network of spies...

...Some supergrasses have admitted to striking deals with the police...

...Her friend Nessie Marchant believes the British will eventually rein in reliance on the supergrasses...

...It has been almost four years since the Royal Ulster Constabulary kicked down the Loughlins' door and hauled Gerald off to Castlereagh interrogation center...

...After Amnesty International's investigation and the European Court of Human Rights' finding that the British government was guilty of 'inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners,' the torture stopped...

...British and Irish officials continue to ignore the growing popularity of this political statement...

...They are never too fussy about the safety of these people, as distinct from their usefulness...

...The Royal Ulster Constabulary, the local police force, didn't stop loyalist fire-bombings of Catholic ghettos...

...I'm making the same political statement today...

...Shoppers are no longer frisked for bombs at police or army checkpoints around the city's center...

...Gerald and Roisin Lough/;'« never lived at that address...

...But what I witnessed in the Budgie Allen and Harry Kirkpatrick supergrass trials was totally unknown in my experience...

...Within this compound, a modern dungeon serves as a symbol of Northern Ireland's warped justice system...

...I was upset, but I didn't panic at the time because Gerald had been lifted before," Roisin says...

...British justice for loyalist prisoners...

...The Loughlin hallway, as Roisin was able to show, bears absolutely no resemblance to the one Black remembered...

...Indeed, the mainly Protestant police sometimes shot Catholic children and adults who were defending their homes...

...Clain Short, a Labour member of the British Parliament who is also there, isn't afraic to listen to Holland and Maskey, ever though Sinn Fein supports the IRA...

...Tish Holland and Alex Maskey, twe newly elected Sinn Fein councillors frorr the area, are in the crowd as well...

...In our area, it's very common for completely innocent people to be lifted for no reason, just because the police want information/ says Roisin Loughlin, whose husband is locked up in prison As order was restored, however, it became apparent that religious bigotry was a symptom, not the cause, of a much larger political problem—one rooted in Ireland's colonial past...

...There's lots of ignorance about the fact that there's lots of loyalists as well as Catholics involved in these trials...