Dead Irishman: inquiry sought

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33512, 18 April 1974, Page 7

Dead Irishman: inquiry sought

fJV.Z P A -Reuter—Copyright)

LONDON, April 17.

Britain’s I tome Secretary (Mr Roy Jenkins) is being asked to investigate ' the activities of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch after the murder of an Irishman.

The request comes from the National Council for Civil Liberties,! which alleges that the murdered man had been forced to act as a police informer against the Irish Republican Army. ( The council says that the victim, Mr Kenneth Lennon, aged 31, called at its London office last week, three days before he was found shot in the head in a country lane in Surrey. He made a l"-page statement saying that he had been forced by the Special Branch to spy on I.R.A. sympathisers in England, the council says. The statement has since been shown to both Scotland Yard and the Home Secretary. According to a spokesman for the council, Mr Lennon said that he was afraid he would be killed by either the I.R.A. or the Special Branch making it look like an I.R.A. murder. “If Kenneth Lennon had never been approached by the Special Branch and asked to become an informer, he would be alive today,” the spokesman said. Mr Lennon’s statement to the council said that the Special Branch had encouraged him to become involved in a bank robbery in August

last year allegedly to raise I, funds for the I.R.A. He was encouraged later to I 1 1 become involved in an escape ■ , ‘ plot to free three men gaoled i, as a result of the robbery/ > according to his statement. ; ■ , Mr Lennon was found not; guilty last week of taking part ; lin the escape plot, but an-i other Irishman was gaoled! J for three years. ", Mr Lennon’s statement; 'claimed that the Special; 1 Branch had put pressure on I > him by threatening prosecu-j i tion over a civil rights de-1 monstration in Northern Ire- L land several years ago. J Ulster toll i In Belfast, unofficial statis- > tics from press officers for • the Army and the police show ; that over 1000 persons have i been killed in Northern Ire-j ■; land in five years of strife. ; The figures show that 996; i have died, but this does not) > include incidents like the one I ; in Armagh last month when - ■ the police mistook two plain-,' ' clothes soldiers for terrorist' • gunmen and shot them dead. ; Two more persons died! 1 yesterday. ? ’ Gunmen from a speeding >' truck shot a policeman dead ; ; while he was guarding work-i, • men repairing a bomb-; damaged police station at a ) village outside Belfast; and, : Joseph Neill, a member of the; - militant Ulster Defence Asso-! 1 ciation. died in a bomb blast' t at Porterdown.