Irish Protestant killers announce terror campaign

Press, 2 June 1980, Page 6

Irish Protestant killers announce terror campaign

NZPA Belfast! The Ulster Freedom Fighters, a shadowy group of Protestant assassins, has disclosed that it has started a campaign of shooting prison officers in Northern Ireland who have mistreated convicted Protestant extremists.- ' A man identifying himself as “Captain Black,” a pseudonym used by-the outlawed freedom fighters in the past; telephoned a radio station in Belfast and said. “We have shot one officer. Others will be eliminated.’ The caller said two Ulster Freedom Fighter gunmen shot and critically wounded a prison officer last week, but got the-wrong man. ■ Militant Protestant sources sav the group has at least seven prison officers on a “death list” t All the men, the sources

noted, have been identified by convicted Protestant extremists as ill-treating “loyalist inmates.’’

Several hundred Protestants are behind bars for terrorist crimes. Most of the province’s 2600 prison officers are Protestant and the Ulster Freedom Fighters’ move has stirred protests from other Protestant militants who object to killing their fellow churchmen.

The group’s move came as the Protestants’' rivals, the I almost exclusively Roman Catholic Irish Republican I Army, apparently -has called i off its campaign against the unarmed prison officers., The I.R.A. has assassinated 18 warders in the last two years in their bid to secure political prisoner status for convicted I.R.A. guerrillas.