I.R.A. accused of plotting to set fire to Catholic homes

Press, 2 May 1981, Page 8

I.R.A. accused of plotting to set fire to Catholic homes

NZPA-Reuter Belfast The British Government has accused the Irish Republican Army of planning to burn a Roman Catholic area of Belfast and blame it on the Protestants if Republican hunger striker, Bobby Sands, dies. A tough statement issued by the British Secretary for Northern Ireland (Mr Humphrey Atkins) accused the I.R.A. of mounting "a deliberately planned campaign of violence and destruction" if and when Sands dies. Mr Atkins charged that the I.R.A. planned to set ablaze Catholic homes after boarding the occupants with other Catholics as part of a campaign to whip up sectarian and anti-British feeling. He said that the I.R.A. had circulated leaflets alleging that certain areas would be overrun by Loyalist paramilitaries led by security forces. The leaflets called on residents to stockpile food and warned that those who did not co-operate in supporting the hunger strike would hot get essential goods the I.R.A. claim they will control in a crisis, Mr Atkins said. "Most contempHble of all, they plan wherever possible to use young people in the confrontation they seek with the police.” he said. Sands, aged 27, a convicted I.R.A. gunman who was recently elected to the British Parliament, is now in the sixty-second day of a fast and his mother, Rosealean,

said he was “prepared for the end.” His demand for jailed Republicans to be treated as political prisoners has been flatly refused by the Government. Three' other I.R.A. prisoners are also on hunger strikes. including Frank Hughes, aged 25. whose brother. Oliver, said yesterday he was very weak after 46 days of fasting. , Roman Catholics, who largely oppose British rule in Northern Ireland, have been preparing for an upsurge of violence in the wake of Sands’s death. Protestants, mostly loyal to Britain, have also said they are preparing for violence should Sands die. In London, the Prime Minister (Mrs Margaret Thatcher) also spoke out on the hunger-strike crisis. She repeated to Parliament that the Government would not concede political status to the prisoners. Yesterday saw the end of what appeared to be the last chance of calling off the fast. A special emissary from the Pope, the Rev. John Magee, left Belfast after failing to persuade the hunger strikers on behalf of Pope John Paul to end their action. Before leaving Belfast. Father Magee visited the bereaved families of two men murdered in I.R.A. attacks. Accompanied by Cardinal Tomas O’Fiaich, Roman Catholic Primate of All Ire-

land, he made a private visit to the family of a Protestant part-time soldier killed in an I.R.A. ambush on Tuesday. “They prayed beside the coffin and offered their deepest sympathy to his mother and other members of the family," a Church spokesman said. The two churbhmen also visited the family of a Roman Catholic member of the British militia who was murdered by the I.R.A. last Christmas. After seeing her son yesterday. Mrs Sands told reporters he was very weak and barely able to speak. She said she had promised him she would not allow doctors to save him if he lapsed into a coma. Although Frank Hughes, serving a life sentence for killing a British soldier, began his fast two weeks after Sands, his family said .he is almost as weak. He was badly wounded in a gun battle with British soldiers in 1978 and as a result his family said he is less resis-, tant to the effect of fasting than Sands. In Washington. 33 Congressmen sent a telegram to Mrs Thatcher urging her to start immediate negotiations to end the hunger strikes. The ad hoc Congressional committee for Irish affairs appealed to Mrs Thatcher “to initiate steps that would lead to a humanitarian resolution in the matter of Bobby Sands and other hunger strikers.”