The Irish Republican Army (IRA) dissident has targeted prominent veteran of the now disarmed organization, Gerry Kelly, in his first public action since the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) admitted to the public leak of personal details of all its workers. The identity, rank and job location of the PSNI’s 10,000 officers and civilian employees were posted online this month in apparent internal human error.
The head of the force, Simon Byrne, said he was “convinced” that radicals from the so-called New IRA or another small group opposed to the peace process have accessed the police file. The file was visible to any user for at least three hours before being removed from the web. The list was uploaded to the digital platform in response to a query from the Freedom of Information law.
It was a serious breach in the protection of confidential data that does not concern only the volatile territory of Northern Ireland. Police in Norfolk and Suffolk, in eastern England, revealed on Tuesday that they have released personal information on 1,230 people, including crime victims and witnesses. In this case, the force attributes the potential crime to a “technical issue” while the PSNI admitted “human error.”
In Belfast, a version of the police roster, with officers’ surnames redacted, was taped to a wall outside Sinn Fein’s headquarters on Falls Road, the artery of the historic Nationalist neighbourhood. A photograph of Kelly, a former IRA prisoner and member of the now dissolved regional Assembly, had been inserted on the list, with an explicit message: “Gerry, we know who your colleagues are.”
“This is an obvious attempt by dissident Republicans to intimidate me. And even more ominous, it is a very public sign that dissidents have access to the confidential information in the leaked document. It poses a very real threat to affected officers and civilian personnel.” said Kelly, Sinn Fein’s spokesman on police and security matters.
The PSNI chief, who called off the holidays to deal with the imbroglio, assumes the New IRA is planning a campaign of intimidation and attacks, as well as “generating fear and uncertainty” among its members. Recruits from the nationalist and Catholic community feel more vulnerable to an attack by the group of radicals who reneged on the Sinn Fein-IRA tandem when the movement’s then leaders, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, endorsed the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
The dissidence left its deadly mark on August 15 of the same year. A car bomb exploded in the shopping street of Omagh, in the west of the territory, killing 29 Britons, Irish and Spaniards in the attack. The schoolboy Fernando Blasco and the monitor Rocío Abad visited the city that Saturday with their classmates from the study trip to Ireland. The victims were remembered in public and private acts, during the weekend and this day of the Virgin.
The 25th anniversary of the massacre coincides with a power vacuum in Stormont, where the main unionist party, the DUP, is boycotting home rule in protest of the Brexit treaties. In turn, the New IRA is uniting the violent and challenging the stability of Northern Ireland. In February, he claimed responsibility for the attempted murder of Detective John Cadwell as he and his daughter left Omagh Sports Hall.
Sinn Fein, Kelly said this week, is not going to be “intimidated by splinter groups that have no real backing and offer nothing but disorder and threats.” “They should disband and end their activities against the community,” the former IRA gunman urged. The leader of the DUP, Jeffrey Donaldson, defended that this is not the moment to “leave without leadership” the PSNI.