Police have broken up a New IRA plot to carry out attacks during US President Joe Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Peace Agreement, The Belfast Telegraph reports. British army bomb squads participated in the search for material that could have been used to make explosives in Derry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland and one of the hottest spots during the conflict that claimed more than 3,500 victims throughout three decades.
“The plans consisted of carrying out a mortar attack similar to the one that caused serious injuries to two policemen last November in the town of Strabane,” police sources revealed. The information came from the British intelligence services, which decided to raise the terror alert in Northern Ireland to the highest level (“severe risk”) for the first time in twelve years.
“They’re not going to keep me away,” was Joe Biden’s defiant response upon learning of the terrorist alert. The US president, who is of Irish ancestry, wanted to personally highlight “the tremendous progress” in Northern Ireland and at the same time highlight the relevant role of his country in the historic agreement between unionists and republicans sealed 25 years ago (Bill and Hillary Clinton will collect the witness in a few days).
Biden will arrive in Belfast on Tuesday afternoon and give a speech on Wednesday at the new Ulster University campus to an audience of more than 20,000 people. The great security measures have forced the suspension of his visit to the Stormont Assembly, which has been paralyzed for a year due to the refusal of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to form a unity government with Sinn Féin, winner in the last elections.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will attend the meeting with Biden and will also participate in the events planned in Belfast. “The Good Friday Agreement was an incredible moment for our nation,” Sunak declared on Sunday. “It was a powerful and rare example of how people can bend over backwards to create a better future for Northern Ireland.”
Biden, for his part, will continue his journey during the week, symbolically crossing the invisible border between the two Irelands, with a mandatory stop in County Louth, where distant relatives of his mother of Irish origin reside. Afterwards, she will continue on to Dublin, where she will give a speech in Parliament before leaving for Ballina, in County Mayo, where she also has part of her roots.
His visit has aroused great interest in both Irelands, although the terror alert has served as a reminder of the violence that still regularly shakes Ulster, such as the shooting that seriously injured Detective John Caldwell in late February in the town of Omagh . The attack was claimed by the New IRA and the police have even arrested 15 suspects.
The New IRA arose in 2012 from the merger of groups that do not accept the peace agreement and took over from the Real IRA, until then the most active faction of dissidents in the “republican army”. “Intelligence services received credible information about plans to launch a terrorist attack on these dates,” said Deputy Commissioner Bobby Singleton.
The weekend has passed without notable incidents, but the police fear possible clashes coinciding with Easter Monday, when the “uprising” of 1916 against British forces is celebrated in Catholic neighborhoods.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
