Massereene bullets ‘like other IRA gun attacks’
Undated MoD handout photos of sappers Patrick Azimkar (left) and Mark Quinsey, who were shot dead outside the Massereene Barracks in Antrim last March. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Issue date: Monday November 7, 2011. Chilling video footage played today at the trial of Colin Duffy and Brian Shivers for the murders of two soldiers showed the moment the servicemen were gunned down by masked attackers. See PA story ULSTER Massereene. Photo credit should read: Ministry of Defence/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder.
BULLETS fired in a terrorist gun attack that killed two British soldiers were of a make and date similar to those used in Provisional IRA shootings, a court has heard.
One of the two guns used in the ambush in which English sappers Mark Quinsey, 23, and Patrick Azimkar, 21, were murdered was also used in two previous gun attacks on police stations in Northern Ireland, a firearms expert told Antrim Crown Court.
The two Royal Engineer sappers were shot dead as they collected pizzas with comrades outside the gates of Massereene army base in Antrim town in March 2009.
They were only hours from flying to Afghanistan to begin a six-month tour of duty and were already dressed in desert fatigues
High-profile republican Colin Duffy, 43, from Forest Glade in Lurgan, and Brian Shivers, 46, from Sperrin Mews in Magherafelt, deny two charges of murder and the attempted murder of six others – three soldiers, two pizza delivery drivers and a security guard.
The murders were carried out by break-away dissident republican terror group the Real IRA.
Senior forensic scientist Jonathan Greer told the third day of Duffy and Shivers’ trial that the 65 bullets found at the scene were M67 cartridges used in AK assault rifles.
He said they were stamped with the code NMY82, indicating they were made by a company in the former Yugoslavia for use by that country’s military.
Prosecution QC Terence Mooney asked the ballistics expert if such bullets had been used before in Northern Ireland.
“Cartridges of those manufacture and date have been attributed to the Provisional IRA previously,” Mr Greer replied.
The guns used in the attack have never been found but Mr Greer said microscopic inspection had been able to identify which cartridges were fired from which weapon. He called the firearms ‘gun one’ and ‘gun two’.
The scientist revealed that tests had shown that the weapon used in dissident attacks on the outside of police stations in Randalstown and Londonderry’s Strand Road in 2004 was gun two. No one was injured in those incidents.
Mr Greer was asked to interpret bullet holes found on the blood-stained clothes worn by the dead sappers.
He said a number of marks on the back of sapper Quinsey’s jacket were fired at close range.
“They were consistent with someone standing over a prone body while it was wearing the jacket and firing down towards it,” he said.
Earlier the non-jury trial before Mr Justice Anthony Hart was read statements from medics who had battled in vain to save the lives of sapper Quinsey, from Birmingham, and sapper Azimkar, from London, in the wake of the shootings.
The trial was adjourned and is due to sit again on Monday when Mr Greer will continue his evidence.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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