Ex-Special Branch Belfast boss says hijack attack on police station 'one step away from a proxy bomb'

Jim Gamble was speaking in the wake of news that a device left at a Londonderry police station was indeed a real bomb.

The PSNI had said on Monday the device was just an elaborate hoax.

Then on Wednesday they said the device had been “viable” after all.

The drama began on Sunday night, when a trio of masked men hijacked a deliveryman’s grey Ford Mondeo in the Currynierin area, a neighbourhood on the south-eastern edge of Londonderry.

The PSNI said a “suspicious object” was placed inside.

He then drove it to Waterside PSNI station, a journey just short of two miles, where the men “forced the driver at gunpoint to abandon the vehicle”.

Officers then said "the driver was able to raise the alarm, and a public safety operation was immediately implemented”, involving road closures and evacuations.

It is a tactic that has been deployed many times before by paramilitaries, both during the main phase of the Troubles and since.

In recent memory, in November 2013 a taxi was hijacked in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast by republicans and its driver forced to go into the city centre with a 60kg (130lb) keg bomb on board, which then partially exploded near Victoria Square shopping centre.

And in March of this year a driver was ordered by two loyalist gunmen in the Shankill area to drive his white Vauxhall van to collect a “bomb”, and take it to where Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney was delivering a speech. It turned out the device was a hoax.

See here: UVF in frame for north Belfast bomb hoax chaos where hijack victim was made to fear for his family

Jim Gamble, a former head of Special Branch in Belfast, said the tactic recalls the Provos’ “proxy bomb” campaign of the early 1990s (also known as the “human bomb” campaign).

This was when the IRA kidnapped civilian families and forced their men to drive to targets in vehicles rigged with explosives, designed to blow up if they opened the vehicle door on arrival at the target – ensuring the driver died too.

Mr Gamble said of the latest attack in Londonderry: “This is a tried and tested tactic that ensures the terrorists retain distance from their ultimate target, reducing the risk to themselves whilst recklessly increasing the risk to others.

"It’s only one step removed from the human bomb and speaks directly to their cowardly character.

"It also very clearly evidences their willingness to intimidate and coercively control people who live and or work in the communities they say they represent.”

More from this reporter:

> Top Sinn Fein man dismisses politicians who criticise IRA chants saying they have more important things to do

> Just the facts: As pro-IRA chanting spreads across Ireland here are the hard numbers behind the IRA's insurrection