Shankill bomb IRA commander '˜was an informer'

The Irish News reported on Monday that it has seen heavily encrypted Special Branch files stolen from Castlereagh Police Station by the IRA almost 15 years ago.

The paper said the IRA used “a handful of trusted members” to decode the information, which they believed identified a senior IRA commander as an informer.

A victim has now engaged their solicitor to lodge a complaint with the Police Ombudsman that the informer might have provided police with information that could have prevented the 1993 IRA atrocity, which killed nine Protestants and one of the bombers.

Councillor Ruth Patterson said the report highlights the duplicity of the institutions that her former party - the DUP - continues to prop up alongside Sinn Fein, which she claimed used their surrogates to carry out the Castlereagh raid to gain information on informants in their organisation.

“Will Sinn Fein now finally admit that some of their ‘activists’ - acting in their role as dual members of Sinn Fein and the IRA - robbed Castlereagh?

“This again shows the alleged criminal ties and, in the words of Arlene Foster, ‘inextricable links’ between Sinn Fein and the IRA.”

SDLP leader Colum Eastwood said: “These events show that the RUC placed more importance on protecting the lives of their IRA and UDA collaborators than those of innocent people. Even the suggestion in today’s newspaper report that UDA leader Johnny Adair and his criminal cohorts could have been tipped off by British forces acting on intelligence supplied by an IRA mole is truly staggering.”