BBC investigative journalism

The BBC report in a very dry manner that:

"Leading republican Colin Duffy is one of three men being questioned about the murder of two soldiers at Massereene Army base last weekend.

The 41-year-old was arrested during a police raid in Lurgan on Saturday.

...

Colin Duffy is a former IRA member who has been critical of Sinn Fein's support for the police service. "

Hmm I thought, I wonder if the sainted Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams have ever been linked with Colin Duffy in the past and has Colin Duffy ever made an appearance in news articles? So I did a bit of Googling and what did I find?

1. A Sinn Fein press release from 1997:

"Statement from Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, who sought an urgent meeting today with the British security Minister Adam Ingram at which he expressed grave concern at the dangerous situation developing in north Armagh with the campaign of harassment and violence being waged against Lurgan republican Colin Duffy and the nationalist people of north Armagh.

...

``I pointed out to the British Minister that he was responsible for the level of Crown forces on the streets of these towns and that their presence there was oppressive and heavy-handed. The violent and ongoing abuse of Colin Duffy is the tip of the iceberg of harassment of nationalists by the Crown forces. Over the last month solicitors in Lurgan and Armagh have been inundated with complaints about harassment by the RUC and RIR and have logged over one hundred complaints in each area. "

2. This 1997 case seems quite key because if one looks at the Belfast Telegraph for their report on the arrest of Colin Duffy they manage to give some more background :

"He (Duffy) came to prominence in the 1990s after he was acquitted of the murder of a soldier when it emerged a key witness against him was a loyalist paramilitary, but was later arrested over the subsequent murder of two police constables though the case collapsed.

...

Colin Duffy is a member of the republican protest group Eirigi, which has not supported the new police service, but which insists it is a peaceful pressure group.

He attracted criticism last year when serious rioting in the Lurgan area led to attacks on police, which he failed to condemn.

After police came under gun and petrol-bomb attack during two days of rioting, he said the episodes were a symptom of a section of the nationalist community refusing to accept the PSNI.

But in the wake of the murder of the soldiers in Antrim and of Constable Carroll in the Lurgan/Craigavon area, Duffy and the Eirigi group were challenged to condemn the killings.

Eirigi, which is Irish for 'rise up', released a statement in response to the pressure insisting it did not support violent groups.

Earlier this week it said: "Eirigi is an open, independent, democratic political party which is not aligned to, or supportive of, any armed organisation."

It added: "While supporting the right of any people to defend themselves from imperial aggression, Eirigi does not believe that the conditions exist at this time for a successful armed struggle against the British occupation.

"As can be seen from the recent attacks on Britain's armed forces it is clear that not all republicans agree on how the British occupation should be resisted at this time.

"Those who carried out those attacks are best placed to explain their own rationale." "

3. So I did some more Googling and found this page showing the members of the "Garvaghy Residents Coalition" including a Mr Duffy and Rosemary Nelson. This page is on a site dedicated to reporting on "Sinn Fein "Residents Groups" in Northern Ireland". A quick look around this site finds much of interest.


4. A little more Googling and I found a pen portrait of Colin Duffy on Slugger O'Toole:

"THE Beeb and PA are reporting that Colin Duffy is one of the three people being questioned about the shootings of two soldiers last weekend. The Lurgan Mail reports that his house is also being searched. Duffy, a hate figure within unionism, was jailed but later acquitted of the murder of a UDR member in 1995. Duffy had also been charged with the June 1997 IRA murders of community police officers John Graham and David Johnston in Lurgan - the last policemen killed by republicans before this week. The charges were dropped, and it transpired a witness was a loyalist gunrunner. Recently, he has been a spokesman for republican group eirigi (pictured here at a recent protest against the Belfast homecoming parade for UK troops). In December, it was claimed by an anonymous security source that he had had an affair with murdered solicitor Rosemary Nelson, which has also been strongly denied. "

Are the BBC not interested in providing any background on Colin Duffy? Or are they deliberately trying to keep his possibly relevant past from the UK population? It may be that Colin Duffy is as innocent of this murder as he was in 1997 and that he is the victim of a Unionist plot, or it could be that he is guilty - I Simply don't know. The trouble is that the BBC don't know either but they don't seem at all interested.

The BBC's love-in with Irish Republicanism was one of the first clues to me that the BBC was not the unbiased news organisation that it purported to be, I see that they have not changed.