"As Marian McGlinchey was returned for trial accused of aiding and abetting at an Easter commemoration event, her lawyers sought reporting restrictions in the case.
They argued that she faced greater threat of being killed by loyalist paramilitaries if her details and any up-to-date photos were published.
But a judge at Belfast Magistrates' Court refused to grant the order due to a lack of evidence that the risk to life is real and immediate.
McGlinchey (59) and of no fixed address, is charged in connection with a demonstration at Derry City Cemetery in April 2011.
It is alleged that she helped another person who addressed the rally in support of an outlawed organisation, namely the Irish Republican Army.
McGlinchey, also known as Marian Price, served a jail sentence along with her late sister Dolours for the 1973 IRA bomb attack on the Old Bailey in London.
She was returned to prison when her licence was revoked following the new charge, spending two years in custody before finally being released earlier this year.
Along with her late sister Dolours, she distanced herself from mainstream republicanism over Sinn Fein's support for the Northern Ireland peace process.
Plagued by ill-health in recent years, she appeared in court today for a preliminary enquiry to determine whether she has a case to answer on the aiding and abetting a terrorist rally charge.
Wearing a brown duffel coat and glasses, McGlinchey shook her head when asked if she wanted to give evidence or call witnesses at this stage in the case.
District Judge Barney McElholm ruled that there was a prima facie case against her and returned her for trial at Belfast Crown Court on a date to be set.
She was bailed to live at an address in Belfast but banned from applying for a new passport without prior permission.
Seeking the anonymity order, defence counsel Sean Devine produced a doctor's report which stated media attention was likely to cause greater anxiety and worsen her medical condition.
He argued that police had previously informed her that she was under threat.
A newspaper article from June this year claiming loyalist paramilitaries still planned to kill her at the first opportunity was also produced.
Contending that McGlinchey's physical appearance has changed, Mr Devinesaid: "The level of protection being sought is relatively modest - images of her should not be published."
But a prosecution barrister opposed the application, stressing the late notification given by the defence.
He added: "The defendant has on previous occasions sought to use the media in pursuit of her own political and ideological ambitions.
"She was aware of the threats on her."
Dismissing the application, Judge McElholm accepted McGlinchey's appearance had altered but suggested it may be due to her now wearing glasses.
He also pointed to the amount of images and information about her already in the public domain.
After referring to the need for any anonymity application to be notified to police and prosecutors at the earliest opportunity, he ruled: "At the moment we have no objective evidence as to whether or not there is a real and immediate risk to the life and well-being of the applicant.
" ' In those circumstances I refuse to make an anonymity order.' "
Interned Irish republican Marian Price will learn this week if she will be be freed after more than two years' imprisonment according to the Parole Commission which will make an announcement by Thursday.
The british SS (secret services) say she no longer represents "a security threat". Marian is seriously ill in a Belfast City Hospital suffering from severe depression and respiratory problems.
The current internment without trial of veteran Irish republicans Marian Price 59, now interned 2 years without trial and Martin Corey 63, interned more than 3 years among others, is causing serious resentment to build in Ireland against the British Tories and their occupation.
Internment without trial is an odious instrument of wartime, to control the general population. It's use in the wake of a supposed Peace Process in Ireland is guaranteed to eventually bring war again to Ireland, as it did, when last introduced forty years ago, igniting the powder keg of injustice, that already exists with British occupation in Ireland.
Below is an article of the sequence of some of the events around the internment of Marian Price. For those who recognize justice as being the foundation for a prevailing peace, and non violent activism, as an alternative to violence, your help is desperately needed, to spread the word by re-sharing on Facebook, re-tweeting on Twitter, organizing pickets and demonstrations, to educate and organize the public with regard to facts of this matter.
There is a general mainstream media blackout on the facts around internment without trial in Ireland and passive silence, is enabling it to happen, in the same way as it did with Nazi internment and the Holocaust of the last world war.
"Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, veteran Irish civil rights leader, said in response to the case of Irish republican Marian Price, who was returned to jail in 2011: “It is a clear signal to everyone who is not 'on board' and who is not of the same mind as the government that no dissent will be tolerated.
“No dissent will be tolerated and you challenge the status quo at your peril.”.
Marian Price, 59, is a long-time Irish republican activist and ex-Irish Republican Army volunteer. She was given two life sentences over bomb blasts in London in March 1973 that targeted a British army recruitment centre and Old Bailey courts. Price was one of nine republicans sentenced, including her sister Dolours and Gerry Kelly, who is now Sinn Fein MLA for North Belfast.
Price was given a “royal pardon” in 1980 and left prison suffering from poor health and weighing only five stone. The Price sisters had spent 200 days on hunger strike demanding to be transferred to a jail in Ireland's north, where republican prisoners had political status.
They were both forcibly restrained and force-fed three times a day over the last 167 days of the hunger strike.
Despite her health issues and prolonged jailing, Marian Price remained politically active after her release. Her outspoken criticism of British rule caused problems for the British administration, who had probably hoped she would quietly fade from the political scene.
Marian’s continued political activism and vocal support for Irish republicanism kept her under scrutiny and made her a target for the British in Occupied Ireland .
Jailed on orders of an unelected British government official
Marian Price was returned to prison in 2011, not on the basis of fresh evidence or any new offence. Rather, then-British Viceroyal for British Occupied Ireland, Owen Paterson from England, ordered her detention and charged her with encouraging support for an illegal organisation.
The basis of this charge is that Marian attended a 1916 traditional, annual, Easter Rising Commemoration held in Derry; one of many held by Irish republicans each year since the Easter Rising in Dublin almost one hundred years ago.. At the event, Marian Price held up a piece of paper for a masked man from the 32-County Sovereignty Movement as he read out a message.
Three days later, Marian was arrested. She was then granted bail by a judge, but arrested again after she left the court on the unelected Viceroyal for Occupied ireland's orders.
This time, the reason was supposedly based on secret information from the British secret services, which claims the supposed evidence from a paid informer cannot be revealed due to national security concerns.
Later, Marian Price was also charged with “providing property for the purposes of terrorism”; this allegedly related to her purchase of a phone, which authorities “think” was later used by attackers who killed two soldiers in 2009.
Marian Price's supporters believe this is simply an attempt by the British to link her with a crime. No evidence or connection whatsoever to the incident was produced and she was again granted bail by a judge inthe court.
Yet Marian Price remains in prison due to Viceroya's order.
Marian Price's real transgression seems to be her critical remarks about conditions in the occupied six Irish counties, still claimed by Britain, and of the Good Friday Agreement, that lead to the power-sharing arrangement between Sinn Fein and parties that support British rule in the north.
Solitary confinement
After her arrest, Marian was held in solitary confinement in the all-male Maghaberry high security prison for more than nine months, despite not being convicted of any crime.
Then in February last year, Price was taken to Hydebank Women’s Prison where she served another nine months in solitary confinement.
In May last year, the so-called charges involving the Easter Commemoration incident were thrown out of court by a judge. Still Price remained interned in prison as her mental and physical health rapidly deteriorated.
Then in June, by now seriously ill, she was transferred to a secure ward at Belfast hospital.
The European Court and former Commission on Human Rights, as well as the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), have said the use of solitary confinement can be classified as torture, depending on the circumstances.
The CPT has also said that solitary confinement “can amount to inhuman and degrading treatment” and has on several occasions criticised such practices. It has recommended reforms such as abandoning specific regimes, limiting the use of solitary confinement to exceptional circumstances, and/or securing inmates a higher level of social contact.
Furthermore, the revised European Prison Rules of 2006 have clearly stated that solitary confinement should be an exceptional measure and, when used, should be for as short a time as possible.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has also stated that prolonged solitary confinement constitutes a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment prohibited under Article 5 of the American Convention on Human Rights.
The UN’s lead investigator on torture, Juan Mendez, has called for governments to end the use of long spells of solitary confinement in prison. Mendez said such isolation could cause serious mental and physical damage and amounted to torture.
He further said that short term isolation was permissible only for prisoner protection, but all solitary confinement longer than 15 days should be banned.
Support for Marian Price
In a joint statement in November last year appealing to US officials visiting Ireland to support calls for the release of Price, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein deputy first minister of the Northern Ireland Executive Martin McGuinness said: “[Price's treatment is a] serious case of injustice and denial of human rights and judicial rights in the north of Ireland.
“We believe that her detention is unjust and runs contrary to the principles of natural justice. We believe very strongly that Marian Price McGlinchey should be released.
“ Her human rights have been breached. She has been denied justice and due process. She is seriously ill. Her detention undermines the justice system and the political process.
“She clearly presents no threat to anyone.”
The campaign to release Price has encompassed a diverse range of people and political, social and community organisations across Ireland and elsewhere. Calls for her freedom have been backed by the two parliamentary nationalist parties in the north, Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP).
Adams called for Marian’s release in November, January and again in March. McGuinness has also appealed several times for her release, most recently at Sinn Fein's Ard Fheis (congress). He also attended and gave evidence at the Parole Commissioners hearing a short time ago.
SDLP leader Alistair McDonnell called for her release on March 30. SDLP MLA Pat Ramsey has been a vocal supporter of the release of Price, as has Lisburn independent councillor Angela Nelson.
The campaign is also supported by a wide range of republican and national groups, including the 32 County Sovereignty Movement (of which Price is a member), Irish Republican Socialist Party, Republican Network for Unity, Eirigi, Republican Sinn Fein, Irish Freedom Committee, Friends of Irish Freedom, the Celtic League, the United Celtic Brotherhood and the 1916 Societies.
Calls for Price's freedom have also come from Dublin City Council, Fermanagh Council, Dungannon Council, Galway Council, Derry Council, Sligo Council and Omagh Council.
Among other groups calling for Price’s release are the Scottish Republican Socialist Party and Human Rights Watch UK.
Justice
Devlin McAliskey said: “I think what is very important for people to recognise that what is happening to Marian is not an isolated case. While it's happening here in Northern Ireland and we have had to call upon the UN Rapporteur for Health to exercise his authority to examine it ... [it relfects] the arrogance [of] many of the Western powers ...
“I think Marian's case is symptomatic of those things we see every day ... That people can still be imprisoned without due process and that many countries, particularly in the very powerful Western alliances, feel that UN resolutions and UN protections are for protecting them from their enemies, but not people from powerful states.
“Marian's case is not just something peculiar to the Northern Ireland situation. The increasing confidence with which fundamental human rights and due process and protections are being ignored ― I think is frightening.”
The treatment of Price amounts to a return to the bad days of interment without trial, enforced by the British on the nationalist community in Ireland's north in the early 1970s.
Price is being held purely because of her views and criticisms. She is being selectively targeted because she refuses to remain silent in the face of British coercion and repression.
The British justice system’s mistreatment of Price has again exposed it as the disgraceful, hypocritical and discriminatory structure that it is, a fact that Irish people have experienced throughout the colonial occupation of Ireland.
Price’s case reveals the contempt the British judicial system has for genuine fairness and due process.
Twice she was granted bail by judges, only to be rearrested due to orders signed by the Northern Ireland secretary of state. Price has been illegally imprisoned. The lack of a genuine case against Price and her jailing without due process is a travesty that must be remedied by her unconditional freedom.
Price’s human rights are being grossly violated by her long-term incarceration. She is effectively detained without trial, sentence or release date. This means she could be held for an indefinite time, an illegitimate procedure that allows the British administration to hold her for the rest of her life if it so desires.
On the basis of compassion, legal, civil and political rights, and those of common sense, Marian Price should be released immediately.
Poem by Bobby Sands
As the day crawls out another night crawls in
Time neither moves nor dies.
It’s the time of day when the lark sings,
The black of night when the curlew cries.
There’s rain on the wind, the tears of spirits
The clink of key on iron is near,
A shuttling train passes by on rail,
There’s more than God for man to fear.
Toward where the evening crow would fly, my thoughts lie,
And like ships in the night they blindly sail,
Blown by a thought — that breaks the heart —
Of forty women in Armagh jail.
Oh! and I wish I were with the gentle folk,
Around a hearthened fire where the fairies dance unseen,
On March 14th, 2013 Provisional Sinn Féin MLAs Jennifer McCann and Sean Lynch, met with Vice royal Theresa Villiers, regarding the continued internment of Marian Price and called for the immediate release of Marian Price according to MLA Jennifer McCann. Since that time there has been a complete media print blackout on the political internment of Marian Price.
Marian Price News Blackout
On March 14th, 2013 Provisional Sinn Féin MLAs Jennifer McCann and Sean Lynch, met with Vice royal Theresa Villiers, regarding the continued internment of Marian Price and called for the immediate release of Marian Price according to MLA Jennifer McCann.
Ms. McCann said, “The meeting followed a visit that Martin McGuinness and myself had recently with Marian Price and the presentation made by Martin at her parole hearing last week.
At the meeting with Theresa Villiers, Martin Guinness made it clear, that Ms Price was not a threat to the public and that she should be released without further delay.
I gave a detailed account of the deteriorating condition of Marian Price's health, which has been added to by the recent death of her sister Dolours Price.
I also challenged the decision to re-imposing her life term licence especially given that she was granted bail and urged Theresa Villiers, to accept that Ms Price is entitled to due legal process. She should be tried in a court of law or released.”
Since this statement was made public, there has been a news blackout with regard to Marian Price, with all written material published censored. A Google search will confirm this. Inter agency communiques on Marian Price are also being manipulated, along with material on both Twitter and Facebook. It is the responsibility of ethical news agencies to investigate this matter immediately and confirm the welfare of Marian Price publicly, as there considerable public concern for Marian's welfare and the exercise may be further punishment to the many people concerned worldwide.
Media Blackouts like political internment are act of war that neither belong ina genuine democracy or in peace time. The Irish peace process has been considerably undermined by the British Tory Government since coming to power.
According to Wikipedia a Media blackout refers to the censorship of news related to a certain topic, particularly in mass media, for any reason. A media blackout may be voluntary, or may in some countries be enforced by the government or state. The latter case is controversial in peacetime, as some regard it as a human rights violation and repression of free speech. Press blackout is a similar phrase, but refers specifically to printed media.
Media blackouts are used, in particular, in times of declared war, to keep useful intelligence from the enemy. In some cases formal censorship is used, in others the news media are usually keen to support their country voluntarily as in the UK system in the Second World War.
Historical Media Blackouts
Some examples of media blackout would include the media bans of southern Japan during the droppings of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the lack of independent media correspondence from Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
During World War II, the US Office of Censorship sent messages to newspapers and radio stations, which were acted on by recipients, asking them not to report any sightings or explosions of fire balloons, so the Japanese would have no information on the balloons' effectiveness when planning future actions. As a result the Japanese learned the fate of only one of their bombs, which landed in Wyoming, but failed to explode. The Japanese stopped all launches after less than six months.
The press blackout in the U.S. was lifted after the first deaths from fire balloons, to ensure that the public was warned, though public knowledge of the threat could have possibly prevented the deaths. News of the loss of over 4,000 lives when UK ship RMS Lancastria was sunk during the war was voluntarily suppressed to prevent it affecting civilian morale, but was published after it became known overseas.
Contemporary Media Blackouts
A media blackout was used during the 2005 New York City transit strike to allow for more effective contract negotiation between the two sides of the dispute.[4] Most typically, the more freedom of the press that any particular country has, and the more sensational the story, the more likely it is that at least one news organization will ignore the "blackout" and run the story.
The 2008 abduction of Canadian journalist Mellissa Fung was given a media blackout to assure her safe return. All media sources obliged making the Canadian public unaware of the fate of Fung.
In 2008, the fact that Prince Harry of Wales, third in line to the British throne, was serving on active duty in Afghanistan was subject to a blackout in the British media for his own safety. He was brought home early after the blackout was broken by foreign media.
On June 22, 2009, when news came that New York Times reporter David Rohde had escaped from his Taliban captors, few knew he had even been kidnapped, because for the seven months he and two Afghan colleagues were in the Taliban's hands, The Times kept that information under wraps. Out of concern for the reporter's safety,
The Times asked other major news organizations to do the same;NPR was among dozens of news outlets that did not report on the kidnapping at the urging of Rohde's colleagues. Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute, says she was "really astounded" by the media blackout. "I find it a little disturbing, because it makes me wonder what else 40 international news organizations have agreed not to tell the public," she tells NPR's Melissa Block. McBride says the blackout could hurt the credibility of news organizations. "I don't think we do ourselves any favors long term for our credibility when we have a total news blackout on something that's clearly of interest to the public," she says.
In 2009, on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, a number of social media websites were made in accessible and foreign television reception disrupted in China.
Some media critics have questioned whether the 2000 Wichita Massacre received little to no coverage in the mainstream media due to political correctness regarding the race of the perpetrators and the victims. Such critics also cite the 2007 Murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom in Knoxville, Tennessee.
On January 18, 2012, Wikipedia itself participated in a media blackout to protest SOPA."
"Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle," says Price. "You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open.
"They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move.
"They throw whatever they like into the food mixer - orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube.
"The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death."
Price was force-fed 400 times over six months. "I knew nothing about force-feeding beforehand," says Price. "I thought it was like when you hold a baby's nose and put a spoon in its mouth. Ignorance was bliss." Marian Price still politically interned 40 years later in British Occupied Ireland, in a supposed Peace Process without Due Process.Her sister Dolours died from the effects of 200 days on hunger strike. Please reshare or retweet to overcome censorship.
Marian Price is currently interned without trial in a British Gulag in Occupied Ireland Other internees like Martin Corey are also being interned without trial on concocted secret service hearsay, to justify their ever expanding budgets and try provoke another lucrative money making racket of 40 years of making war on ordinary Irish people.
The hunger strike of Marian Price lasted over 200 days,being force-fed by prison authorities for 167 of them. In an interview with Suzanne Breen, Marian Price described being force-fed: "Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle. You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open. They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move. They throw whatever they like into the food mixer – orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube. The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death."
Hunger strikes have deep roots in Irish society and in the Irish psyche. Fasting in order to bring attention to an injustice which one felt under his lord, and thus embarrass him into a solution, was a common feature of society in Early Irish society and this tactic was fully incorporated into the Brehon legal system. The tradition is ultimately most likely part of the still older Indo-European tradition of which the Irish were part.[8]
The tactic was used by Irish republicans from 1917 and, subsequently, during the Anglo-Irish War, in the 1920s. Early use of hunger strikes by republicans had been countered by the British with force-feeding, which culminated in 1917 in the death of Thomas Ashe in Mountjoy Prison.
In October 1920, the Lord Mayor of Cork, Terence MacSwiney, died on hunger strike in Brixton prison. Two other Cork IRA men, Joe Murphy and Michael Fitzgerald, also died on hunger strike in this protest along with Monaghan native,Conor McElvaney who lasted 79 days before death. TheGuinness Book of Records lists the world record in hunger strike (without forced feeding) as 94 days, which was set from August 11 to November 12, 1920 by John and Peter Crowley, Thomas Donovan, Michael Burke, Michael O’Reilly, Christopher Upton, John Power, Joseph Kenny and Seán Hennessy at the prison of Cork. Arthur Griffith called off the strikes after the deaths of MacSwiney, Murphy and Fitzgerald.
After the end of the Irish Civil War in October 1923, up to 8000 IRA prisoners went on hunger strike to protest their continued detention by the Irish Free State (a total of over 12,000 republicans had been interned by May 1923). Two men, Denny Barry and Andrew O’Sullivan, died on the strike. The strike, however, was called off before any more deaths occurred. The Free State subsequently released the women republican prisoners. Most of the male Republicans were not released until the following year.
Under the de ValeraFianna Fáil government three hunger strikers died in the Republic of Ireland in the 1940s. They wereSean McCaughey, Tony d’Arcy and Sean (Jack) McNeela. Hundreds of others carried out shorter hunger strikes during the deValera years with no sympathy from the Government.
The tactic was revived by the Provisional IRA in the early 1970s, when several republicans such as Sean MacStiofainsuccessfully used hunger strikes to get themselves released from custody without charge in the Republic of Ireland. Michael Gaughan died after being force-fed in a British prison in 1974.Frank Stagg, an IRA member being held in a British jail, died after a 62-day hunger strike in 1976 which he began as a campaign to be repatriated to Ireland.
In 1980, seven Republican prisoners in the Maze Prisonlaunched a hunger strike as a protest against the revocation by the British government of a prisoner-of-war-like Special Category Status for paramilitary prisoners in Northern Ireland. The strike, led by Brendan Hughes, was called off before any deaths, when Britain seemed to offer to concede their demands; however, the British then reneged on the details of the agreement. The prisoners then called another hunger strike the following year. This time, instead of many prisoners striking at the same time, the hunger strikers started fasting one after the other in order to maximise publicity over the fate of each one.
Bobby Sands was the first of ten Irish republicanparamilitaryprisoners to die during a hunger strike in 1981. There was widespread support for the hunger strikers from Irish republicans and the broader nationalist community on both sides of the Irish border. Some of the hunger strikers were elected to both the Irish and British parliaments by an electorate who wished to register their support for the hunger strikers. The ten men survived without food for 46 to 73 days,[9] taking only water and salt. After the deaths of the men and severe public disorder, the British government granted partial concessions to the prisoners, and the strike was called off.
Dolours Price beofre her recent death, claimed that Gerry Adams her "Officer Commanding" in the IRA ordered her 18 year old sister Marian Price to go to London and carry out a military operation, that according to the British, is responsible for the current internment of Marian Price 40 years later. Adams, who has never admitted to being an IRA member, denies the allegation. If what the British say is true, then clearly Gerry Adams has major responsibilities in the matter, that he is ignoring, in the same way as he ignored his responsibilities around the rape of his niece Aine Adams. By refusing to take responsibility in both matters he has contributed to considerable agony in the lives of both these young women at the time. As a critical part of a Peace Process without Due Process in Ireland and apparently a very devout Christian, these are critical immeidate matters of leadership to restore basic credibility to his legacy. Make no mistake about it, Gerry Adams and provisional Sinn Fein, do have the political leverage, to end all political internment without trial in Ireland.
Critics of Gerry Adams and provisional Sinn Fein claim they have played a political game with Marian Price, and the Irish people, that if she wasn't so high profile "they wouldn't give a flying f*ck about her". They say provisional Sinn Fein know she has a great deal of sympathy and respect, particularly in her native west Belfast. They maintain that provisional Sinn Fein have called for republicans who don' follow their strategy to be locked up, labelled principled, traditional Irish republicans criminals, traitors and conflict junkies. Critics say that Gerry Adams and provisional Sinn Fein used their political clout to relase Sean Kelly, the McCartney suspect and countless other political ex-prisoners and most certainly have the political leverage to have Marian Price released. Others have cut Adams alot of slack giving him the benefit of the doubt but he is clearly and rapidly running out of time and with him, all credibility around an Irish Peace Process without Due Process. There is however one current event, clouding the political leverage Gerry Adams, as President of Ireland's largest political party actually has and that is the current trial of his brother for his daughter's rape. Aine Adams, daughter of Gerry Adam's brother, has waived her right to anonymity, saying she had gone to the British paramilitary police RUC/psni (Royal Ulster Constabulary/psni) in 1986 at the height of the Troubles but found British police officers preoccupied with her uncle, the Gerry Adams the provisional Sinn Fein president.
"I felt it wasn't about me," she said.
"The police were more interested in Gerry Adams. They were trying to get information about where he was and who he was with. Back then you did not really trust or talk to the British police. We had to leave it. We felt it was safer for me and mummy. I had to go up to the barracks and say I wanted to retract my evidence. I did not say I was telling lies, I just said I wanted to retract it."
Liam Adams, 57 is on trial accused of 10 counts of sex abuse including rape, gross indecency with a child, indecent assault between 1977 and 1983. He has denies all of the charges.
A jury of six men and six women at Belfast Crown Court were shown a recorded interview in which Ms Adams, alleged her father exploited every opportunity to sneak into her bedroom and abuse her from when she was aged between four and nine-years-old.
"It was as often as he could manage. If he could sneak in. That just seemed to be the way it was. Every opportunity there was he would have done it. Even if he didn't I would have expected him to do it," she said.
The abuse was carried on regularly at four different addresses across Belfast, she claimed.
Ms Adams, said she can vividly recall a number of specific incidents that happened between the ages of four and five-years-old.
"I remember him coming in, I think I had wet myself, touching me and getting me to touch him, him saying that I could not tell anyone and that we were going to run away to Kerry together," she said.
It was like I was being suffocated by him. I couldn't breathe. I was roasting, I could smell the drink off him. I felt that he has had the power over me."I remember feeling bad. I knew he should not have been doing it. I would have felt guilty as well. I knew I was part of something wrong," she further said that she had felt unable to stop the abuse because she did not want to upset family members and she had come to accept it as part of her life.
After the death of her grandmother, Ms Adams felt compelled to speak out because she realized her father had another two-year-old daughter, whom he was living with in Donegal.
"I just snapped one day and wrote my mummy a letter and told her everything that happened because I did not want it to happen to his wee daughter.It is not about hate or revenge or pity. It is just to hear him saying 'no you weren't lying, I did it'," She said she wanted to protect this 2 year old baby and that at the age of 13 Ms Adams, her mother and uncle Gerry had also confronted her fatherLiam at a house in Buncrana.
"He denied it to my face. I told him to his face that he did it. At that time that's all we could have done," she said. The British are trying to censor the trial and matters relating to the political internment of Marian Price claiming that because this case is sub-judice, it is in-opertune to opinionate because it could prejudice its outcome. There is considerable scrutiny in Ireland of the trial, along with considerable speculation about the extent of Gerry Adams and provisional Sinn Fein being politcally compromised by the matter.
Many disagree, pointing out that it is largely irrelevant whose brother an accused actually is, however such caution was not exercised by the British before the trial of the Guilford Four or Birmingham Six. It certainly has not been exercised in the case of Marian Price who has been interned without trial for almost two years and been demonized by the British press.
While Gerry Adams and provisional Sinn Fein have expressed faint protest at Marian's internment with public statements. The normally mild SDLP, have been much more active on the issue and indeed brought down the Stormont adminsitration the last time internment without trial was inroduced in British Occupied Ireland. Provisional Sinn Fein on the other hand who claim to be a republican party, seem to have no such principles of republican democracy.
MI5 and the British SS in general are known to use blackmail to control both loyalist and provisional politicians, the judiciary, the PSNI, the media and social services. Some claim the British secret services, control almost all elected politicians in British Occupied Ireland, with blackmail on matters related to child rape, satanic rings of orangemen, with sacrificial baby murdering ceremonies across all of Ireland. One thing is certain the Adams family trial is but the tip of the iceberg.
Subject: Marian Price interview: Date: Weds. Dec. 08, 2004
The Village December 7, 2004
Suzanne Breen
A well-dressed, articulate, middle-aged woman, Marian Price wouldn't look out of place on a Sinn Féin negotiating team meeting Tony Blair or Bertie Ahern.
But she'd face jail and hunger-strike all over again rather than take part:"I would be ashamed to be on any delegation to Downing Street given what’s on the table. The only reason for going there should be to negotiate the freedom of our country.
"If I went to agree to British rule, restoring Stormont, or signing up to a partitionist police force, I'd hope at least to have the decency to hang my head in shame."
The last time Price visited London was to blow it up. With her sister Dolours and Gerry Kelly, now a Sinn Féin negotiator, she was part of an 11-strong IRA unit which in March 1973 planted bombs at the Old Bailey, New Scotland Yard, Whitehall, and the British Forces Broadcasting Office.
They were arrested attempting to fly home from Heathrow Airport. A 200-day hunger-strike and force-feeding regime made the sisters household names. "I did what I believed in," Price says. "Nothing Provisional IRA or Sinn Féin leaders do can denigrate that.
"But I'm very angry when I see so much has been sacrificed for so little. All these lives have been lost - IRA volunteers, civilians, policemen, British soldiers - and for what? If this is what they’re settling for, we all could have joined the SDLP back then."
Price (50) came from a staunch republican family in west Belfast. She believes IRA membership is too often explained away as an emotional response to events: "I made an ideological choice to join. It wasn't a reaction to Bloody Sunday, internment or anything else."
Her childhood ambition was to be a nurse. She left school with a string of 'O' and 'A' levels and secured one of only five places on a course at the Royal Victoria Hospital. She denies there was a huge contradiction between IRA membership and nursing.
"One day, a wounded British soldier was brought into casualty. He was wearing a dirty vest. He looked frightened. I felt very sorry for him. That night, I told my comrades and one joked that I should have finished him off.
"I asked why on earth I'd do that. He was no longer a soldier, he'd been taken out of the battlefield. He was a patient now, I'd have no difficulty looking after him."
The bombing mission was the Provisional IRA's first to England. The idea and planning came from the sisters. Price travelled on the Dublin-Liverpool ferry with one of the four car bombs which was then driven to London.
Did she never consider the morality of planting bombs in densely populated areas?: "The warnings given were twice as long as in Belfast. That was a conscious decision because we knew the English lacked experience of evacuation. We didn't want civilian casualties, from a moral or pragmatic viewpoint."
Yet there were casualties. Two bombs were defused but those at the Old Bailey and Whitehall exploded, injuring 200 people, mainly with flying glass. Price expresses regret but says the injuries "weren’t intentional".
"I've never had a sleepless night over anything I've done as an IRA volunteer. Bombs are weapons of war. Western states have used them far more brutally than we ever did.
"George Bush and Tony Blair send other people's sons out to die without ever venturing onto the battlefield themselves. They drop far bigger bombs from B52s on women and children and they don't give any warnings at all." Price is an atheist: "When I look around the world, I think if there’s a God, he's a bad God."
After her arrest at Heathrow, she was interrogated for five days. "I was stripped in the police station and given a grey blanket to wear. I was embarrassed because there were a lot of policemen about and I was sexually innocent.
"They used no physical violence but I wasn't let sleep once. The lights were kept on in my cell and the police were there at all times. If I started to doze off, they clapped their hands."
She remained remarkably unfazed: "I remember a detective saying to me, ‘I bet your mother will be proud of you' and I thought 'yes, she will be very proud of me'. My father was on a bombing mission to England in the forties, so it was a family tradition."
The sisters were charged and moved to Brixton prison. They were strip-searched daily and locked 23-hours a day in cells where again the lights were permanently on.
As a 19-year-old facing potential life imprisonment in England, wasn’t she depressed?:"It never entered my head. I'd known what I believed in and the risks involved.
"My mother, her sisters, and my granny had been in Cumann na mBan. My Aunt Bridie was badly injured lifting an IRA arms dump in the 30s. It exploded and she lost her hands and sight. She was 26.
"When we were growing up, it was never a case of 'poor Bridie'. We were just proud of her sacrifice. She came home from hospital to a wee house with an outside toilet, no social worker, no disability allowance, and no counselling. She just got on with it."
Price claims that during their 1973 trial, the bombers learned they had been compromised by a high-placed informer in Belfast who knew all the details but didn't take part in the operation.
"It emerged in court that customs at Liverpool realised one of the cars had false number plates. They phoned Scotland Yard but were told to wave it through.
"The authorities allowed the bombs to happen. They had details of the operation in advance that could only have come from a senior figure in Belfast. We learned that photos of Dolours and I had been circulated at airports and ports across Britain nine hours before the bombs exploded,” says Price.
She claims that during the trial they agreed it would be less damaging for the IRA if they appeared "young, stupid and incompetent", rather than publicly exposing an informer. She claims to know the identity of the alleged informer whom, she says, remains in a leadership position.
The Price sisters, Gerry Kelly and Hugh Feeney went on hunger-strike in Brixton prison in November 1973 as part of a campaign to be repatriated to serve their sentences in Northern Ireland.
"Four male prison officers tie you into the chair so tightly with sheets you can't struggle," says Price. "You clench your teeth to try to keep your mouth closed but they push a metal spring device around your jaw to prise it open.
"They force a wooden clamp with a hole in the middle into your mouth. Then, they insert a big rubber tube down that. They hold your head back. You can't move.
"They throw whatever they like into the food mixer - orange juice, soup, or cartons of cream if they want to beef up the calories. They take jugs of this gruel from the food mixer and pour it into a funnel attached to the tube.
"The force-feeding takes 15 minutes but it feels like forever. You're in control of nothing. You're terrified the food will go down the wrong way and you won't be able to let them know because you can't speak or move. You're frightened you'll choke to death."
Price was force-fed 400 times over six months. "I knew nothing about force-feeding beforehand," says Price. "I thought it was like when you hold a baby's nose and put a spoon in its mouth. Ignorance was bliss."
After the sisters went on hunger-strike, the British Home Office dispatched eminent psychiatrist Peter Scott to examine them. "He said he’d been sent to certify us so we could be force-fed. He left saying we knew exactly what we were doing and the problem was we were too sane,” Price says.
They built a good rapport with Dr Ian Blythe, the prison doctor: "He called us 'my girls'. As the hunger-strike went on, he arm-wrestled with us, pretending it was a game but really testing us to see how much we were weakening."
Dolours was first to be force fed, three weeks into the hunger-strike. "I met her in the exercise yard afterwards. She was in a terrible state. She said it she couldn't go through that again. I told her she didn't have to, she could come off the hunger-strike immediately, but I'd stay on.
"She said we'd come off together or not at all. She was much braver than me because she was so much more afraid of force-feeding yet she didn't give in." Two days later, Marian was force-fed.
While Dolours endured the procedure once a day, Marian suffered it twice daily because she vomited so often afterwards. "I always threw up when they pulled the tube out of my stomach. It was vile. I would be exhausted afterwards but you couldn't even lie in bed in your cell in privacy because the screws came in with you.
"Sometimes when they arrived to force feed me, I would struggle; other times I didn't have the energy to fight. The low point was having no control over your weight. But not for one minute did I think of giving up. They were never, ever going to break me."
One day, a doctor put the tube into Price's lung, not her stomach, and water flooded in. "I felt like I was drowning. I passed out. They carried me back to my cell. The doctors were standing over me when I came round. If had been food, not water in the tube, it would have killed me. The medical and prison staff told the authorities they wouldn't force feed me again."
A fortnight after that incident in May 1974, the hunger-strike ended and a deal was reached. The sisters were moved to Armagh prison the following March.
The British Home Secretary, Roy Jenkins, was loathed by republicans for his treatment of the hunger-strikers. Price says she doesn't hate him: "He was caught up in the politics of the situation. He followed orders. I once asked the psychiatrist Peter Scott who knew him to invite him to Brixton to visit us. He said he wouldn't come because if he met us, he’d want to send us home."
Price was freed after five years in Armagh jail, suffering from anorexia and tuberculosis. Ten-and-a-half stone when she was arrested, she left prison half that weight.
On release from jail, she says she was in no physical or mental state to rejoin the IRA and had no interest in a Sinn Féin career: "I like politics but not politicians. To be a politician, you must be a liar and a hypocrite."
Still, she was initially positive about Sinn Féin's rise, believing it would strengthen the IRA campaign: "I remember watching TV as Sinn Féin swept down the stairs in Belfast City Hall with Tricolour ribbons and champagne after an election victory.
"My father was disgusted. He pointed to Gerry Adams and said, 'I've been around longer than you, that boy will sell you out'. I told him to give Sinn Féin a chance. I was wrong."
From 1994, Price had "serious concerns" about the leadership's political direction but "loyalty to the movement" kept her quiet. Eventually, she spoke at one 'republican family' meeting in west Belfast, expressing doubts. A senior IRA member visited her home: "He told me what I was saying wasn't appreciated and he'd shot people for less."
She claims the republican movement underwent a transformation: "People began to make financial gain from the movement. Those who had never worked a day in their lives, now had better homes, cars, and holidays than their neighbours.
"It used to be what you could do for the movement, now it's what the movement can do for you. In the past, to be a republican brought financial hardship. But that was okay because to be a republican was to be something special. You knew you were right."
Price says that while the peace process has secured "a measure of equality" for Catholics, a British withdrawal and the ending of partition is further away than ever.
Five years ago, she joined the 32 County Sovereignty Movement which security sources say is the Real IRA's political wing, a claim the group denies. She says her military days are over but she won't condemn others "for doing what I did myself".
She claims 'armed struggle' is morally justified "while the British occupy part of this country". The Real IRA has proved itself incapable of waging a sustained campaign against the state and lacks popular support. Physical force republicanism has never been weaker in recent decades.
Price refuses to recognise 'armed struggle' is now pointless: "Sometimes it’s necessary to do something just to let it be known there are people out there who don't accept the status quo.
"Being a minority of a minority is nothing new for republicans. You don’t join for an easy life or to be popular. As a child, I remember 50 people at an Easter parade on the Falls Road."
Despite everything, she has no regrets: "Disappointments maybe. I’m disappointed in Gerry Kelly. I expected more of him but I'd never detract from the physical bravery he showed. Gerry Adams and I were once friends. We certainly aren't now. He may have difficulty admitting his IRA past but I'm very, very proud of mine."
Saturday May 04, 2013 11:17
by Brian Clarke - AllVoices
