A 17-year-old boy was due to appear in court in Northern Ireland yesterday charged with the murder of a policeman, an attack that triggered fears of a return to the sectarian violence of the past.
Police charged the teenager late on Monday following the shooting of on-duty Constable Stephen Carroll in Craigavon, southwest of Belfast, on March 9.
It was the first time in a decade that a police officer had been killed in the British-ruled province, and the murder came within 48 hours of the fatal shootings of two British soldiers outside their barracks near the city.
Although Northern Irish, British and Irish politicians condemned the attacks, the killings heightened fears the province could be dragged back into the civil conflict that raged for three decades until 1998.
The unnamed 17-year-old, due in court in Lisburn, southwest of Belfast, was charged with murder and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.
He was also charged with belonging to the Continuity IRA (Irish Republican Army) — a banned republican splinter group dedicated to a united Ireland which claimed responsibility for Carroll’s murder — and with “collecting information likely to be of use to terrorists,” police said.
Seven people were originally arrested over Carroll’s murder, but two were released on Monday without charge.
Four people remain in custody meanwhile over the March 7 killings of the British soldiers at the gates of the Massereene Barracks in Antrim, northwest of Belfast, which were claimed by the Real IRA, another splinter group.
Six of those being held over the three murders were to challenge their extended detention in the High Court in Belfast yesterday, arguing it breaches their right to liberty under the European Convention on Human Rights. They are the first people to be held in Northern Ireland under the Terrorism Act of 2006, which means they can be held for up to 28 days without charge.
The Independent Monitoring Commission, which provides regular reports on paramilitary activity, previously warned that the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA had been increasingly active over a six-month period up to last November.
Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness — a former IRA commander — said dissidents were on the offensive precisely because the peace process and power-sharing were working, and branded them “traitors.”
Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde said the number of dissidents opposed to the peace process was relatively small, but they were dangerous.
“The current wisdom is that they number around 300 in a population of 1.75 million. They are also very dangerous, like any cornered animal in its death throes,” he wrote in the News of the World newspaper after the shootings.
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