The darkest, most undemocratic forces in the state are in the ascendancy. “Allowing MI5 to have a lead role in intelligence is like appointing Herod as children’s commissioner,” says SDLP leader, Mark Durkan.
Paul O’Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry is equally disturbed: “MI5 was aware Pat Finucane was to be murdered but didn’t intervene. MI5 allowed the 1998 Omagh bombing to proceed, it destroyed covert recordings in shoot-to-kill cases, it ran agents involved in multiple murders.
Officially, it doesn’t exist. It’s 10,000 square feet, boasts a massive underground section, and could cost up to £100 million but MI5 won’t even admit it’s building a new headquarters beside Palace Barracks, Holywood, a few miles outside Belfast.
For nationalists, such expansion is hardly a sign the British are leaving the North. But there are other reasons to worry. All the gains of recent years, in terms of accountability and transparency regarding policing, are in jeopardy.
Next year, MI5 will take over intelligence-gathering from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). The SDLP and Sinn Féin are challenging this move in the ongoing post-St Andrews negotiations, but no-one believes the British will reverse it.
The darkest, most undemocratic forces in the state are in the ascendancy. “Allowing MI5 to have a lead role in intelligence is like appointing Herod as children’s commissioner,” says SDLP leader, Mark Durkan.
Paul O’Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry is equally disturbed: “MI5 was aware Pat Finucane was to be murdered but didn’t intervene. MI5 allowed the 1998 Omagh bombing to proceed, it destroyed covert recordings in shoot-to-kill cases, it ran agents involved in multiple murders.
“The Bloody Sunday tribunal, the commission of inquiry into the Dublin, Monaghan and Dundalk bombings, and the Stevens and Stalker investigations, all faced major difficulties when requiring co-operation from MI5.
“MI5 officers have been involved in interrogations at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo Bay. It’s unbelievable that an increased role is being planned for such people.”