The IRA hasn’t changed its evil ways.

Ireland

Editorial

The Irish Independent

The Irish Republican Army is just as thuggish as ever, said Dublin’s Irish Independent in an editorial. Sinn Fein, the militant group’s political wing, tried to convince everyone that the bad old days of terrorism ended last year, when the IRA gave up its weapons. But now we have another “blatant public execution” of an informer. Denis Donaldson, a former top IRA official, had been in hiding in Ireland since confessing a few months ago that he’d been spying for Britain for two decades. Last week, his body was found; he had been tortured and his right hand cut off before being killed with a bullet to the brain. Everyone knows that the IRA did it. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams can protest his group’s innocence all he likes—he’s merely destroying all pretense of his credibility. If Adams didn’t know that the IRA was going to murder someone, that just proves that he doesn’t have control over it or the power to negotiate on its behalf. “The neat suits and ties, the choreographed photo opportunities” of Sinn Fein are all just “affectations for the gullible.” Because “at the end of the day, it is the IRA who call the shots.”

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