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Date Posted: 06:33:19 03/26/05 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Widow rejects IRA apology for cop's death (Washington Post)

washingtonpost.com

Widow Rejects IRA Apology for Cop's Death

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
The Associated Press
Monday, March 14, 2005; 2:49 PM


DUBLIN, Ireland - The widow of a police officer killed by the Irish Republican Army rejected the outlawed group's apology Monday as self-serving, dishonest and nine years too late.

The 1996 slaying of detective Jerry McCabe has aroused exceptionally strong feelings in the Republic of Ireland, where the IRA rarely targets police officers. The IRA-linked Sinn Fein party for years has demanded that four men convicted of the killing should receive early paroles under terms of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

But in their statement issued from prison, the four IRA men - Pearse McAuley, Jeremiah Sheehy, Michael O'Neill and Kevin Walsh - declared they "do not want our release to be part of any further negotiations with the Irish government."

The IRA unit shot McCabe three times at point-blank range with an assault rifle and badly wounded his colleague, detective Ben O'Sullivan, during a botched ambush on a cash-filled van. The IRA denied involvement, then said the unit acted without authorization.

The four men said they never intended to shoot either officer.

"We deeply regret and apologize for this and the hurt and grief we have caused to their families," their statement said.

But McCabe's widow, Ann, said the IRA men's words were just sickening.

"It doesn't wash with me. It means absolutely nothing," she said.

She noted that their contrite words came during a week when the Sinn Fein-IRA movement is facing unprecedented U.S. pressure to renounce crime and fully disarm.

"They have the glare of all this publicity on them now, and I think it's just a public relations exercise to try to take that glare away from them," she said.

As part of the Good Friday accord of 1998, which envisioned a future Northern Ireland where British Protestants and Irish Catholics shared power, more than 500 convicted members of the IRA and other truce-observing paramilitary groups walked free from prison from 1998 to 2000.

The Irish government has insisted that McCabe's killers are not eligible because the killing was not an official IRA operation. Many analysts say the case reflects double standards in the Republic of Ireland, where the IRA's frequent killings of Northern Ireland police from 1970 to 1997 caused no public disquiet.

Prime Minister Bertie Ahern stirred significant opposition last year when he announced that the four would have to be freed as part of a new deal to revive power-sharing in Northern Ireland. That deal fell apart in December when the IRA refused to renounce crime or permit photos of its disarmament as others demanded.

Since then, the IRA has been accused of mounting the world's largest cash theft in a bank robbery; knifing a Catholic man to death and intimidating witnesses in Belfast; and laundering millions in crime proceeds in the Republic of Ireland. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, for the past decade a welcome guest in Irish-American circles, this week is being snubbed by the White House and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., among others, during official St. Patrick's Day functions.

As part of the growing Irish government criticism of Sinn Fein, Ahern last month said McCabe's killers must serve their full sentences.

And Ahern's justice minister, Michael McDowell, said the changed position of the four IRA men "simply recognizes reality - that the government has already ruled out any consideration of their early release in future talks."

All four originally faced charges of murdering a police officer, an offense that carries a mandatory minimum of 40 years in prison. But after two key prosecution witnesses withdrew their testimony, citing IRA intimidation, the four pleaded guilty to manslaughter and received sentences ranging from 11 years to 14 years in 1999.

They are all supposed to be paroled by August 2009. McAuley remains a wanted man in England, where he shot his way out of a London prison in 1991 while awaiting trial on other IRA offenses.

Mrs. McCabe is traveling to New York later this week to attend annual ceremonies in her husband's memory at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The college, a part of the City University of New York, in 1996 established a Jerry McCabe fellowship program that allows police officers from Ireland and New York to study in each other's countries.
© 2005 The Associated Press
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