Republican refutes media slur
By Mick Naughton.
A Belfast republican has refuted allegations linking
him financially to drug dealers which appeared in the
British Sunday Times and the Irish tabloid `Sunday
World' on 15 February.
The papers claimed the man was ``booted out of the IRA''
after a ``top level inquiry''. He says he now fears for
his life because of the stories.
d the man's fears are not unfounded. It was disclosed
that drug dealer Brendan Campbell, shot dead last
Monday evening, had a supply of South African
fragmentation grenades and attacked Sinn Fein's
Connolly House, where the man works, using one of these
bombs.
``It's rather ironic,'' said the man, ''that only a few
months ago these same papers were saying that I and
other republicans were terrorising drug pushers through
neighbourhood watch and community alert schemes. The
real intention is that the RUC is using these papers to
try to set me up for drug pushers.''
In the story last weekend the papers said the man had
been thrown out of the IRA after what they termed,
``senior IRA investigators accused him of being on the
payroll of a drugs dealer in Belfast''.
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