Republican News · Thursday 14 March 2002

RIR patrol holds father and children

A father and his three children aged three, five and seven, were stopped and held at the side of a Fermanagh Road by an RIR patrol on Wednesday 27 February.

The man was driving along the Derryvollen Road, near Roslea at around 8pm on Wednesday 27 February, when the RIR stopped his van. The RIR soldiers ordered the father to remove his children from the van but as it was raining the man refused to comply.

The man told the RIR to send for the RUC/PSNI and in response they put spikes in front of and behind the wheels of his van to prevent him moving. Over the next 15 minutes, the RIR soldiers verbally abused the man before allowing him to drive on.

Sinn Féin councillor Brian McCaffrey said that this was only the latest in a list of incidents involving the RIR in the South Fermanagh area over the last while. McCaffrey said that RIR patrols were noting car registration numbers of local people and were taking young people from taxis at weekends and searching them. "This is a return to the '80s and early '90s", said McCaffrey. "It was unacceptable then and it is unacceptable now."