Irish Republican News · January 6, 2005

Taxi driver ordered to transport bomb

The Continuity IRA have said they were behind an incident on Saturday night in which a taxi driver was ordered at gunpoint to drive a firebomb to a west Belfast police station.

In west Belfast, the front seat passenger in the taxi pulled out a gun and ordered the driver to take them to Gibson Street. When they got there, the two placed a device wrapped in a black bin bag in the back seat of the red Mercedes car and jumped out.

The men told the driver he had 20 minutes to get to Grosvenor Road police station before the device exploded. The driver raised the alarm when he arrived at the station and British army bomb experts were called to examine the object. It was later declared to be a viable device containing petrol.

The taxi driver, who was too frightened to be identified, said he thought he was going to die. Sinn Féin councillor Fra McCann said: “These people have nothing to offer. All they are doing is endangering the lives of people in this community.”

An 18-year-old Catholic youth was savagely attacked by a group of loyalists in broad daylight as he walked home on New Year’s Eve. The victim sustained cuts, bruising and swelling around the whole of his head and was robbed.

Another incendiary device was discovered at a retail park in County Antrim over the New Year. Incendiary devices have been found in stores in Lisburn, Newry, Antrim, Derry, Newtownabbey and Ballymena in recent weeks. Dissident republicans linked to the Real IRA have been blamed for the attacks.

Unionist paramilitaries were blamed for leaving a device at the County Derry home of a Sinn Féin election worker. The device, which the PSNI described as “suspect”, was found in the back garden of the man’s house in Kilrea, County Derry, on Sunday night. The man was in the house with his family at the time.

A number of suspicious mail packages were delivered to the Stormont Parliament Building near Belfast on Wednesday. The building - home to the suspended Assembly - was not evacuated.

An attack which damaged Garvetagh Orange Hall, just outside Castlederg, County Tyrone, is being treated as arson by the PSNI. The fire broke out at around 9pm on Monday.

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