Irish Republican News · June 3, 2005

Derry man approached in recruitment bid

A member of Republican Sinn Féin in Derry has said that PSNI police tried to recruit him as an informer.

Richard Walsh, a member of the party’s ruling ard comhairle, said he was stopped by uniformed police officers who said they were from the “intelligence services” last Wednesday.

Mr Walsh said the two officers who stopped him as he travelled to work near Glenullin had also stopped him the city several weeks earlier.

“I was told that they had been watching me for months, for years and that I must have known that this day was coming,” he said.

Mr Walsh said the PSNI men told him they knew everything about him and offered to meet anywhere if he could obtain information about two named individuals.

He said he was threatened by the two policemen and alleged that one of them told him that if he wanted to stay alive he would help them.

“One of them also said that in this day and age all it would take was a word in the ear of the Dublin administration and I would be going away to Portlaoise for a few years the next time I headed down the country,” Mr Walsh said.

He said the the officers repeatedly attempted to give him a telephone number and when he refused said they would speak to him again.

Senior RSF member Joe O’Neill, from County Donegal, said the incident was the latest effort by police to target young members of the party. He said such actions were designed to deter people from becoming active with RSF.

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