UK UK - Kevin McGuigan, 53, IRA hitman, Belfast, 12 Aug 2015

PSNI detectives this morning arrested three men in connection with the murder last month of Belfast republican Kevin McGuigan, one of whom is Bobby Storey, the chairman of Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland.
---
Since Mr McGuigan’s murder in the Short Strand area of east Belfast last moth, 16 people have been arrested in connection with the killing. No one has been charged in relation to the murder, although one man was charged with firearms’ possession.
---

Click to expand...

[T]he IRA selected McGuigan for an assassination unit that would target alleged drug dealers in Belfast and other parts of Northern Ireland. Another even younger activist who was being groomed to become Belfast IRA commander – and ultimately, perhaps, the organisation’s overall chief of staff – was drafted in to run the DAAD murder campaign. His name was Gerard “Jock” Davison...

The unit of McGuigan and Davison became an object of fear among the IRA’s many enemies, and its activities led to the latter’s promotion to head the Provisionals’ Belfast Brigade. Yet in a world of volatility, suspicion and daily violence, the fellow IRA killers would eventually fall out... For a decade, McGuigan nursed a dark grudge, which the IRA in Belfast now believe led him to kill Davison on a rainy Tuesday morning in May...

Around 9pm on 12 August, as McGuigan was pulling up in his car with his wife at their home in Comber Court, two men clad in dark clothing ambushed him. They wounded him with a volley of shots and, as he tried to escape, killed him on the ground in front of his wife.

Ed Moloney, a veteran IRA-watcher and world authority on the Provisionals, is in no doubt that the leadership gave the go-ahead for the killing. “If this had been a genuinely freelance action, it would have been met with a ferocious response from the IRA against those responsible, and we haven’t seen that at all,” he said.

Click to expand...

Detectives have previously made a number of high profile arrests in the case including senior republicans Bobby Storey, Sinn Fein's northern chairman, Eddie Copeland and Brian Gillen.

All three were released without charge.

Click to expand...

The widow of IRA murder victim Kevin McGuigan has said she believes that his killers will never be convicted...

She said she had no doubt that the IRA leadership had authorised her husband's brutal execution, with a senior Belfast Provisional, who is also a Sinn Fein member, giving the go-ahead.

Mrs McGuigan said it was disappointing that a panel, set up by the Stormont Executive in the wake of her husband's death to report on the disbandment of paramilitary groups, hadn't talked to her.

Click to expand...

Records compiled by a panel reporting on the disbandment of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland have been destroyed.

Details of the documents' destruction emerged after a Freedom of Information request by the sister of an IRA murder victim.

The panel was set up by the Stormont Executive in the wake of the murder of Kevin McGuigan to examine ways to disband paramilitary groups.

Catherine McCartney said she was shocked to discover that the records hadn't been kept. She is reporting their destruction to the Information Commissioner as an alleged breach of the Freedom of Information Act.

Click to expand...