RAAD ‘is determined to kill police officers’

Republican Action Against Drugs (RAAD) has been blamed by senior commanders for attempted murder after an explosive device was hurled at a police vehicle in the city recently.

Federation chairman Terry Spence yesterday told the annual conference of the organisation, which represents rank-and-file officers, that RAAD had created an extortion racket out of punishment beatings.

It has been claimed that more than 200 young people have been forced to leave Londonderry by so-called punishment gangs in recent years.

RAAD have also been behind around 50 shooting incidents, including the murder of father-of-two Andrew Allen in Buncrana on February 9. Mr Allen was originally from the Top of the Hill area in Londonderry’s Waterside.

Since that murder, RAAD’s links to the Real IRA have become closer, especially after it emerged that young people within the republican and nationalist community were fighting back against them, and a number of RAAD members were assaulted.

Two people alleged to have links with dissident republican groupings had to be escorted from the Top of the Hill area for their own safety as police probing the murder of Mr Allen searched a number of houses earlier this year.

On the cityside, two young men were shot in the legs after being involved in a “drunken altercation” outside a bar with a RAAD member. Threats against two others were withdrawn after public protests.

As pressure intensified against RAAD, it warned - initially through the RTE Prime Time series - that it would attack police. Some observers now believe that the groups and the Real IRA have effectively come together.

Still, anti-RAAD graffiti appeared in the Top of the Hill area recently, saying “RAAD not welcome here”.

It was painted over but last night new graffiti appeared saying ‘Justice for Andy will come’.

Mr Spence said yesterday: “Now the RAAD have gone further and unashamedly exposed themselves as determined to murder police officers.

“Their social interest in drug crime has been an utter sham and a profile-building exercise for mounting terrorist attacks.”

On June 2, a device was thrown at a police vehicle while officers were conducting searches in Londonderry’s Creggan area. It damaged the vehicle but there were no injuries.

Mr Spence said RAAD should be proscribed as an organisation and the UVF should be respecified as the “active terrorists” that they are.

“Neither the UVF nor the RAAD are acting in the interest of the community,” he said.

“They are tawdry groupings of vicious thugs, pumped up with self-importance, determined to exercise control of local communities through fear.”

He added: “A downward destructive spiral of despair is being created because of the public’s lack of confidence in their safety if they help the police.

“There has also been the hint that if some of the victims had been more robustly dealt with by the courts in the first place, perhaps there would be less community support for such barbaric punishments.”

He said the sentences accorded last month to the Continuity IRA murderers of Constable Stephen Carroll sent out the wrong message.

A 14-year jail term handed to a member of the gang has been referred to the Court of Appeal by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The officer’s widow, Kate, hit out after John Paul Wootton, 21, who drove the getaway car, was sentenced to a minimum of 14 years by Lord Justice Paul Girvan.

The term was 11 years less than that handed to Brendan McConville, 41, also convicted of the killing.

Mr Spence said: “We demand that life should mean just that, a whole life sentence, no matter what age the perpetrator.

“If we don’t take the opportunity to persuade young would-be murderers that a life in prison awaits them, then we are failing to protect our officers and failing to deter terrorists.”