Guardian Unlimited
Henry McDonald
Bomb goes off behind Palace Barracks, on the outskirts of Belfast, timed to coincide with transfer of judicial and policing powers to Stormont
The Real IRA admitted today that it launched the bomb attack on MI5's regional headquarters in Northern Ireland timed to coincide with the transfer of judicial and policing powers to the Stormont Assembly. The device, transported to the base at Holywood, Co Down, was designed to go off hours before Stormont appoints a new justice minister.
A taxi driver was subjected to a terrifying ordeal after his car was hijacked in the Ligoniel district of north Belfast late on Sunday. The driver was held for about three hours by armed dissidents before being ordered to take the bomb in his car across the city to the MI5 HQ. While he was travelling to the other side of Belfast armed dissidents held his family hostage in their own home. On arrival at the Old Holywood Road on the eastern outskirts of Belfast the driver got out of his taxi and alerted the security forces that there was a bomb in his car.
Security staff at the base which is also home to a number of British Army units inside nearby Palace Barracks around 12.20am when the bomb exploded. The PSNI said there were two explosions – first, when the bomb detonated, and then shortly afterwards when the taxi's petrol tank exploded.
A pensioner nearby sustained minor injuries while a number of people being evacuated from their homes near the Old Holywood Road were later treated for shock. However no one was seriously injured or killed in the bombing. Dozens of people are still out of their homes due to an ongoing security operation near Palace Barracks. They are being housed in a nearby community centre.
The Real IRA and other republican dissidents have been intensifying their armed campaigns over the last 18 months. They oppose the peace process and regard Sinn Féin's participation in the power sharing coalition with unionists at Stormont as a sell-out of traditional republican principles.
In planning their attack on the MI5 regional HQ – the largest outside the security services' national headquarters in London – the Real IRA is following the terror tactics of the Provisional IRA at the height of the Troubles. The IRA selected high profile targets such as the City of London in its bombing campaign during the 1980s and 1990s. The Real IRA's strategy is to use such attacks to destabilise Northern Ireland and drive a wedge between unionists and mainstream republicans at Stormont. At the end of the 1990s the Real IRA fired a Russian-made rocket propelled grenade at the headquarters of MI6 in London. Northern Ireland secretary, Shaun Woodward, condemned the terror group but insisted that politics would move forward in the province.
On the timing of the attack just hours before the transfer of policing and justice powers, Woodward said: "This democratic transition stands in stark contrast to the activity of a criminal few who will not accept the will of the majority of people of Northern Ireland. They have no support anywhere."
Today Northern Ireland will have its first justice minister for nearly 40 years when the Stormont parliament takes over judicial and policing powers. It is expected that David Ford, the leader of the centrist Alliance Party, will receive the backing of the two main parties in the assembly and become the head of the new justice ministry.
Ford's elevation to the post is due to a deal hammered out earlier this year between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists at Hillsborough which saved power-sharing. But his election will be controversial because under the Hillsborough accord Sinn Féin will support the Alliance leader rather than a fellow nationalist from the SDLP.
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