I
Indofred
Guest
On the trail of US funds for IRA / The Christian Science Monitor - CSMonitor.com
Given America's terrorist supporting past, should the US have any real say in today's world?
New York
Funds raised in the United States ostensibly for charitable relief work in Northern Ireland have been diverted for the purchase of guns and bombmaking equipment for the outlawed Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), according to US federal court documents. The funds, raised through pub collections and testimonial dinners by the Irish Northern Aid Committee (Noraid) of New York City, are channeled through An Cumman Cabhrach, a relief organization in Dublin.
But on several occasions in 1982 and 1983 some of the Noraid funds were siphoned off to finance IRA shopping expeditions in the US for guns and other military hardware, according to the testimony of Michael Hanratty, a former electronics purchaser for the IRA who turned federal informant in 1982.
``Money supplied by Noraid was sent over to Ireland,'' Mr. Hanratty testified in the 1983 Brooklyn gunrunning trial of Gabriel Megahey and Andrew Duggan. ``At that point, when equipment was to be purchased, a courier then took some of the money that was needed and carried it back to this country.
Given America's terrorist supporting past, should the US have any real say in today's world?