INLA decommissions weapons
It is understood that the Irish National Liberation Army has decommissioned its weapons.
Saturday, 06 February 2010
The move by the republican paramilitary group comes a matter of days before the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning stops operating.
The IICD was established to oversee the decommissioning of republican and loyalist paramilitary weapons as part of the peace process.
The move is expected to be confirmed on Monday by the INLA and General John de Chastelain.
The organisation, formed in 1974, announced last October the end to its 30-year campaign of republican violence, using a graveside oration outside Dublin to confirm that its "armed struggle is over".
The splinter group, which opposes the 1998 Good Friday Agreement as a platform for achieving Irish unity, said it would restrict its opposition to the accord to purely peaceful means.
The INLA killed more than 100 people during the Troubles and is responsible for attacks such as the murder of Conservative MP Airey Neave in 1979.
The ruthless paramilitary group was also responsible for one of the largest death tolls of the Troubles in 1982 when it killed 17 people - including 11 soldiers and six civilians - in a bomb attack on the Droppin' Well pub in Ballykelly, Co Londonderry.
The group wound its campaign down in the 1990s in the aftermath of ceasefires by the IRA and the main loyalist groups, but it has continued to be involved in sporadic violence and criminal activity.
DUP MP Gregory Campbell said the decommissioning was long overdue.
"All too often when moves like this occur, there is a tendency to forget what was carried out by these groups," said the East Londonderry MP.
"Now is the time to ensure that history is not rewritten, just as those who were in the Provisional IRA and the Loyalist paramilitary organisations must not be allowed to try and justify the unjustifiable the same principle must apply to the INLA.
"As we move to the future we must not forget the past."
Once the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning ceases to exist any paramilitaries found in possession of weapons face prosecution and imprisonment. Recovered arms will also be forensically tested to secure convictions.
The loyalist UVF decommissioned last year, while the UDA put its weapons beyond use last month. The IRA was witnessed destroying its cache almost five years ago.
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