A FORMER Fermanagh Unionist Councillor has been described as “a leading member of the UDA” who enlisted the help of a British Army officer to enable the Loyalist paramilitary group blow up Aghalane Bridge in 1972.

Jack Leahy, a well-known publican in Lisnaskea and a member of the Ulster Unionist group on Fermanagh District Council, was identified by Captain Vernon Rees in an audio interview taped by the Imperial War Museum.

Rees admitted that he agreed to Leahy’s request to keep troops away from the bridge for four hours while Loyalists bombed Aghalane.

Furthermore, Rees – responsible for British Army security along the south Fermanagh Border in the early 1970s – passed his agreement through Special Branch.

The claim that the UDA, British Army and Special Branch collaborated in the bombing of a cross-Border road came in an RTE documentary this week, entitled: ‘Belturbet: A Bomb That Time Forgot’.

Teenagers killed

Two teenagers, Geraldine O’Reilly (15) and Paddy Stanley (16), were killed in the no-warning blast just across the Border three days after Christmas, 1972.

There was a co-ordinated Loyalist operation that evening which saw bombs in Belturbet, Clones and near Pettigo. Two of the cars were hijacked in Enniskillen earlier that day.

The programme named leading figures in Fermanagh Loyalist paramilitarism and asked serious questions about the poor investigations into the attacks by security services on both sides of the Border.

The documentary revealed the loss of files by investigators.

Following the broadcast on Monday evening, questions were raised in the Dail on Tuesday, and the Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, said he would pursue the matter with the British authorities and the authorities in Northern Ireland.

As regards Aghalane Bridge, which used to form the main road between Enniskillen and Dublin, it became a controversial crossing after the brutal double murder by the IRA of Tom and Emily Bullock in their home close to the bridge in September, 1972.

Unionists claimed it was frequently used by IRA units based in the Republic.

Following the murder of the Bullocks, outraged Unionists demanded the closure of the bridge. The British could shut minor roads, but shutting a main “approved” road required Dublin’s consent, and that would not be forthcoming.

However, records now held by the Imperial War Museum show that Captain Rees – the army officer in charge of security in southwest Fermanagh – collaborated in blowing up the bridge illegally.

In an interview for the museum’s oral history archive, Rees recalled that, after the killing of the Bullocks, a local RUC chief inspector introduced him to Jack Leahy, then a 46-year-old publican in Lisnaskea and a long-standing Ulster Unionist Party councillor.

Rees claimed that Leahy was a leading representative of the UDA in south Fermanagh.

In Rees’ view: “anybody who would help me defeat the IRA would be a friend of mine – and that, in those days, included the UDA”.

The blast damaged but did not destroy the bridge. So, the next day, Rees ordered his own men to finish off the job.

The interview was uncovered by Edward Burke, a professor at the University of Nottingham, whose detailed research includes many official documents. His insight into the subject of cross-Border violence was integral to the programme.

Rees was regarded with some suspicion as a controversial figure by local Nationalists, at a time which saw the murder of Louis Leonard in his butcher shop at Derrylin in 1972, and the infamous ‘pitchfork murders’ of Michael Naan and Andrew Murray the same year.

It is widely believed that the Belturbet bombing in December, 1972 was in retaliation for the order by Cavan County Council to reopen the bombed road against the wishes of the British government and local Unionists.

The bridge was reopened but subsequently bombed again, and when it was eventually demolished, it remained a closed route for 26 years.

After the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, a new bridge was built, and at its opening the following year was named the Senator George Mitchell Peace Bridge, in honour of the American diplomat’s role in peace talks.

The RTE documentary featured contributions from the former editor of The Impartial Reporter, Denzil McDaniel; former Fermanagh South Tyrone MP, Frank McManus; and retired Free Presbyterian Minister and former DUP politician, the Rev. Ivan Foster.

Rev. Foster referred to the long list of UDR, RUC and RUC Reservists killed by the IRA coming across the Border.

‘Inflammatory’

McDaniel recalled the “inflammatory speeches” made by Unionist politicians in the Vanguard movement giving cover for Loyalists in Fermanagh in the early 1970s.

McManus, a former MP for Fermanagh-south Tyrone, who himself survived being shot by Loyalists, talked about the fear Nationalists felt when they heard the speeches.

Almost 50 years after the Belturbet bombing, nobody has been charged with the murders of the two children, and the injuries to so many others.

A 2004 report by former High Court judge Mr Justice Henry Barron named one lead suspect, Robert Bridge – an Enniskillen Loyalist who was later convicted of the sectarian murder of Catholic worker Patrick (Packie) O’Reilly in his lorry when working at a road scheme near Irvinestown in 1975.

It’s claimed that Bridge was the most likely leader of a Loyalist cell in Fermanagh that planted bombs in the southern Border towns of Belturbet, Clones and Pettigo on the night of December 28. Fortunately, nobody died in Clones and Pettigo.

In the programme, Bridge denied having anything to do with Belturbet.

The RTE programme has named George Farrell, an Enniskillen man who served a prison sentence for Loyalist crimes in the 1970s.

Court reports showed Farrell had named other Fermanagh Loyalists allegedly involved in paramilitary activity at the time.

Intelligence

Barron’s conclusions drew heavily on Garda reports, which were largely based on intelligence received from the RUC. Barron singled out Bridge, because there was so little information about anyone else.

However, documents held at the UK National Archives in London now prove that intelligence on another lead suspect was available, but that this was not passed on to Irish investigators.

Shortly after the Belturbet murders, the commander of the British army’s 3rd Infantry Brigade met Tyrone and Fermanagh police commanders in Omagh, where among other matters they discussed the arrest of two men – William McMurray, Newtownabbey, and James Campbell, with addresses in Fermanagh and Newtownabbey – after a robbery in Derrygonnelly, Co. Fermanagh.

They discussed an UDA member involved in “a commando-type gang from Belfast” blamed for explosions “in Eire”. British military intelligence identified McMurray as the “OC [officer commanding] of a UDA special commando team” in the Border region.

The families of the murdered teenagers maintain their fight for justice.