Ten-Thirty-Three

by Nicholas Davies

  In October 1987 Brian Nelson reported to his FRU handlers that the UDA had held a meeting with Loyalist sympathisers living in Co. Tyrone and that all the information handed to him by the FRU had been passed on to the local UDA. Nelson’s intelligence handlers urged him to keep them informed of exactly what the UDA discovered and to report back. It is understood that plans to target and kill McIvor were drawn up by the local UDA leaders. This attack was not carried out, though McIvor’s name and all his details were kept on the UDA file.

  It was not until three years later, some months after the arrest of Brian Nelson himself, that Malachy McIvor’s fate was decided and, ironically, he only died because of terrorist actions taken by his Republican friends. In November 1990 an IRA active service unit from Co. Tyrone decided to target and kill a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment soldier, Albert Cooper, a man in his thirties who was married with three young children. In many ways Albert Cooper, who was also a mechanic, was the Protestant equivalent of the Catholic Malachy McIvor, two men on opposite sides of the sectarian divide, both steeped in their own traditions but family men of honour who had never been involved in terrorist activity. And yet both would suffer violent deaths and for no good reason whatsoever.

  Unknown to McIvor, his life was put at risk when permission was given by the Provo commander in Co. Tyrone for an IRA active service unit to go ahead with the cold-blooded murder of Albert Cooper early on Friday, 2 November 1990. Cooper was targeted solely because he was a part-time serjeant-major with the UDR. According to the Provos of Co. Tyrone, that was good enough reason to murder him. Little did they know that their decision would directly lead to the murder of their friend Malachy McIvor.

  Cooper was working in his garage, Mid-Ulster Exhausts, in Station Yard off Union Street, Cookstown, when, shortly after ten in the morning, a woman drove a white Vauxhall Astra estate car into the garage and spoke to him. After a couple of minutes she walked away, never to be seen again. Within minutes the car exploded, killing Albert Cooper instantly and causing people in Cookstown to run to the Yard to see what had happened. Two other mechanics were on the premises at the time but were not injured in the blast. The two men gave descriptions of the woman to the police but to no avail.

  Albert Cooper, a quiet family man adored by his children, had been targeted once before by the Provos. Two years earlier he had escaped injury when IRA gunmen opened fire on his car as he drove towards his home three miles from Cookstown. As a result, the family had moved into the town, setting up their new home in Dunmore Close, off the Moneymore Road, where they hoped they would be less conspicuous. But once more the IRA gunmen had found him and this time they were more determined than ever to kill him.

  One week later, on the evening of Thursday, 8 November, Malachy McIvor would meet his fate in a tit-for-tat killing. The UDA leadership in Co. Tyrone recalled the P-card handed to them by Brian Nelson three years earlier and selected McIvor to pay the price.

  Under cover of darkness, on a cold, wet November evening in 1990, three Loyalist gunman drove from Cookstown to nearby Stewartstown, fully aware of the risks they were taking by entering into what they perceived to be ‘enemy territory’. They drove slowly down the main street, checking all the details they had, noting McIvor’s small garage at the corner of Castlefarm Road and North Street. They then left the village following the Coagh Road.

  Three nights later the same men once again drove into Stewartstown. The man in the front passenger seat was carrying a pistol in his belt; in the back seat was another gunman, holding a sub-machine-gun across his knees. Also on his lap, covering the gun, was an Ordnance Survey map of the area. They were taking no chances.

  They parked their car in North Street, got out and quietly closed the doors, not wanting to draw attention to their arrival. They looked around. The place seemed deserted. They pulled masks across their faces and nodded, the sign to walk into McIvor’s garage a few yards away.

  When they got there they could see that not one but two men were present.

  ‘Malachy McIvor?’ shouted one of them, addressing his question to the older of the two men. The other looked not much more than a teenager. As the gunmen stood at the entrance to the garage they were barely visible in the darkness that was lit only by the light in the garage where McIvor was working on his brother-in-law’s car.

  ‘Who’s that?’ McIvor asked, somewhat taken aback, because he wasn’t expecting any visitors.

  Without another word the gunmen took a few paces towards him and opened fire at point-range. McIvor was hit by six rounds, all direct hits, and he immediately slumped to the ground without uttering a word. Before McIvor’s body had hit the floor the gunmen had walked quickly out of the garage and away from the scene. Apart from the terrified teenager, no one, it seemed, had witnessed their arrival nor would anyone see them depart.

  The killing of Malachy McIvor three years after it was first mooted demonstrates the repercussions that flowed from the recruitment of Brian Nelson by British Military Intelligence. The allegation that the British Army in Northern Ireland colluded with Protestant paramilitary groups in the assassination of suspected Republican terrorists had been made many times during the thirty years of the troubles, but it has always been vehemently denied by both the army and the British government. As a result of the actions of the unique Force Research Unit, evidence has been put forward from a number of corners, including politicians in Northern Ireland, the Republic and the mainland, that the FRU was complicit in a series of murders carried out by the UDA between 1987 and 1990, suggesting that the army unit practised ‘assassination by proxy’. The facts revealed here, however, show that the army was far more deeply involved than had hitherto been suggested.

  Assassinations and killings attributable to Nelson and his UDA friends began within a few weeks of Nelson taking up his job. The first shootings carried out by his UDA gunmen bore all the hallmarks of assassins looking for easy targets on which to hone their skills.

  One of the first innocent victims of the UDA’s new sectarian campaign designed to cause distress and alarm among the Catholic community was Dermot Hackett, a decent, law-abiding, well-known man who visited both Catholic and Protestant shops and houses every day of his working life as a bread-delivery driver. Shortly before nine o’clock in the morning of 23 May 1987, Dermot Hackett was driving his bread van along the Omagh to Drumquin road in Co. Tyrone when he was forced to slow down as he negotiated a difficult bend outside Drumquin. Waiting around the corner, out of sight of the approaching driver, were two masked gunmen. They opened fire with a sub-machine-gun, firing at least a dozen bullets into the driver’s door, shattering the window and hitting Dermot Hackett in the head and body. Shortly afterwards a passing motorist stopped and discovered Hackett slumped over the steering wheel of his van, the engine still running, the driver’s door peppered with bullet holes. There was no sign of the gunmen.

  Dermot Hackett, a forty-year-old married man, was a well-respected and well-liked local figure known to hundreds of Catholics and Protestants living in and around Omagh, a man who would always have a smile and a cheery word for everyone no matter what their religious beliefs. He had never been a member of the Provisional IRA and had no connection with hardline Republicans. He was, however, a hard-working member of the local St Vincent de Paul charity and the cousin of Stephen McKenna, then the leader of the SDLP group on Omagh Council, although Hackett was not a member of any political party nor had he helped with his cousin’s election campaign.

  But Hackett, a man of principle, had some months before had an argument with local RUC officers after he was found driving his van in an area close to where a security officer had just been shot by Provo gunmen. Questioned by detectives investigating the shooting, Hackett told police that he was simply on his rounds at the time and knew nothing of the killing. He also told them that he had seen no sign of the gunmen either before or after the incident. Apparently, some RUC officers did not believe Hackett and they began to harass him,
stopping him frequently as he made his deliveries and demanding to search his vehicle.

  Hackett complained about the constant harassment not only to senior RUC officers in Omagh but, when the campaign against him continued, to his local SDLP constituency representative, Denis Haughey, asking him to take up his case with the RUC. Following Hackett’s murder, Mr Haughey commented, ‘He had been in touch with me about the harassment he received from the police over a lengthy period of time. He was out working when an incident occurred involving a member of the security forces. He had been questioned and co-operated fully and gave details of his movements that day. From that time on he became an object of harassment from the police. Both I and Joseph McManus, the local chairman of the St Vincent de Paul charity, had made representations to the police on his behalf and after this police pressure had eased off. My fear is that the absolutely unreasonable harassment of this man by the police and the public knowledge of it may have made him a target.’

  It had indeed. Nine hours earlier Charles Watson, a former prison warder, had been gunned down by masked Provo hitmen who broke into his home in Co. Down, using a sledgehammer to smash their way through the back door just before midnight as he sat at home with his wife Doreen with their four children asleep upstairs.

  Doreen told the RUC, ‘As soon as Charlie realised that people were trying to smash their way into our home, he knew they were the Provos out to get him. He had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and so he ran up the stairs to the bathroom, intending to try and escape through the window and down the pipe. The two masked men broke into the living-room and shouted, “Where is he? Where is he?” I said nothing, I was so shocked and frightened, fearing for Charlie’s life. The two men were both carrying guns and I just prayed that Charlie would escape. Then I heard shouting followed by the sound of gunfire coming from upstairs and I knew, I just knew, the worst had happened. Seconds later the two men came racing down the stairs and out the kitchendoor. I ran up the stairs and there was Charlie lying in a pool of blood. I knew when I saw him on the bathroom floor that he was dead. Then suddenly I thought of the kids and I turned round and they were coming out of their room to see what was going on. I didn’t want them to see their father lying there and I took them back to their bedrooms and closed the bathroom door before calling the RUC. It was horrible, terrible, and now the children have no father.’

  And there was anger in Co. Down over Charlie Watson’s murder. Three years earlier he had been involved in a late-night fracas outside a chip shop in Newcastle. He had been found guilty of assault and given a three-month suspended jail sentence which was overturned on appeal. The prison authorities, however, dismissed him from the service. As a result, of course, he was also ordered to give back the handgun – the personal protection weapon – that all prison officers are issued with on joining the prison service; because so many prison warders had been targeted and killed by the Provos they were permitted, indeed advised, to carry their handguns with them at all times. They were also advised to sleep with the guns under their pillows.

  Some blamed Charlie Watson’s murder on the prison service for refusing to re-employ him after his successful appeal, as well as the Northern Ireland Office for refusing to allow him to keep the gun for his own personal protection. DUP councillor Ethel Smyth claimed that the prison service and the Northern Ireland Office had left him defenceless. ‘They have blood on their hands,’ she said. ‘As a prominent Loyalist he was always going to be a target. Charlie was a member of the Apprentice Boys and the Orange Order and was well known as a Loyalist. He was very concerned about his safety, especially when his brother in the UDR was shot at by Provo gunmen. Charlie was not even permitted to keep his own shotgun that he used to kill vermin on his farm. I knew Charlie well and I know that he was the sort of man who would not have hesitated to use his gun if he was attacked by armed gunmen. But when they did come to his house to kill him, he was defenceless.’

  But Charlie Watson had five brothers, and they all had friends in the Orange Order and acquaintances with contacts in the Loyalist paramilitary organisations. Within hours of Watson’s murder, the local hardline Co. Tyrone Loyalist paramilitary activists had been in touch with the UDA in Belfast informing them of what had happened and asking if there was any reason why they should not retaliate by taking out a man they considered to be a hardline Republican. They received the reply they wanted, an affirmative, and Dermot Hackett’s fate was sealed. Within hours he too was dead and the Loyalists believed they had taken revenge for Charlie Watson’s killing.

  During early discussions with his handlers Brian Nelson raised the question of Catholic taxi-drivers. ‘Are all those taxi-drivers really Provos?’ he asked.

  ‘No, not necessarily,’ he was told. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘Well, we understand that many of the drivers working for Catholic taxi firms have done time for various offences connected with the Provos,’ said Nelson. ‘When they come out of jail they have no work and no one will employ them, so the Provos arrange for one or other of the west Belfast taxi firms to give them a part-time job driving taxis. It brings them in some money.’

  ‘Well of course it’s true that the Catholic taxi firms will want to employ Catholic taxi-drivers because they spend their times in the Catholic areas,’ commented one FRU handler. ‘It’s also true that some of those drivers have done time for terrorist offences, but not all of them. Some are totally innocent, just doing a job of work.’

  Nelson was adamant, however, that his UDA colleagues were convinced that most Catholic taxi firms used known Provo activists and hardline Republicans as drivers. The FRU were aware that pressure was often put on the owners of taxi firms operating in the Catholic part of the city to employ former Maze inmates and, they realised, the taxi firms had no option but to comply. If they had said no to the Provos, they would have found themselves out of business very soon. They put this argument to Nelson forcefully in an effort to persuade him to leave taxi-drivers well alone, but he was never convinced of their argument. Nelson believed he knew better than Military Intelligence.

  On Saturday, 3 July 1987, a UDA man walked casually into a pub on the edge of west Belfast which was known to be mainly, though not exclusively, frequented by Catholics from the nearby estates. He was, of course, taking an extraordinary risk, for if anyone in that bar had suspected he was a Protestant his chances of escaping a severe beating, or perhaps a worse fate, would have been nil. He ordered a pint of Guinness and slowly downed it, talking to no one and minding his own business as he watched groups of men, and a few women, enjoying an evening in the pub. He placed his empty glass on the bar and asked the barmaid serving him: ‘Could you call me a taxi, love?’

  ‘Aye,’ she replied, ‘when do you want it for?’

  As soon as possible,’ he replied, ‘five minutes okay?’

  ‘Here’s a card for the taxi,’ she said, and handed over a printed card with the name of the Ardoyne taxi firm on it. At that moment the UDA gunman knew that the taxi would almost certainly be driven by a Catholic. The idea was that passengers would give the card to the driver so he knew he was picking up the man who had, in fact, ordered the taxi and not some stranger.

  As he waited impatiently for the taxi to arrive, the UDA gunman didn’t want to start a conversation with anyone for fear of being traced later so, after a couple of minutes, he walked outside to wait in the summer evening light. A few yards away another man who had been waiting in a car, got out of his vehicle, walked over and handed the UDA man a folded newspaper. They winked at each other but did not say a word. Wrapped inside the newspaper was a .9mm handgun.

  Minutes later the Ardoyne taxi arrived and the UDA man waved down the driver, handing him the card from the pub before getting in the back. He said he wanted to be taken to Oldpark Road the other side of the Ardoyne.

  The driver was forty-year-old Edward Campbell. His name had never come up during discussions between Nelson and his handlers. Campbell was totally unknown to the RUC Spec
ial Branch or Military Intelligence, having no previous convictions and apparently no attachment or relationship with the Provisional IRA or even its political wing, Sinn Fein. His only tenuous connection with the Provos was that the taxi firm for which he worked was situated in the Catholic Ardoyne area of Belfast and he therefore may have, from time to time, ferried Provos, Sinn Fein supporters or Republican sympathisers around the city.

  For ten minutes neither man in the taxi said a word as the driver made his way towards the Ardoyne and on towards Oldpark Road. When he was not far from his destination he asked his passenger where exactly he wanted to be dropped.

  ‘Say nothing,’ the gunman said in a threatening voice as he jammed the barrel of the revolver into the back of Campbell’s neck. ‘If you try anything I’ll blow your fucking brains out. Just keep driving till I tell you when to stop.’

  During the next couple of minutes the highly agitated Campbell tried desperately to start a conversation in a bid to talk the gunman out of shooting him. But the UDA man would not let him say a word, telling him to ‘shut up and keep fucking driving’. As they approached a country lane leading to a quarry the gunman told Campbell that he should stop as he was waiting to meet some friends.

  A few seconds later a car that had been following the taxi flashed the headlamps twice. In that instant the gunman fired at point-blank range into the back of Campbell’s head. The noise in the car was deafening; the damage to Campbell’s head horrifying. He died instantly. The gunman stepped out of the car as his two accomplices drove up. He clambered inside and shut the door as the driver picked up speed and drove away.

  ‘How did it go?’ said the man in the passenger seat.

  ‘Perfect,’ replied the gunman. ‘Went like fuckin’ clockwork.’