NI punishment attacks double

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- The number of "Mafia-style" paramilitary attacks on youngsters in Northern Ireland has nearly doubled since the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, a report has found.

The report shows that despite an accord which is supposed to help reduce the level of paramilitary violence in the area brutal revenge-style attacks on children are increasing.

Often the victims are children and juveniles with low IQ levels, beaten in front of their mothers in their own home.

Attacks are carried out by both Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries, the report -- prepared for various parliamentary committees -- said.

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The report called 'They Shoot Children Don't They' found that during 1999 and 2000 the squads brutalised 47 under-18s compared with 25 in the previous two years.

It contained a number of eye-witness accounts of beatings, including that from the mother of a 16-year-old attacked by a gang of 10 in his house in west Belfast.

The boy, with a reported IQ of 45, was dragged into the bathroom and beaten.

His mother said: "I could hear him screaming from in there. After that they dragged him outside to the alleyway. I went into the bathroom and saw blood everywhere: after that I passed out."

Another mother told of the beating of her 15-year-old son after he admitted to juvenile delinquency when confronted by five masked IRA men.

"One of them pulled an iron bar from inside a jacket and hit him across the face," she said.

It was the start of a 20-minute beating which left him with a broken jaw, traumatised and barely able to speak.

The report written by Liam Kennedy, professor of modern history at Queens University in Belfast, calls for the immediate establishment of an anti-intimidation unit in Northern Ireland and urges the Stormont Assembly and General John de Chastelain's decommissioning body to monitor the scale of punishment attacks.

The report was written for the cross-community Northern Ireland Committee Against Terrorism and the House of Commons Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, and will be submitted to the Stormont Assembly when it returns after the recess.

If nothing is done, Kennedy fears there will be "the consolidation of a patchwork of Mafia-style mini-states, of orange and green complexion, operating vendetta-style justice and sustained economically by extortion and other forms of racketeering."