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Low turn-out for Sinn Fein protest
BELFAST, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- Irish republicans held low-key demonstrations on Saturday against raids carried out on Sinn Fein offices the day before. The party had called for protests after Northern Ireland police searched offices in Belfast on Friday including at the parliamentary buildings, Stormont, in an unprecedented move. Security forces said the searches took place as part of a probe into Irish Republican Army activities in the city. Sinn Fein brandished the police action as "politically motivated" in an attempt to scupper the peace process. But only a handful of demonstrators took to the streets outside six police stations. About 80 people, 10 of them children, protested outside the Andersontown police station in west Belfast. Five other similar demonstrations were held at other police stations. Meanwhile a protestant man was killed after being shot in the chest late Friday, believed to be part of loyalist paramilitary feud. Jeffrey Thomas Gray, 41, from east Belfast, was shot dead at about 11.40 p.m. (2240 GMT) Friday night by a lone gunman dressed in black and wearing a baseball cap. Anti-terrorist police are still questioning four people arrested in Friday's searches including, it is believed, a former government messenger who once worked inside Castle Buildings where the Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid and his ministers have their offices. It is understood he was being questioned about allegations of spying on government ministers for the IRA in Belfast. A woman was also held following the raids. More than 200 officers were involved in the raids on homes in north and west Belfast as well as the Northern Ireland Assembly building during which documents and computer disks were taken for examination. They were launched following allegations that Sinn Fein was in some way involved in procuring private documents intended for Reid and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. Sinn Fein official Barbara De Brún told CNN she had no knowledge of the allegations involving the stolen documents and branded the dawn raids as "politically motivated." Sinn Fein is widely regarded as being the political wing of the IRA, a charge the party denies.
But hardline unionist politicians took the opportunity to call for Sinn Fein's removal from the shaky power sharing government of Northern Ireland. Ulster Unionist Party member Jeffrey Donaldson called on the British government to take steps to remove Sinn Fein. The nationalist party has two seats in the assembly. If it does not, Donaldson said, the Ulster Unionists -- the largest and most significant protestant party in Northern Ireland -- will take action of their own. After the raids on Friday, Northern Ireland First Minister and Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble called for the same action. He said: "On the 24th of July, John Reid [the Northern Ireland Secretary] said in the House of Commons that if there was further evidence of activities incompatible with a cease-fire, as he defined it, then he would act. "So the challenge today to John Reid is: fulfil your word, do what you said in July that you would do, take appropriate responses." Trimble, who is to meet Blair in London next week, has already warned he will withdraw his ministers from the executive next January unless the IRA disbands. The IRA has already been blamed for the theft of Special Branch files in Belfast last March while three suspected IRA members in Colombia are facing accusations of training FARC guerrillas. The raids came on the same day three men accused of being members of the IRA went on trial in Colombia for allegedly taking part in the training of rebels. (Full story) Sinn Fein has called the searches "anti-democratic and anti-Sinn Fein."
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