Editorial Bear

French court sentences 3 in Real IRA trial
Monday December 11, 04:55 PM

PARIS (Reuters) - A French court on Monday sentenced two Irishmen and a Frenchman, all with suspected links to the Irish republican splinter group the Real IRA, in connection with the discovery of arms in France in 2003.

All three were charged with "criminal association with a terrorist group".

Irishman Gary Roche was arrested in Portugal last year before being turned over to France. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison and is forbidden from ever returning to French territory.

Another Irishman, Kieron Doran, received the same sentence after being tried in absentia. An international arrest warrant has been issued for him.

French sympathiser Bernard le Gac, who was arrested in November 2003 during a police operation in Brittany in western France, received a suspended two-year sentence.

Police discovered the stash of two machine guns, an automatic pistol and two silencers buried in a forest near the town of Dieppe in northern France in November 2003.

The Real IRA is a breakaway from the IRA, which fought a three-decade campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland during which 3,600 people died.

The Real IRA was responsible for the single deadliest attack of the conflict when it detonated a bomb in the Northern Irish market town of Omagh in 1998, killing 29 people and injuring hundreds of others just months after a peace deal was signed.

Since then, the bombings and shootings that marked 30 years of sectarian conflict in the province have largely come to a halt -- a shift underlined last year when the main IRA movement pledged to end violence for good.

Northern Ireland's cease-fire watchdog has said it believes the IRA is keeping to that promise but issued a report in October saying it considers the much smaller Real IRA to be still active and dangerous.

Now, anti-American sentiment in Europe has been annoying me for quite a while... But I remember, when I was in America, that anti-French sentiment annoyed me as well. Cheese eating surrender monkeys was one of their favourites. French fries became Freedom Fries. The jokes about suntanned armpits and the German army marching in the shade were rampant.

But with this action, the French have firmly established that they won't tolerate terrorism. And despite the "war on terror" bravado, I'm sure that there are certain parts of the American community that won't like it one bit.

This is because the IRA, despite blowing up bombs in city centres and stations, still manages to have some credibility in America. Especially amongst forth generation Irish barflies, who shove a fiver in the kitty when some drunken Irishman staggers about demanding "something for the boys back home?"

The fact is, that Irishman is off to spend that money in the pub next door. And the fact is, the 'boys back home' - if you're referring to the IRA - are doing a roaring trade in arms and drugs and don't need any of American charity thank you very much.

The IRA sell drugs. They sell weapons. They sell training-in-terrorism to America's enemies. They basically run a big mafia across Northern Ireland. They are real, old school terrorists. The people who blow women and children up via remote control because they're gutless cowards (rather than ranting psychos, like the suicide bombers.)

There is nothing - NOTHING - noble or good about the IRA. And I hope some day that America realises this and treats them with the same murderous disdain that they do the bastards who knocked down the Twin Towers or blew themselves up in the London Underground.

Today it seems the French have shown more backbone about something than the Americans. and if that doesn't spur them into action in this War on Terror, I don't know what will!