The Continuity IRA and the Real IRA are two of only three non-Islamic terrorist organisations who have been designated as a threat to the United States.
The CIRA were re-confirmed by US Secretary of State John Kerry in recent months as maintaining their threat to US security, while the RIRA were re-entered in 2013.
The paramilitary dissidents are named amid a list largely made up of the most dangerous Islamic terrorists in the world, which includes Boko Haram, the Taliban and branches of Al Qaeda.
In fact, the CIRA and Real IRA are the only Western European groups who have been deemed a threat to US security, except for ETA – a terror group fighting for control of the Basque region in Spain.
Based upon a review of the record of groups which are red alert in the US, the Secretary of
State signed an order last April re-confirming that the CIRA were still a huge threat.
The CIRA were first designated on the US terror list in 2004, and again after the shooting dead of PSNI Constable Stephen Carroll in 2009.
He had responded to a 999 call and was the first police officer to be killed since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
He was killed two days after the Real IRA shooting of two British soldiers outside Massereene Barracks in Antrim.
The Continuity IRA, which rejects the peace process in Northern Ireland, have recently split into two groupings, one in Limerick and the other in Dublin
In 2011, Liam Kenny, was murdered at his Clondalkin home, allegedly by drug dealers, and in retaliation for his death, the Limerick-based Continuity IRA embarked upon a campaign which showed just how fanatical they are.
The brutal murder of an innocent delivery man David Darcy resulted in the trial of Rose Lynch at the Special Criminal Court. She is a daughter of Republican hardliner ‘Tiny’ Joe Lynch.
During her trial, the court heard that Darcy was on a chilling list of six men that Rose Lynch had planned to assassinate in retaliation for Kenny’s murder.
But CIRA intelligence had got it wrong about Darcy, who was in fact a hard-working man who only came to their attention because his delivery route often took him to Limerick.
The Sunday World revealed after she was jailed that Lynch went to jail staunchly refusing to name her former lover Dermot Gannon as her co-assassin. He is serving a sentence on gun charges.
