LEGENDARY GAA club Crossmaglen Rangers last night said it would willingly assist gardai investigating the capital murder of Garda Adrian Donohoe.
The south Armagh club issued a statement to the Sunday World through a lawyer, after it emerged that the focus of the murder hunt is now firmly fixed on a gang of five baby-faced criminals who have strong links with the most successful club in GAA history.
Sources close to the investigation believe the wider GAA family may now hold the key to catching the killers of the father-of-two, who was also a devoted Gaelic games man.The Sunday World can today reveal that the reward for information on the murder is expected to be doubled to €100,000 in the belief that those close to the killers hold the key to solving the brutal murder, and that gang members are turning on each other.
Execution
Crimestoppers will this week put up a further €50,000 to add to the €50,000 already offered by the Irish League of Credit Unions in the hunt for the gang. It is hoped that the money, coupled with the heat being put on the area known as 'Bandit Country', will break the traditional Omerta that usually surrounds the lawless land where the suspects live.
Father Michael Cusack, who celebrated Garda Donohoe's funeral and who will lead a month's mind mass today,said: "Wherever people are, in whatever part of this country, north or south of that space called the Border, I would say they need to come forward and name names. This was an atrocity."
One month after the callous murder, a Sunday World investigation into the suspected killers led us right into the heart of South Armagh l; Border country.
Over 48 hours, our team entered a world where no outsiders are welcome and where decades of republican criminality has spawned a feral gang of young thugs that have threatened the very foundations of social order.
We cannot print the names of the gang of five believed to be responsible for the execution of Garda Donohoe, but we understand that two are key players on Crossmaglen Rangers teams and the other three are closely associated with the club and some of its members.
Within hours of the shooting at Lordship Credit Union in Dundalk last month, the PSNI had furnished the Gardai with the names of the five, all in their early 20s. Three, including a girl, are siblings from one well-known republican family that has been involved in diesel laundering and smuggling for decades. The other two are childhood friends;the gang leader and his lieutenant who is in a relationship with the girl suspected as being the getaway driver for the gang - a couple who see them- " selves as a young Bonnie and Clyde.
An unprecedented sharing of intelligence between the PSNI and the
Garda at the highest level has identified the gang through the use of covert human intelligence sources established during the Troubles. Ordinary members of the GAA club,which is the holder of a record six All-Ireland football titles, are horrified by the news that the focus of the investigation is fixed on the gang, who are all well known.in the Crossmaglen area.
Stunned
One high-profile member who did not wish to be named said he was "stunned" at the development in the investigation and would totally refute any claims that the club would give any protection to the killers.
In response to a series of questions we put to club officials about its connections to the suspected gang,Crossmaglen Rangers issued the following statement through a lawyer:"Garda Donohoe did not have any association with Crossmaglen Rangers football club. It was therefore not appropriate for the club to issue a statement of sympathy to his family.
"Crossmaglen Rangers has no knowledge of the prime focus of the Garda or PSNI investigation into the murder of Garda Donohoe, but if invited by either body to assist their enquiries will willingly do so."
A mammoth garda investigation centred in Dundalk is making slow but steady progress in its inquiries. While no forensics could be salvaged from the getaway car found in an isolated forest near Keady, Co. Armagh, following the shooting, phone records are currently being mapped and the results are expected in the coming weeks.
Despite the technological advances in mapping technology which have regularly linked suspects to their crimes,it is believed that the gang may have broken protocol and made frantic mobile calls to associates as they fled Dundalk at breakneck speed following the shooting.
Officers believe that they made arrangements to have the stolen Volkswagen Passat torched as they made their way back to bandit country. Analysis of cross-Border cell sites,along with painstaking CCTV examination, may yet yield some crucial evidence for the lOO-strong team.
Alibis
We understand that all five suspects have been provided with alibis, claiming they were at home on the night of the murder on January 25 last, but officers are hoping their inquiries will prove otherwise.
Our Sunday World investigation in Bandit Country has uncovered a community under siege from the authorities and a young gang at the brink of breaking point. Sources within the area have told us that the gang leader, the man suspected of pulling the trigger, is holed up in Glasgow and has told relatives that it was his lieutenant who took the fatal shot and not him, signalling tensions within the gang.
At one point during the week our sources said he was on the verge of handing himself over to gardai to admit his part in the robbery and finger his best friend as the shooter.
None of the gang or their associates will deal with the PSNI, due to the historical tensions in the area, but it is understood that as the intelligence network tightens its screws, the tight-knit gang is on the verge of imploding.
Gardai have been facilitated in their inquiries in the area by the PSNI and have met with sources that are helping them with their investigation.
By their nature, those living in Bandit Country are uncooperative with authorities. For years, Crossmaglen and its surrounding townlands was policed by armed RUC officers who were helicoptered in and out of an iron fortress that remains in the centre of the town.
In recent years the PSNI have had absolutely no visible presence in the area, which in essence polices itself. However, we understand that following the peace process the restructured PSNI took over the 'Covert Human Intelligence Sources' developed there in late 1980s and '90s and continued to keep them on the books to monitor dissident and criminal activity.
Covert
The Special Forces Reconnaissance Unit (SRR) tasked with assisting the SAS and specialists in covert surveillance is still working for the PSNI. They were deployed in Northern Ireland from 2009 to gather intelligence on dissident republicans.
MI5 claims that the dissident threat is on a par with that from Muslim extremists on the UK and it has never relinquished its hold on sources and undercover secret agents in the heart of the IRA border strongholds.
Today Bandit Country remains a valley of squinting windows, where outsiders are left under no illusion that they are not welcome and where the flourishing diesel smuggling industry has given a prosperity out of sync with the rest of the country. The heat on both sides of the Border has threatened this illicit cottage industry and could represent the greatest threat to the Omerta that normally operates in this part of the world.
Today, Garda Donohoe's family, his widow Caroline and two young children, Amy and Niall,will attend his month's mind mass at St Joseph's Redemptorist Church in Dundalk, where Father Michael Cusack will again appeal to people to examine their conscience and come forward with information.
