Alarm raised in Northern Ireland due to threats by IRA dissidents

The terrorist threat in Northern Ireland was raised from from “significant” to “serious”, due to the growing danger of republican dissidents, against the peace process. The increase implies that the British secret service MI5 considers an attack in Northern Ireland “highly likely”, after the agent was killed in February.

The British intelligence service checks the level of the threat of terrorism every six months. The ‘serious’ level is just below ‘critical’, the maximum set by UK authorities.

The New IRA would be behind the attack on the police inspector John Caldwell, 48, who was shot several times while coaching a youth football team in the town of Omagh. Three months before this attack, the New IRA detonated a bomb next to a passing police vehicle in County Tyrone, although none of the officers inside were injured.

The decision was made a few days before the twenty-fifth anniversary of the peace agreement on Good Fridaysigned on April 10, 1998, which ended more than thirty years of violence between Protestants and Catholics.

“Over the past 25 years, Northern Ireland has transformed itself into a peaceful society. The Belfast Agreement shows how peaceful and democratic politics improve society. However, a small number of people remain determined to harm our communities through politically motivated acts of violence,” said the UK’s Northern Ireland Secretary, Chris Heaton-Harris.

Heaton-Harris asked the public to “remain alert but not alarmed and to continue to report any issues that cause you concern.”

No autonomous government

The government made this threat at a time when the province does not have an autonomous executive boycott of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) from province to agreement post-Brexit agreed with the European Union (EU), to avoid raising the physical border between the two Irelands.

The DUP – the province’s second party – which refuses to take part in a power-sharing government, rejected the Windsor Framework Agreement, recently signed between London and Brussels.

This formation is above all against the so-called “Stormont brake”, a tool that will allow the Northern Irish assembly to oppose future community legislation.