Stone Storms Stormont

Questions Raised As To How He Could Have Breached Security

By Stephen McKinley

Panicking politicians and officials ran in terror from the Northern Ireland Assembly building at Stormont last Friday, after notorious loyalist killer Michael Stone burst into the building waving a gun and a bag in which he said was a bomb.

A female security guard managed to wrestle Stone to the ground and disarm him, and an army bomb disposal unit safely defused eight poorly made pipe bombs found in Stone's backpack. Stone was arrested and is now in prison as inquiries into the incident continue.

Questions are being asked as to how Stone, who murdered three mourners at an IRA funeral in 1988, managed to breach security at Stormont, especially after it has been revealed that before bursting through the main entrance of the Assembly building, he had time to paint a slogan, "SINN FEIN IRA WAR," in large red letters on an exterior wall. Stone has been charged specifically with attempting to murder Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and chief negotiator Martin McGuinness.

In March 1988, the heavily-armed Stone rampaged through Belfast's Milltown Cemetery during the funeral of three IRA volunteers killed by the SAS in Gibraltar, killing three mourners in full view of television news cameras.

He was convicted of three additional murders and sentenced to life imprisonment, but under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement he was released from prison in 2000 on license.

Authorities may revoke licenses if a person is believed to be a threat to the public or has returned to committing acts of terrorism.

Peter Hain did revoke his license during the weekend, meaning he will have to serve at least the balance of his original 1988 sentence, which would be 18 more years Friends of Stone told reporters at the weekend that he is a man tortured by guilt and fears of retribution by the IRA since his actions at what became known as the 'Milltown Massacre.'

Stone claimed to have dropped a pistol during the cemetery shoot-out and believes that IRA members recovered the weapon, with the intention of eventually killing him with it. As such, he believes he will only be safe in prison.

Another notorious loyalist thug, Johnny Adair, taunted Stone through the tabloid press at the weekend, referring to the fact that it was a female security guard, Susan Porter, who disarmed him.

"People will say, 'did you see Stoner getting wrestled to the ground by a woman?'" Adair scoffed.

Sir Hugh Orde, the PSNI chief constable, said that the Stormont attack was "the actions of a lunatic."

An Ulster Defence Association (UDA) source said: "Michael had become obsessed with the idea that the IRA were going to shoot him with the gun they captured from him before any peace deal was finally concluded. That is why he turned against the Good Friday agreement after initially supporting it. He was totally paranoid and receiving treatment."

The incident has highlighted recent political developments in Northern Ireland as well as briefly putting the spotlight of public attention on men like Stone who for reasons of violence, gained prominence during the Troubles and for whom adjusting to a normal life has been close to impossible.

A UDA spokesman said that Stone's mental instability and paranoia had returned to haunt him because of the recent St Andrews Agreement between the political parties of Northern Ireland.

Stone believed that there had been a secret deal between the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, which would mean that the IRA would move to kill him.

After his release from prison in 2000, Stone started a career as an artist, signing his work with his right index fingerprint and a penned annotation that read "Michael Stone's trigger finger."

After the July 7th 2005 suicide bombings in London that killed 52 people, Stone briefly caused a stir by refusing to condemn the suicide bombers in a television interview.

"These men were not criminals - they paid the ultimate sacrifice for an ideology which they believed very strongly in," Stone told a BBC 2 Horizon TV interviewer. "I'm aware the relatives of those who died in the blasts might not be too happy with my views, but I am just trying to understand the motivation behind their actions. I condemn the fact they did not target a military, political or economic target and the fact innocent people lost their lives, but I can't see them as mass murderers."