‘Let’s go then,’ said the man in charge, ‘we’ll show you everything we know.’
With no back-up car for fear of attracting unwanted attention, Nelson and the two FRU men took off to west Belfast, the heart of Republican territory. They had already shown Nelson the exact location of Hamill’s home in Forfar Street on the large, detailed Belfast street map issued by the Director of Military Survey. The handlers also pointed out the Felon’s Club which was several hundred yards from the Andersonstown Leisure Centre and they drove down Beechmount Avenue, nicknamed ‘RPG7 Avenue’ because of the number of rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) attacks against army and RUC vehicles travelling along that road. Being the Protestant UDA’s intelligence officer, Ten-Thirty-Three had no intention of venturing into Republican areas on his own, asking questions which might get him ‘arrested’ and cross-questioned by the Provisionals in their inimitable fashion. He knew that would end with a bullet in the back of the head, for this was no game.
The FRU handlers were happy to help their UDA colleague. Nelson was the most important Loyalist agent that the Force Research Unit had ever handled in the ten years of the organisation’s secret existence. The two FRU officers, sitting in the front seats, took the UDA man on a reconnaissance drive throughout the area, pointing out to him various landmarks – the Republican clubs and pubs, the Milltown cemetery and other places which they thought might be of importance to Nelson. They also took the risk of driving around the staunch Provo neighbourhood and showed him the house in Forfar Street where Hamill lived with his wife and two young children. On the return journey they pointed out the Felon’s Club where Hamill spent a few evenings most weeks drinking and chatting to his Republican mates. But not for one minute did they contemplate stopping for even a few seconds, or even think of questioning any passers-by, for they knew they would have instantly realised these three men in the unmarked car were either inquisitive Protestant troublemakers, members of a Prod paramilitary force or attached to the security services.
At a further meeting in January 1988, Nelson nonchalantly informed his handlers that UDA gunmen were planning attacks on the homes of known Provo targets. The handlers looked at each other, worried at this sudden and serious turn of events. They simply noted the statement and passed it to high authority for evaluation.
‘Do you intend to hit their homes or the Provos?’ he was asked.
‘The Provos, of course,’ came Nelson’s reply. ‘We’re not interested in the wives and kids.’
‘Whom do you intend to hit?’ one FRU officer asked.
‘No idea,’ Nelson replied, ‘they don’t give me that sort of information. That’s the ops side; I’m intelligence, remember?’
‘You will tell us if you hear the names of any targets, won’t you?’ one asked.
‘Of course I will,’ he said.
After that meeting the two FRU officers, believing that a Loyalist paramilitary attack was now imminent, wrote out a Military Intelligence Source Report (MISR) warning of probable UDA attacks on known Provos and this, in turn, was passed by their senior officers to the Joint Irish Section (JIS), the name given to MI5 headquarters in Northern Ireland. This was passed in a secret encrypted report to the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) in London, the committee chaired by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The source report would, automatically, also be distributed to army chiefs in Lisburn, senior Special Branch officers and senior RUC officers who had clearance to receive such top-secret intelligence.
Over the next few days, however, nothing came back from DowningStreet or the JIS to the Force Research Unit officers; no advice, no instructions and no orders. There was no suggestion from any political, military or security service sources suggesting that anything must be done to stop such attacks taking place. With no advice, guidance, instructions or orders, the Force Research officers also decided to take no action.
Three weeks later, at about 3 p.m. on 8 September 1987, a dark saloon Vauxhall car was stolen from outside a Protestant pub off the Shankill Road, north Belfast. Ten minutes later the driver pulled up at a prearranged spot and two men clambered into the back. Both were armed, one with a revolver, the other with a sub-machine-gun. The car was driven to a roadside parking lot near the Felon’s Club and, while the two men in the back ducked down out of sight, the driver slipped down in his seat so that he could just see over the facia. Anyone glancing at the vehicle would have thought there was no one was inside.
Not long before six o’clock Patrick Hamill walked out of the Felon’s Club a happy man having spent the afternoon drinking with his Republican mates. Without bothering to check under his vehicle for any suspicious packages, he got into his car and drove off. A few minutes later he pulled up outside his house, not even noticing the dark saloon car slowly coming to a halt on the other side of the road. He got out, locked the car door and walked across the footpath towards his home.
He let himself in, closed the door and walked into the kitchen. Within minutes there was a knock at the front door and his wife, Laura, opened it. Two men, wearing masks and carrying handguns, brushed her aside and strode in.
‘We’re from the IRA,’ one said. ‘Who lives here?’
Patrick Hamill replied, ‘I do, with my wife and the kids. What do you want?’
‘What’s your name?’ the gunman asked, confused that the man in front of them was speaking with an English accent and was certainly not from Northern Ireland.
‘Patrick Hamill,’ he replied, ‘and this is my wife Laura.’
The two gunmen looked at each other for a second and then one of them aimed at Hamill and pulled the trigger, shooting him in the chest at point-> range. His wife screamed in horror as she saw her husband crumple to the floor. His two-year-old daughter, Kelly, who was also in the room, moved towards her father and, as she did so, the gunman with the revolver bent over the man’s body and fired one more shot into the victim’s head, splitting the skull. Hamill’s body shook for a second and the two gunmen turned on their heels and walked swiftly out of the door without saying another word. Behind them they could hear the harrowing screams of the dying man’s wife and the pitiful cries of his daughter. They took no notice.
A neighbour, George Crilly, spoke later of the shooting, saying, ‘We heard the two shots at about 5.45 in the evening. My wife and I ran out and we saw Laura Hamill on her knees on the footpath screaming, “They shot my Paddy, they shot my Paddy.”
‘I ran into their house and saw Patrick Hamill lying on the floor with a pool of blood around his head. I knew he was a goner. His wee daughter Kelly was running around in circles screaming and crying for her daddy. It was pitiful.’
Mr Crilly said the fleeing gunmen fired another shot at a man in nearby Colinward Street as they were making their escape but the man was not injured. There was also severe criticism from many neighbours in Forfar Street that the RUC took an astonishing fifty minutes to arrive after the 999 call had been made. In comparison, the ambulance which was called at the same time took only three or four minutes to arrive at the scene. Patrick Hamill died in hospital some hours later. He never regained consciousness.
‘When the RUC didn’t arrive I phoned Springfield Road barracks and told them of the shooting,’ said Mr Crilly. ‘They told me that they had been made aware of the shooting and were taking appropriate measures.’
It was not surprising that there had been no RUC or army patrols in the area at that time, nor was it a surprise that the RUC and the army took so long to respond to the 999 distress call. That afternoon the Force Research Unit had put out a ‘restriction order’ on the immediate area around Forfar Street, making certain that all RUC and army patrols would be out of that area for a few hours around 5 p.m. Such restriction orders were frequently enforced whenever the RUC, the British Army or any one of the security services wanted to operate in a certain area at a specific time on a specific date, for they would not want their operations accidentally or inadvertently interrupted by one of the other security
services.
Such requests, which were nearly always granted, were made to the Tasking Co-ordination Group – a committee, as mentioned earlier, made up of officers from MI5, the British Army, the SAS, the Special Branch and Military Intelligence, whose job it was to ensure that there were no overlapping operations happening in the same place at the same time. That could lead to disaster. On this occasion a senior FRU officer had made such a request to the TCG hours beforehand and it had, as expected, been granted. Every member of the TCG, every organisation involved in the security services in Northern Ireland, had therefore been fully aware that something was about to occur in or around Forfar Street and Beechmount at that time on that day. But the area was empty of any troops, police or undercover agents, providing easy access and easy escape routes to anyone taking part in clandestine operations in the immediate area. Such extraordinary freedom was always provided by the Force Research Unit, after consultation with the TCG, on many occasions during those years when Brian Nelson worked hand in glove with British Military Intelligence. And, as a result, many people, including Provo hit-men and activists, Sinn Fein politicians and members and Republican supporters and sympathisers were targeted and killed. So were a number of ordinary, decent Catholics killed for no reason at all apart from the fact that they were members of the Province’s religious minority.
The following morning a FRU handler, operating under orders from a senior officer, put in a telephone call to Nelson’s home in Belfast but the UDA man wasn’t there. He left a message to be called urgently and a meeting was set up for later that day.
This time, however, when the three men walked into the safe-house they didn’t bother to sit down. There were no pleasantries between Nelson and his handlers.
‘What do you know about this Hamill killing?’ Nelson was asked.
‘I know nothing about it,’ he replied. ‘I knew nothing about it until after it happened.’
‘Who did it?’ demanded the FRU officer in charge in a tone of voice which would brook no excuses.
‘I’ve no idea who carried it out,’ Nelson replied, ‘but I do know exactly how it was done.’
‘How?’
‘I was told,’ Nelson said, ‘that the guy had been clocked over a period of time so that his identity was confirmed. Yesterday afternoon he was followed home from the club. He parked his car outside his house about fifteen yards from his front door. I understand that once he was inside his house he was approached and asked to identify himself. When he did so he was shot. That’s all I know.’
‘Why didn’t you phone here to let us know?’ he was asked.
‘Because I had no idea until I heard about it on the radio last night.’
‘You’ll be hearing from us,’ said the senior FRU handler, indicating from his brusque manner that the meeting was at an end. Without saying a word, the two officers escorted Nelson to the door and he was taken away by car to his destination. Inside the safe-house one officer turned off the tape-recorder and noted the exact time and date so that there would always be a record of that interview with Nelson. They returned to their headquarters and a meeting was held with the officer commanding the unit. The full facts of the killing were given to him, as well as Nelson’s explanation. An MISR was written out detailing what had occurred.
But of course no action whatsoever was taken against Nelson. Nor was it ever intended that it should be. Nelson was working for the Force Research Unit and, in a very short space of time, he would become the most important person in the chain that began inside Military Intelligence and ended with the UDA gunmen who carried out the random sectarian killings.
Hamill’s murder was not just one isolated killing. It was part of a series of sectarian shootings carried out over a period of two years in Northern Ireland, from 1987 to 1989, when Brian Nelson was the UDA’s intelligence officer. British Army Intelligence was directly involved in many of those killings, providing photographs, up-to-date information, addresses, phone numbers and car registrations of Provisional IRA activists, as well as advice as to the most efficient way the UDA gunmen could track and target suspects. Some of those Provo targets were subsequently murdered, others would survive the attempts to kill them and many more were targeted but never actually attacked.
On nearly every occasion, prior to the killings and murder attempts, intelligence was passed from the FRU officers to the Joint Irish Section headquarters in Northern Ireland and then distributed to the Joint Intelligence Committee. On no occasion were instructions received by the FRU in Belfast telling them to halt the sectarian targeting and killings. And yet the Prime Minister, MI5 officers, senior security officers and all members of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who usually met once a week in London, were aware that a man named Brian Nelson, the intelligence officer of the UDA, was involved in many of the murders and dozens of conspiracies to murder during that period. It was further known that officers of the Force Research Unit were ‘handling’ Nelson during that time. And yet nothing was done to stop the killings. The battle against the Provisional IRA had entered a new phase about which Prime Minister Thatcher appeared fully aware.
Chapter Two
The Recruit
The guard on night duty at the joint army/RUC base in Belfast slowly shook his head from side to side as he watched the slim man in black winkle-pickers, black trousers and a three-quarter-length grey-and-black check coat make his solitary way along the deserted, rain-splashed streets that Boxing Day morning in 1985. It was 5 a.m. and still dark as night and the guard presumed the lone figure was a drunken late-night reveller making his way home, not caring that he was soaked to the skin. But the guard took more notice when the man stopped outside the imposing, well-protected army and police base at New Barnsley as though trying to find the way in. There was no way the guard would let anyone walk off the streets into the base without permission from a senior officer.
As the man stood under the glare of security lights in front of the large metal gates he seemed unsure as to whether to proceed further, looking around him and then casting his eyes over the fortress-type building which seemed strangely quiet, as though deserted. But the guard, secure inside the sanger by the entrance, could see the man perfectly well, silhouetted against the powerful arc lamps. With dark, almost black, swept-back hair, the visitor’s pale unshaven face bore the marks of a recent brawl, with bruising and marks around the eyes, and his rumpled, dishevelled clothes gave the appearance of a man who had slept rough that night or not at all.
At that early hour on Boxing Day hardly a car could be seen or heard in the city and the guard wondered what on earth the man was doing standing there as if waiting for someone. He thought it odd that the scruffy visitor wore only a white shirt, a light coat and thin trousers, for the weather was bitterly cold and the rain had added to the misery of the morning. The dawn was barely rolling back the night and the rain clouds that had brought the downpour to Northern Ireland that Christmas night were still overhead.
‘Anyone at home?’ the visitor shouted at the gates in a broad Belfast accent, but there was no reply.
Minutes passed and the man looked annoyed as he scanned the building. Suddenly, his attention was drawn to a side gate as it opened.
A young soldier, armed and wearing a flak jacket, called to him: ‘In here.’
As the man walked through the gate, the soldier asked, ‘What do you want?’ speaking brusquely as if annoyed at being interrupted during his long, cold vigil of guard duty that night.
‘I want to see someone from British Intelligence,’ the man said.
‘I see,’ said the officer, sounding sceptical, ‘What about?’
‘I only want to see someone from British Intelligence,’ the visitor repeated, ‘I’ll explain everything to him.’
‘Come with me,’ said the soldier and led him inside.
The man certainly looked the worse for wear, as though he had been drinking heavily and had not slept for a couple of days. But he did not appear drunk or dis
orderly, instead speaking quietly, weighing each word.
A British Army sergeant told the visitor he would have to be searched and the man raised his arms and spread his legs as though carrying out an order which he had obeyed a thousand times before. But so had many a man in Belfast those past fifteen years.
‘He’s clean,’ said the soldier a minute later having checked the visitor’s pockets, his trouser-legs and even the inside of his black socks which covered his thin, hairy calves.
The sergeant returned and told him that as it was so early in the morning he would have to wait for a couple of hours before someone could see him.
‘That’s all right,’ said the visitor, nodding his head, ‘I’ll wait.’
‘Before anyone will see you,’ continued the sergeant, ‘we’ll need some details – name, address, that sort of thing – so we can check you out on the computer.’
The visitor gave them his name and his former regimental number when he was serving in the British Army with the Black Watch. He also told them that he was now employed as an intelligence officer with the Ulster Defence Association. The sergeant immediately reacted to that statement, glancing up at the soldier, and both looked somewhat confused that this apology for a man standing shivering in front of them could possibly be a UDA intelligence officer. But they decided to make their unwelcome early visitor feel at home. After taking down the details they asked the man if he would like a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich.
‘Aye, I would that,’ he said, but there was little enthusiasm in his voice.
An hour or so later he was asked if he really did want to wait or whether he would prefer to return at some other more convenient time.
‘No,’ he replied, ‘I need to see someone this morning. I’ll wait.’
The clouds and the rain had disappeared, leaving a bright, clear morning and the sun had broken through, shafts of sunlight penetrating the guard-room where the visitor sat waiting patiently for his promised interview.
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