Long Kesh escaper Dermot McNally (39) a father of two who was arrested by 26 County police at his home in Sligo in the last week of April was remanded in custody for two weeks when he appeared at Dublin district court.
SAT. MAY 3, 1997: There are now 256,000 people unemployed in the 26 Counties.
SUN. MAY 5, 1997: An elderly couple were beaten up by members of a British-backed death squad in the bedroom of their home in the Bloomfield area of east Belfast.
WED. MAY 7, 1997: A north Belfast family, who include seven children, narrowly escaped injury when a British-backed death squad placed a bomb under their car in the Bawnmore Estate.
THURS. MAY 8, 1997: Father-of-two Robert Hamill (25), the nationalist victim of a sectarian loyalist assault on April 27 died at Belfast's Royal Victoria Hospital having endured monstrous beatings in a horror attack by a gang of 30 loyalists when he and three relatives were set upon by the fascist mob as they were making their way home from a dance in Portadown, County Armagh.
FRI. MAY 9, 1997: The INLA shot dead a British policeman (RUC) in Belfast. Darren Bradshaw was drinking in the Parliament Bar in Belfast city centre when the INLA men came in and shot him.
SAT. MAY 10, 1997: A Protestant man, Ivan Heatherington, was set upon and beaten in a sectarian beating in Derry. He had been visiting friends in the Fountain and was returning to his home in the Waterside after midnight when he was attacked by a group of Catholics at Spencer Road, who kicked and punched him leaving him with severe head injuries.
SUN. MAY 11, 1997: A car bomb found at College Avenue, near King Street in Belfast was defused by British Crown Forces.
MON. MAY 12, 1997: A loyalist pro-British death squad sprayed the nationalist home of a pregnant mother of two with gunfire at Archdale Park, Carnmoney, near Glengormley on the northern outskirts of Belfast after failing to break down the door.
A British police (RUC) reservist based in County Down was convicted of taking part in a loyalist protest during last summer's disturbances over Drumcree. In a statement the RUC said the man had "appeared recently at the local magistrates court charged with public order offences. He was found guilty and fined." No mention was made of the nature of the offences.
TUES. MAY 13, 1997: A prominent Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) official, Seán Brown (61), chairman of the Wolfe Tone Gaelic Football Club in Bellaghy, County Derry, was killed by a loyalist death squad as he was locking up the club premises on his own after a meeting. He was a father of six children.
WED. MAY 14, 1997: Loyalists attempted to kill a nationalist taxi-driver in Milford, County Armagh as he was delivering a food order to a house on Monaghan Street in Milford. The order turned out to be a hoax and when he returned to his car he was confronted by a masked man who tried to shoot him but the gun jammed. Earlier in the evening, a caller contacted the A-2-B taxi office and asked for a car to be sent to the same address. However the base operator, who knew the house, did not recognise the caller and didn't send out a car.
The number of people out of work in the Six Occupied Counties is 64,800.
TUES./WED./ MAY 13/14, 1997: Up to a dozen homes of members and supporters of Republican Sinn Féin, including Vice-President Mary Ward, Burtonport, National Treasurer Councillor Joe O'Neill, Bundoran in County Donegal and Declan Curneen, Ard Chomhairle member, North Leitrim were raided by 26-County Special Branch.
THURS. MAY 15, 1997: Councillor Joe O'Neill was arrested under the Offences Against the State Act and held in Sligo police barracks for forty-eight hours. The 26-County parliament was dissolved and a general election was announced for June 6.
SAT. MAY 17, 1997: Belfast man Gerard Michael Moyna appeared before a special sitting of Sligo District Court in the 26 Counties on May 17 charged under the 1976 Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act with possession of 2.28 kilograms of Semtex explosives in Belfast seven days previously.
SUN. MAY 18, 1997: Around 200 hundred Apprentice Boys scuffled with the British police (RUC) at Dunloy, Co Antrim after their parade was diverted away from the mainly-nationalist town.
TUES. MAY 20, 1997: Two Provisional prisoners —Danny McNamee and Liam McCotter — are expected to be transferred shortly from prisons in Britain to Maghaberry prison in County Antrim.
WED. MAY 21, 1997: Following elections to local councils in the Six Occupied Counties unionists lost control of Belfast City Council as well as Cookstown and Strabane, Co Tyrone District Councils.
The number of council seats won were as follows (1994 results in brackets): UUP, 186 (187); SDLP, 119 (121); DUP, 92 (114); Provisionals, 74 (43); Alliance, 41 (37); PUP, 6; UDP, 4; others 56.
THURS. MAY 22, 1997: The Belfast Irish News reported on its front page that the Provisionals military organisation had abducted and interrogated a member of the IRA led by the Continuity Army Council in west Belfast. The unnamed man was later released. According to the newspaper a Continuity IRA source said all the organisation's members "were accounted for".
FRI. MAY 23: Róisín McAliskey was finally given conditional bail by the British to enter the Whittington Hospital, North London.
Gerard Moyna was remanded in Sligo District Court until June 20 next.
SAT. MAY 24, 1997: Once again innocent church-goers had to run the gauntlet of fascist Orange mobs as 200 loyalist protesters tried to charge through British police lines to the Catholic church, at Harryville, Ballymena, Co Antrim. The loyalists hurled bottles, stones, paint bombs and other missiles in the direction of Our Lady's Church. Water service workers who had been operating in the area were forced to flee as their van was set ablaze.
SUN. MAY 25, 1997: The British-backed loyalist death squad, the Loyalist Action Force planted a bomb, containing Powergel explosive, in Dundalk, Co Louth. It was defused and no one was injured. The LVF cclaimed the attack on May 26 saying there would be more "no-warning" attacks.
Bernadette Reilly and her five children were targetted by a British-backed loyalist death squad when a masked man used a baseball bat to break the living-room window of their home at Wyndham Street in north Belfast. It is the sixth attack on their house since the Drumcree stand-off in 1996.
MON. MAY 26, 1997: Róisín McAliskey gave birth to a baby girl weighing 5lbs 13oz and mother and baby were reported to be doing well.
WED. MAY 28, 1997: The international body Human Rights Watch, founded out of the 'Helsinki Accord' of 1978 and whose brief is to monitor human rights abuses by states across the world, condemned the British paramilitary police (RUC) for their behaviour during the Drumcree stand-off in July 1996 and their eagerness to use plastic bullets indiscriminately against nationalists in a report entitled To Serve Without Favour, Policing Human Rights and Accountability.
FRI. MAY 30, 1997: Josephine Hayden (51), the only woman political prisoner in the 26 Counties and a member of Cumann na mBan, suffered a heart attack in Limerick prison's 'C' Block and had to be removed to Limerick Regional Hospital.
SAT. MAY 31, 1997:
The Provisionals' military wing admitted responsibility for placing a van containing a defused landmine in the nationalist Poleglass estate of West Belfast.
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