The case against Colin Duffy, of Lurgan, Co Armagh, who was charged with killing two British policemen in Armagh in June, collapsed when all charges were dropped.
A house in Rosevale Street in Belfast was damaged in a petrol-bomb attack. The device was thrown across from the loyalist side of the "peaceline", a barrier dividing nationalist and loyalist areas in Belfast. The nationalist victim of the attack had already been intimidated out of the Torrens Drive area and said she had nowhere else to go.
SAT. OCTOBER 4, 1997: Pearse McAuley (32), from Strabane, County Tyrone, who escaped with Nessan Quinlivan from Brixton prison in London in July 1991, was arrested in County Galway, having been arrested by the 26-County police on foot of a warrant which had been granted when he jumped bail in June 1996.
Kevin Winters, a lawyer with the firm of Madden and Finucane Solicitors, Belfast, was subjected to abuse from a CID detective during an interrogation in which the RUC officer called him a Provo bastard in Armagh's Gough barracks. He said the remark was made in the presence of a representative from the Independent Commission for Holding Centres.
The incident also occurred on the same day as the announcement of a United Nations investigation into police intimidation of lawyers. The UN team will also investigate RUC collusion in the killing of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane by the UDA/UFF pro-British death squad in February 1989.
The loyalist picket on Mass-goers at the Catholic church in Harryville, Ballymena, Co Antrim resumed but with much reduced numbers.
MON. OCTOBER 6, 1997: The Dublin District Court ordered that Pearse McAuley should be extradited to Britain within 24 hours.
TUES. OCTOBER 7, 1997: McAuley's hand-over to the British was halted following an application on his behalf by lawyers. He was then brought before the Special Court in Dublin and charged with the 'unlawful' possession of a handgun, a shotgun and three shotgun cartridges and two rifles at Clonalea, County Tipperary on June 7, 1996.
A report, carried out by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and British Irish Rights Watch, on the alleged ill-treatment of people questioned by 26-County police investigating the killing of Special Branch member Gerry McCabe during an armed robbery by the Provisionals on June 7, 1996 has been sent to international human rights groups.
The talks for a new Stormont began at Castle Buildings at Stormont.
THURS. OCTOBER 9, 1997: Lurganman Colin Duffy, who was released from custody after a case against him collapsed the previous week was arrested and assaulted by British Crown Forces.
FRI. OCTOBER 10, 1997: The British Scottish Office has stopped the transfer of a Scot, Jason Campbell, whose family has links with the Scottish UVF, and who was convicted of killing a Glasgow Celtic football club supporter to a loyalist death squad compound in Long Kesh prison in the Six Counties. His transfer had been requested by the PUP, spokespersons for the UVF loyalist death squad, who said that he was "well rated" by loyalists.
SUN. OCTOBER 12, 1997: Rioting broke out along the route of a march in County Fermanagh to commemorate three United Irishmen who were executed by the British in 1797. Loyalist protesters threw stones and bottles at the RUC and the nationalist marchers. RUC in riot gear ran at the loyalists who broke up hoardings and fences to use as weapons and clashes between the two groups ensued.
A list of people who took part in the Roslea Martyrs' commemoration was stolen from a British colonial police (RUC) police vehicle which was overturned by a loyalist mob during the attack on the parade. It is believed the list may have fallen into the hands of the LVF which has been responsible for the deaths of several nationalists this year.
A UDP rally in Belfast, attracting a crowd of several thousand loyalists, to mark the third anniversary of the loyalist ceasefire, was attended by a colour party carrying UDA/UFF death squad banners and wearing UDA/UFF cap badges. At the conclusion of the rally, as the colour party marched from the platform, the UFF-adopted anthem, Simply the Best by Tina Turner was played.
THURS. OCTOBER 16, 1997: The mother of Guildford Four member Paul Hill, Elizabeth Hill, whose family have lived in New Barnsley for 25 years, was forced to flee her West Belfast home after enduring years of intimidation and violence from Orange terror gangs.
At a sitting of the Dublin Supreme Court, the 26-County administration brought an appeal against a high court refusal to extradite Crumlin Road prison escapee Angelo Fusco to occupied Ireland. Fusco (39) originally from Slieve Ban in Belfast but now living in County Kerry is wanted by the British colonial administration in the Six Counties to serve a life sentence imposed in 1981 for the killing of SAS Capt Herbert Westmacott and on other charges.
FRI. OCTOBER 17, 1997: British Direct ruler Mo Mowlam announced details of the new Parades Commission in the Six Counties. The draft British legislation is supposed to transfer responsibility for contentious parades from the British paramilitary police (RUC) to the supposedly-independent Parades Commission.
Patrick Colm Canning, a native of Derry city, was jailed for four years at Belfast Crown Court following collaboration between the British colonial police (RUC) and the 26-County police leading to his arrest in September last during a visit back to Derry. Canning (33) who was on the run for five years in County Donegal pleaded guilty to having possession with intent of an AKM assault rifle, a revolver and more than 60 rounds of ammunition found during a Crown Forces search of his Durrow Park flat in Derry on February 25, 1991.
SUN. OCTOBER 19, 1997: Several hundred people from both sides of the Border took part in a march organised by the South Armagh Farmers and Residents Committee in protest against British Crown Forces hilltop spy posts in South Armagh.
MON. OCTOBER 20, 1997: Four men were charged at an Old Bailey court in London, with conspiring to cause explosions between January 1 and September 24 last year and possession of explosives. The four, James Murphy (26), with an address at Chelsea, London, Patrick Kelly (31), originally from Birmingham but since living in London, Michael Phillips (22), Crawley, Sussex but originally from Belfast and Brian McHugh (31), who was described in court as the unit commander. Diarmaid O'Neill (27), the unarmed Provisional member gunned down in a British police operation at his hotel room in August 1996 was described by the prosecution as having been "at the heart of the conspiracy" and a vital member of a Provisional active service unit preparing for a lorry bomb blitz in England.
TUES. OCTOBER 21, 1997: Anthony Kelly (36), a native of Derry city, a H-Block escapee, was served with a British extradition warrant at his home in Letterkenny, Co Donegal. He was immediately brought to Dublin District Court and remanded in custody for seven days.
WED. OCTOBER 22, 1997: The British police (RUC) used batons to quell the crowd when Derry coroner Ronnie O'Doherty discharged the jury during the inquest into a killing of a Strabane man, Alex Patterson, who was shot dead by the SAS in 1990. The jury returned a unanimous verdict but the coroner discharged them and refused to divulge the verdict.
SAT. OCTOBER 25, 1997: Glen Green (28) was killed in the Kilcooley estate in Bangor, Co Down after a booby-trap bomb exploded under his car. The killing happened just two days after the UDA/UFF death squad officially announced their decision to leave the CLMC, the umbrella group for the British-backed death squads. The dead man was reported to have received warnings from the UDA in 1993 to leave the Six Counties because he was passing information on their activities to the British colonial police.
SUN OCTOBER 26, 1997: St Stephen's Church of Ireland church in the Millfield area of Belfast was damaged in an arson attack. Sectarian slogans were painted on a Methodist church in Derry city.
TUES. OCTOBER 28, 1997: Anthony Ganley (16) was pushed through the front window of a hairdresser's shop in Lurgan, Co Armagh by British soldiers after he and his friend Kevin Scullion (15) were stopped and searched by the RUC as they were walking down William Street shortly. They were left go on by the RUC but were stopped by an RIR British army patrol and threatened by a member of the patrol. The two ignored the abuse and walked on. The soldiers ran after them and pushed them up against the window of a hairdressers in Lough Street.
It was revealed that Provisional councillor Robin Martin welcomed the RUC to a committee meeting of Fermanagh Council at the end of October. Martin, who chaired the meeting, shook hands with two RUC officers and held a closed-door conference for two hours along with his fellow Provisional Geraldine Cassidy and other councillors.
THURS. OCTOBER 30, 1997: The Labour government in Britain announced that it would renew the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) and the Emergency Provisions Act (EPA) next March when they come up for renewal.
A device, containing 1.5lbs of Semtex and two gallons of petrol was planted in the British motor tax office in Derry city centre and a warning was given by a man, armed with a handgun, who entered the building at 10.40am. The building's 300 workers were evacuated and 20 minutes later the detonator exploded. The main device was defused by a British army bomb disposal squad. Shortly afterwards a caller to the Irish News office in Derry, using a recognised codeword, said that the Continuity Irish Republican Army was responsible for the attack on what it called the "British administrative centre" in Derry's Foyle Street.
FRI. OCTOBER 31, 1997:
Three men — Rory Randolph Arthur Robinson (25), of Corcrain Avenue, Alistair Harvey (20), of Derryanvil Road and Dean Forbes (19), of Deramore Drive — charged with the killing of nationalist Robert Hamill in Portadown last May, had all charges against them dropped at a special sitting of Lisburn magistrates court when the Director of Public Prosecutions told resident magistrate Harry McKibbon that the evidence of certain witnesses would no longer be available.
The Fianna Fáil candidate, Mary McAleese, was elected President of the 26-County state.
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