TV Probe For McGuinness

As the new boss of the Democratic Unionist Party, Peter Robinson prepares to step up to running Northern Ireland as First Minister alongside his deputy, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, a TV programme will tonight reopen controversy on his colleagues' background.

Both British and Irish intelligence sources each claim that in 1987 Martin McGuinness was the leading figure on the IRA's Northern Command - the body that ran the so-called "war" in Northern Ireland.

Among other issues examined in Age Of Terror - 10 Days Of Terror, will be a claim that the Northern Command knew about the Enniskillen bombing in advance and did nothing to stop it.

Award-winning journalist Peter Taylor carried out an interview with Detective Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter who led the investigation into the Enniskillen bombing which left 11 civilians dead and not a single member of the security forces injured.

DCS Baxter revealed the Enniskillen attack was not an unauthorised, one-off operation by a local IRA unit, but was carefully coordinated by three IRA units – two from the South and one from the North. He says that prior to the bombing there were deliberations at a very senior level within the IRA.

"The calculation was taken as to the number of casualties they could inflict on the civilian population against the number of casualties they could inflict on members of the security forces. And they decided that the risk was worth taking," he said.

"The civilians were collateral to the bomb but they were prepared to accept the number of casualties."

DCS Baxter also revealed that the IRA planned a simultaneous attack on a Boys' and Girls' Brigade parade at the border village of Tullyhommon a few miles away but the bomb failed to go off.

Intelligence reports indicate three days before the attack McGuinness was stopped by Irish police on the Donegal border. Three southern members of the IRA were in the car with him.

The subsequent intelligence assessment was that McGuinness was going to be briefed on the Remembrance Day attacks.

In the hours after the Sunday bombing, the reports record McGuinness leaving Belfast to travel to Fermanagh to meet members of the local IRA to find out what went wrong.

Peter Taylor asked Martin McGuinness if he was on Northern Command at the time and had advance knowledge of Enniskillen. He said he was not and knew nothing about the attack. He did not deny going down to Fermanagh after the bombing but implied that it would have been in his Sinn Fein capacity. He declined to be interviewed.

The programme goes out tonight, Tuesday 22 April, at 9.00pm, on BBC Two.

(BMcC/JM)