Why the mortar attack at Newry in 1985? Why its 'success'?

 An Phoblacht had reported that the Traffic Police in the Newry area were using traffic violations to draw young people into the web of the Special Branch as informers on IRA activity.

Although I did not choose the Newry location for a mortar attack,the late Manus Maguire did,I knew that an attack on a littoral plain offered the best prospects of landing all mortars on a police station roof.

I was one of those many people who believed that police security pre-eminence entailed that they should bear the brunt of republican ire and,I had a particular thirst for revenge for imagined and real wrongs committed on myself and others, particularly for the brutal and barbaric killings of children.

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26.7.2022

Why the attack's effectiveness?

The modification of the warheads on IRA mortars by making them round with the detonating cord sticking up through an aperture at  the top.

The rockets were first tried out at Carrickmore in September 1983 before stocks of gelignite dried up and before TNT became available.

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In July-August 1988 I also devised a different form of mortar,'the barracks buster' and a 'horizontal mortar ' which, out of  ignorance based on reading Paddy Burke's Flying Column in An Phoblacht,I referred to as a "laterally fired rocket". It was in fact,a mortar. Paddy Burke was an undercover Garda who tried to run me over at Long Lane in a long silver 'top-of-the-range silver Mercedes when I was living in Dublin. Cahal M. provided information on my movements. I subsequently dealt with Burke in association with Fergal Connolly using a tactic which I learned from a book on MI6.