Secret files reveal cops believed IRA ‘peacemaker’ Martin McGuinness ordered Bloody Monday bombings in 1972
SECRET files show police were convinced IRA “peacemaker” Martin McGuinness ordered an atrocity dubbed Bloody Monday.
The terrorist-turned-politician was hailed a hero by world leaders after his death aged 66 this week.
But he is believed to have directed the 1972 Claudy bombings in Northern Ireland, which left nine dead, including a little girl.
Kathryn Eakin, eight, became a symbol of the horror after she was blown up while washing the windows of her parents’ grocery store.
Three car bombs devastated the village in County Derry in one of the most notorious unsolved attacks of The Troubles.
A 2003 intelligence report says a trusted source said McGuinness was responsible.
The claims were taken so seriously that one senior Special Branch officer gave the information the highest “A1” intelligence rating.
McGuinness, who was Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland for a decade until this January, was the IRA’s second-in-command in Derry at the time of the attack.
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The files show he was one of five suspects investigated in a fresh Northern Ireland police probe in 2005.
But the case against him was dropped a year later.
Four arrests were made, but there were no charges.
Last night sources said senior Northern Ireland cops believed “political” pressure forced an end to their probe.
One said: “There was great frustration about the decision.
“But it was made very clear there was no way it could be pursued further.”
Meanwhile, a dying army veteran has told how he will stand trial over the death of an IRA suspect nearly 43 years ago.
At centre of IRA in Eighties and Nineties
MARTIN McGuinness was at the centre of IRA operations until it stopped killing, it is claimed.
The former Deputy First Minister insisted he left the Provos in 1974.
But sources believe he was at the helm during the 1980s and early 1990s.
MP Tom Elliot, a former soldier, said he knew of information linking Mr McGuinness to murders in 1987 and 1990.
A cop added the only way to leave the IRA was to leave Northern Ireland.
— SENIOR Paras toasted McGuinness’s passing with a bottle of Taylors 1692 port inscribed: “To be opened on the death of Martin McGuinness.”