Madden & Finucane
Ranked
Number 1
by Chambers,
the clients guide
to the legal profession
Chambers and Partners have been publishing their
world-famous guides to the legal profession since 1990. The key to the success
of their legal directories and the validity of their awards is the in-depth,
unbiased research conducted by their team of highly qualified and experienced
researchers. View more
Madden & Finucane
present
the Madden & Finucane
and Pat Finucane
Aisling Awards
The Aisling Bursaries, launched in March 2000, are
an educational initiative between Belfast Media Group and West Belfast
Partnership. The Aisling Bursaries are designed to help students defray their
education and training costs.
View
more
|
|
North still on radar of plummy-voiced spooks
11 June 2011 --
THE voice on the other end of the phone certainly sounded old Etonian, just how
you might expect a Sandhurst-trained, top-level British intelligence operative
to speak.
I was in the Belfast
offices of Madden and Finucane where I had just heard Peter McCaughey tell how
he had been approached by a man calling himself Nick in
Dubai
who identified himself as British intelligence, M16.
Mr McCaughey said he had a note with a mobile number pressed into his pocket as
he tried to get away from the man who wanted to recruit him as an informer and
take him to Afghanistan
for 'debriefing.'
The tale sounded almost too extraordinary to be true but when the Dungannon
man's solicitor tapped the mobile number into the phone a man answering to the
name Nick did pick up.
"Can I ask you why you're harassing my client Peter McCaughey," solicitor
Fearghal Shiels
asked.
"I'm not harassing him. I simply want to speak to him about his finances and
links to Irish terrorism," the plummy English voice on the other end said.
The use of counter-insurgency tactics by the British against Irish republicans
can be dated back centuries.
However, sending operatives to Dubai
to confront a man, armed with aerial pictures of every aspect of his private
life, would represent a new determination to infiltrate suspected dissident
republican organisations.
There is no way of knowing if the United Arab
Emirates agreed to allow British intelligence
to operate in their jurisdiction.
However, this small glimpse into the world of espionage shows that despite the
perceived Islamist threat, the north may still very much be on the spooks’
radar.
|
|
more..
|
|
|