Sinn Fein backed Northern Irish bank raid

Senior members of Sinn Fein - Northern Ireland's largest republican party - approved a huge bank robbery in Belfast carried out by Irish Republican Army guerrillas, the province's cease-fire watchdog said on Thursday. In a special report, the Independent Monitoring Commission echoed police and politicians on both sides of the Irish border in blaming the IRA for the 26.5 million pound ($50 million) theft at the headquarters of Northern Bank.
It also backed Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's suggestion that senior members of Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally, had prior knowledge of the raid.
"We have carefully scrutinised all the material of different kinds that has become available to us since the robbery, which leads us to conclude firmly that it was planned and undertaken by the (Provisional) IRA," the IMC said in its report.
It said it believed IRA guerrillas also carried out three other robberies last year before the December bank raid.
"In our view Sinn Fein must bear its share of responsibility for all the incidents," it said. "Some of its senior members, who are also senior members of PIRA, were involved in sanctioning the series of robberies."
Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the biggest party representing Northern Ireland's minority Catholics, is expected to respond to the report later in the day.
The fallout from the December 20 raid has dealt a huge blow to Anglo-Irish efforts to hand the running of the British-ruled province back to its divided Protestant and Catholic parties. The commission said that had Northern Ireland's legislative assembly been sitting, it would have recommended punishing Sinn Fein by a period of exclusion from political office.
"(We) recommend that the Secretary of State should consider exercising the powers he has in the absence of the assembly to implement the measures which are presently applicable, namely the financial ones," it added.
The IMC - set up by Britain and Ireland to rule on whether rival paramilitary groups are sticking to peace pledges - can recommend punishments for political parties linked to organisations it deems guilty of cease-fire violations.
Its four members are appointed by London, Dublin and Washington, and include a former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism squad and an ex-deputy director of the CIA.
Britain fined Sinn Fein after the IMC's first report recommended financial sanctions over alleged IRA activity.