Police raid Sinn Fein offices, homes in Belfast in search for IRA documents

Friday, October 4th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) _ Police raided homes and offices of the Sinn Fein party Friday, seizing computer records and arresting several people in an apparent crackdown on intelligence-gathering by the Irish Republican Army.

Sinn Fein spokesman Gerry Kelly claimed police were trying to undermine the party and placate Protestant politicians. Protestant leaders want to expel Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, from the Northern Ireland government because of continued IRA violence.

``This is a highly political raid,'' said Kelly, whom police believe is a senior IRA commander.

At dawn, police kicked down doors of Sinn Fein activists in Catholic areas of west and north Belfast. Later, more than a dozen officers led by the police's secretive Special Branch intelligence arm seized documents at Sinn Fein's offices.

They refused to say how many people had been arrested.

Sinn Fein said that among the arrested was Denis Donaldson, the party's senior office worker at the government's east Belfast headquarters, Stormont. Sinn Fein lawmaker Conor Murphy said others from the party arrested were involved ``in policing, justice and human rights issues.''

Officials in the Northern Ireland government, speaking on condition of anonymity, said another person arrested was a former government employee who left his post last year.

Police said the raids were linked to IRA intelligence gathering and said the operation was ordered by Chief Constable Hugh Orde, amid fears that the IRA had obtained sensitive ministerial documents.

First Minister David Trimble, the Protestant head of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government, said he suspected the IRA had gathered information about government officials.

He called on British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid to take action against Sinn Fein.

``What we know so far, or suspect so far, is that there has been an IRA intelligence operation directed against the upper echelons of the government, having penetrated the Northern Ireland office,'' he said.

Friday's raids were the largest against activists of the Sinn Fein-IRA movement since April, when police arrested four men. One of them was charged with compiling information likely to be of use for IRA attacks on British security installations and politicians.

Sinn Fein insisted the computer disks taken away from its Stormont offices contained such pedestrian items as a backup of Windows 98 operating software.

Protestant politicians applauded the raids, particularly the unprecedented search of offices at Stormont, a grand white marble building overlooking Belfast that is home to the province's four-party government.

``I hope there will be no hiding place for the IRA from now on,'' said Jeffrey Donaldson, an Ulster Unionist Party skeptic of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

The Northern Ireland government, formed in December 1999, is the central accomplishment of the 1998 Good Friday accord. It includes two British Protestant parties and two Irish Catholic parties.

Trimble has threatened to withdraw his Ulster Unionist Party from the coalition by January unless the Irish Republican Army shows it has renounced violence. A withdrawal would cause the coalition to collapse.