Car bomb kills Catholic lawyer in Northern Ireland - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, March 26, 1999

A prominent Catholic lawyer was killed in a car bombing in Northern Ireland, leading some Catholics to fear an upsurge in violence by loyalist terrorists.

"That is what we are afraid of," said Bishop Francis Gerard Brooks of Dromore, Northern Ireland. "We hope and pray that this is not the case."

The lawyer, Rosemary Nelson, died from her injuries March 15 after a bomb placed under her car exploded in Lurgan, Northern Ireland. No warning was given, and a dissident loyalist group calling itself the Red Hand Defenders claimed responsibility for the attack.

Last year the group claimed responsibility for a bombing that killed a Catholic police officer during a loyalist riot in Portadown and for the killing of Brian Service, a 35-year-old Catholic in North Belfast.

Nelson is believed to have been targeted by loyalist terrorists because of her work representing nationalist clients. Recently, her clients included the Catholic residents of Garvaghy Road in their efforts to prevent the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternity, from holding a sectarian parade through their area.

Nationalists are mainly Catholic and seek a united Ireland, while loyalists are predominantly Protestant and seek continued British rule in Northern Ireland.

Bishop Brooks called Nelson's murder "an awful crime. I personally know her husband Paul, whom I taught at ... St. Colman's. Two of her sons are students there now. It's a terrible tragedy for a young family to be left without a mother.

"This bombing is obviously the work of some loyalist group. It's no excuse, but she was probably targeted because of her work for the Garvaghy residents," he said.

Nelson is survived by her husband and three children, ages 13, 11 and 8.

The Committee for the Administration of Justice, a lawyers' human rights group, demanded that any investigation into Nelson's murder be carried out by a British police force other than the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which is more than 90 percent Protestant.

Committee spokesman Brian McGeehan said police officers from England were already investigating Nelson's allegations that she had received death threats from officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

"It is difficult for people in the nationalist community to have faith in an RUC investigation into the murder of a solicitor [lawyer] when so many solicitors who have represented nationalists have been subjected to death threats by RUC officers," he added.

In a statement, RUC Detective Superintendent Sam Kincaid denounced Nelson's murder as "cold-blooded and brutal." Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs David Andrews said Nelson's murder was "a very deliberate attempt to intimidate those whose task it is to provide legal representation to those who need it." The murder was "very clearly designed to sabotage the peace process at this very critical time," he added.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Catholic and Presbyterian churches urged new efforts to resolve the current impasse in the Northern Ireland peace process.

In a joint St. Patrick's Day statement they cited Nelson's death as a new cause of concern that the peace process may get stuck.

"Last year's Good Friday Agreement offers the best hope in a generation of resolving 30 years of conflict," they said. But they added that "seemingly intractable disputes over paramilitary arsenals increasingly threaten the political solution."