CASTLEDERG YOUNG LOYALISTS

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Convicted terrorists in Northern Ireland are incarcerated as criminals. If we accepted the IRA / Sinn Fein analysis of the conflict and treated it as a war then it is certain that the Republican leadership would have been tried for war crimes years ago.

The Republican Movement have waged a sectarian campaign that cut to the lowest depths of humanity. Among the worst was the targeting of the Mountain Lodge Pentecostal Church in Darkley that they claimed responsibility for using the name 'Catholic Reaction Force'.
    

The church was a small structure in a rural area outside the village of Darkley in South Armagh. The area is predominantly Catholic but the church was used by the few Protestant families in the wider area. On 20th November 1983 Republicans entered the church shortly after the service began. Sound recordings of the service played on the local media at the time heard the small congregation singing the opening hymn which was suddenly broken by bursts of gunfire and screaming. The Republicans first killed the elders at the front door who were greeting the congregation as they arrived then stepped over their bodies and fired indiscriminately into the church. They drove off leaving 3 dead and 7 injured. The terrorists intended to kill as many as they could within the church but they intended their effect to be much wider. They struck fear into the small Protestant community and were demonstrating that they would regard nowhere as safe in their sectarian campaign, the intent was to force Protestants to feel extremely vulnerable and to move out of the area, they intended the murders to have a wider resonance throughout the region and a demonstration of what they would do if their will was not accepted.

These were not just the acts of a psychopath, they were the deliberate strategic, political and religiously motivated actions of the Republican Movement. They are beyond criminal.

FOR GOD AND ULSTER