Deportee's Real IRA Links

30 Nov 2005
Irish Voice
Sean O'Driscoll


A Derry man who was deported from the U.S. earlier this month is a fundraiser for a Republican prisoner welfare group which the U.S. government considers a front for the Real IRA, the Justice Department has confirmed. Sean Devine, from Dungiven in Co. Derry, told the Irish Voice last week that he was offered a new home in Portugal if he became an informer for MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

However, Devine agrees that he fundraised for the Irish Republican Prisoners Welfare Association (IRPWA), which is on the Treasury Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, as a fundraising front group for the Real IRA. Members of the IRPWA are banned from entering the U.S., and U.S. citizens are banned from giving it any "material support."

In 2001, the U.S. government banned the IRPWA along with the 32 County Sovereignty Movement, the Real IRA's political wing. The 32CSM later lost a challenge in Washington to lift the ban. However, Devine and other fundraisers for the IRPWA have strongly denied the claim and say that their fundraising is legitimate.

Devine, a fundraiser for the Derry section of the organization, was questioned at Newark airport in New Jersey for over five hours by a five man team lead by the FBI, the Northern Ireland Special Branch and MI5. He said he was offered large amounts of money to become an informer and that he was refused contact with a lawyer and a representative from the Irish Embassy.

Devine agrees that he split from the Provisional movement in 1997 in protest at the approaching Good Friday Agreement, which he describes as a "sell out."