The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.45           December 22, 1997 
 
 
`Fight Is For Rights Of The Irish People' Interview with `H-Block 4' defendant  

BY NORTON SANDLER AND CATHLEEN GUTEKANST
Thirty-eight Irish Republican prisoners broke out of the H- Block wing of the infamous Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland, on Sept. 25, 1983. It was the biggest jailbreak in British history. Four of these men -Jimmy Smyth, Pol Brennan, Kevin Barry Artt, and Terry Kirby - were arrested by the FBI in California between 1992 and '94. Ever since, the U.S. government has fought to have them extradited to Northern Ireland. Numerous groups that support the Irish freedom struggle along with defenders of democratic rights have rallied to back these fighters, known as the "H-Block Four."

Smyth's case was heard first. After a long fight, he was extradited to Northern Ireland in 1996. He and other prisoners were beaten by their Long Kesh jailers earlier this year.

The other three H-Block defendants had their cases heard in late 1996 and early '97 before Federal Judge Charles Legge in San Francisco. On Aug. 11, 1997 Legge ordered their extradition, and denied them bail while his ruling is appealed. In November, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld their bail denial.

After being held together in the federal prison in Pleasanton, California, for some weeks, Artt was abruptly moved to a jail in Oakland. Brennan and Kirby remain in Pleasanton.

This interview with Terry Kirby was conducted at his home in Concord, California, on June 29 before his most recent arrest and again by telephone from prison on November 11.

SAN FRANCISCO - "The prison guards, you can hear their voices through the door, you can't tell who it is. They call us terrorists, Irish scum. My mail has been opened. When I do get it, it's all ripped in half, especially the mail from Colleen and Keely [Kirby's wife and daughter]. People tell me they have sent me mail and money orders, but I've never received it. When I do get the newspapers, I am weeks behind."

That's how Terry Kirby summarized the conditions that he and Irish republican prisoners Pol Brennan and Kevin Barry Artt are facing in U.S. jails as they wait for their appeal to be heard of a federal judge's order extraditing them to Northern Ireland.

Terry Kirby, now 41, grew up in a Republican household in the Andersonstown section of Belfast. His father, Joe, a steelworker, was interned (held in jail by the British authorities without being brought to trial) in the 1940s. "My father was outspoken, he would always come to the aid of anybody being victimized," Kirby explained. His mother, Bridie, a nurse, was a close friend and political associate of Maire Drumm, a vice president of Sinn Fein, the leading party in the fight to end British rule in Northern Ireland. Drumm was assassinated by a Loyalist (pro-British) death squad in 1976 while lying in a hospital bed. "I remember Maire being on TV and I remember my mother being on TV. I remember my mother helping Maire with her speeches," Kirby said.

As a youth Kirby "joined a youth group associated with Sinn Fein. I would basically sell the newspaper, the Republican News," he said. This was just after the Irish civil rights movement began in 1968. When the Republican movement split in 1970, Kirby joined the fight, "I don't regret one day of it," he explained, "because they were only ones who took up the defense of the Irish people."

Harassment of Republican youth
As a teenager Kirby began to experience the wrath of the British government. His sister Clare testified at his extradition trial last year that from ages 13 to 16, Terry was beaten regularly by the British soldiers. He'd come back covered with bruises, welts, and cigarette burns, she told the court.

"At school they started trying to make us stand for `God Save the Queen,' and I refused to do so. I was suspended from school, I was constantly harassed," Kirby explained. "They said, `we can't get your Dad, but we're going to get you.' They told my sister they were going to kill me.

"I was interned on my 17th birthday, from July 4, 1973, to March 20, 1975. No charges were ever filed."

Kirby was arrested again along with four other men in August 1976, just after his 20th birthday, following a shoot-out with the police. "It was mainly the cops that did all the firing," Kirby said. He was charged with the murder of a gas station owner.

Over the next three days Kirby was questioned 12 times for a total of more than 26 hours, according to his U.S. attorney Gilbert Eisenberg. Kirby explains that he was beaten and deprived of sleep. During the torture sessions, Kirby "confessed" to the murder of the gas station owner, as well as two hotel bombings, a furniture store bombing, and an attack on a restaurant. Though Kirby retracted these statements, he was charged with the murder of the gas station owner and separately with possession of weapons and explosives. The other charges were dropped.

Kirby went to trial in 1978 and was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in a nonjury Diplock Court.

Hunger strikes and escape from Maze
Two years earlier the British authorities had instituted a policy of classifying the Republican prisoners as "common criminals.' The Republican fighters refused to wear prison garb and demanded to wear their own clothes. When the authorities denied them this right, the prisoners wore only towels in their cells. By 1980, Kirby was one of 400 men and women "on the blanket" in the H-Block at Long Kesh (also known as Maze) and the Armagh women's prison.

On March 1, 1981, Republican prisoner Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike. He was soon joined by others. The British government refused to act on the prisoners' demands. Sands died on May 5. Nine more prisoners died before the hunger strike ended in August 1981.

"Kevin Lynch was one of my cell mates, Joe McDonnell was a good friend of mine," Kirby stated, referring to some of the young fighters who died on hunger strike. "Kieran Doherty was one of my best friends. And Bobby Sands I knew very well. I knew all the hunger strikers except Francis Hughes, who I only knew to say hello."

Two years later 38 prisoners escaped from the Maze. Kirby arrived in San Francisco a year later. He married Colleen Dolan and they have a three-year old daughter, Keely.

In 1992, H-block escapee Jimmy Smyth was arrested by the FBI. Kirby was arrested in 1994. Pol Brennan and Kevin Barry Artt were also arrested around the same time.

Kirby was released on bail in 1996 after being housed in six different prisons. A condition of his bail was that he wear an ankle bracelet so that the authorities could monitor his whereabouts. He could not leave his house without permission. Kirby was also forced to pay for the rental of the electronic ankle bracelet - $200 a month.

U.S. extradition trials
At the extradition trials of Artt and Kirby, U.S. attorney Mark Zanides, acting for the British government, argued that the two were "terrorists" and criminals, not political fighters victimized because of their opposition to British rule. Zanides stated that because Kirby had signed a "confession," this proved his guilt.

Defenders of Kirby and Artt pointed out that documents the U.S. attorney produced at the trial supplied by British authorities and alleged to have been written in 1978 were actually written some time after 1981.

Judge Legge allowed Kirby to finally remove the ankle monitor about a month before he issued the extradition ruling and had the Irish activist rearrested. In this ruling Legge claimed that Kirby, Artt, and Brennan, "were convicted because they committed serious crimes, not because they are Catholics or nationalists or republicans."

The three refused to accept prison work assignments and told their jailers here that they were not convicted of anything in the United States and are political prisoners. Prison authorities responded by separating the three.

Artt has been moved to a different prison and denied badly needed dental care. Brennan has been placed in solidarity confinement on two occasions. "It's very frustrating when you hear what has happened to Kevin," Kirby stated. "They are still trying to use that old tactic of divide and conquer."

Kirby emphasized that the fight of the H-Block defendants "is not about Terry Kirby or Pol Brennan or Jimmy Smyth or Kevin Artt or Joe Doherty or about any of the prisoners. This is about the Irish people having a right to govern themselves."

Commenting on Sinn Fein's participation in the peace talks under way in Ireland, Kirby said, "I scan the papers, I try to read between the lines. It's a sad state of affairs when you have Ian Paisley trying to disrupt the talks. I think the Loyalist paramilitaries will rejoin the talks, they are more honest than David Trimble and his like." Paisley and Trimble are leaders of the Loyalist parties that oppose a united Ireland. During a recent White House visit, Trimble urged the Clinton administration to proceed immediately with the extradition of the H-block prisoners.

"The British are trying to say that the Irish people are not entitled to anything at all, as if they are entitled to speak for me. I am not a British citizen, I am an Irish citizen," Kirby continued.

"Sinn Fein is trying to put forward the situation that we face in the neighborhoods, where you're constantly harassed, interfered with, there's no jobs, and no opportunities," he emphasized. "For the first time, we see a chance for peace. Everyone in the nationalist community is behind them. Sinn Fein is fighting for equality at the peace talks."

Norton Sandler is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1781.  
 
 
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