Word: northerner
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Catholics only hardened the alloy. But McCord, 53, a powerfully built welder from a Protestant family, always showed his mettle in standing up to the sectarian men of violence. Having grown up in North Belfast, the crowded, often run-down part of the city where one in five of Northern Ireland's murders is committed, he built his reputation by standing up to the paramilitary gangs that rule the neighborhoods. "I don't like bullies," he says. "I've been fighting them since...
...McCord proved how tough he really is - by taking on not only the killers, but also the police spymasters alleged to have shielded them from justice. McCord's decade-long odyssey that turned him from street fighter to amateur investigator was vindicated, Monday, when the official police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Nuala O'Loan, alleged that officers of the Special Branch of Britain's Royal Ulster Constabulary had knowingly colluded with Protestant paramilitaries responsible for at least a dozen murders, shielding them from justice. Her report echoes McCord's allegations, on the basis of his investigation into...
...death with a concrete block by members of the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1997. The 22-year-old had been caught transporting drugs allegedly belonging to a leader of the group, who, police believe, lost $100,000 as a result. It was the type of murder from which Northern Ireland would quickly turn away - there was a drugs link, and because it was Protestant-on-Protestant violence, it didn't threaten the fledgling peace process...
...McCord told his findings to anyone who would listen. But apart from a handful of tabloid journalists, he says he wasn't taken seriously until 2002, when he met Nuala O'Loan. She had been appointed the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland as part of the reforms that followed the 1998 Good Friday settlement. A Catholic academic, Mrs. O'Loan's background is very different from McCord's. But she has proven to be equally tough-minded. Her report on a four-year investigation, published January 22, confirms McCord's basic conclusions. It alleges that some police informers in Northern...
...stand up to these people," he says. "They don't see the man who sits at nights there in the chair and cries over his son." With his son's case coming to a close, McCord has his eye on plans to appoint an official champion for Northern Ireland's victims of violence. It will be a tough job, but he believes a hard...