VICTIMS OF A POINTLESS WAR

However, this grievous atrocity is less abstract for Irish people than might, at first, have been imagined. The word seeps into the news media that Irish passports have been found at the scene of the crime. Three Irishmen were staying at the apartment in which the killings took place. The bodies will not be easily identified at the time of going to press, their identity hasn t yet been conclusively confirmed. But there seems to be little doubt that two of the murder victims are brothers, both in their 20s, from the small town of Bansha in Co Tipperary. The other is a young man, also in his 20s, from Ennis in Co. Clare.
Suddenly, this is no remote gangland slaying involving Eastern Europeans or North African drugs gangs, on which we can look down with a disdain bordering on racism. No longer is it one of those bizarre outbursts of bloody mayhem that take place at a distance usually in the US and about which we can speculate in a way that flirts with the academic. These were Irish country boys nice lads, from what you read, who wouldn t have been associated with crime in local people s minds. And they are dead. Very fucking dead indeed.
The newshounds gather. They talk to Dutch cops and Irish cops. Where possible, they hook up with underworld contacts. Maybe someone will cast some useful light on the circumstances of these sickening deaths. Maybe not. Either way, it s chastening to read the reports and to observe the conflicts of evidence. This was small-time stuff. People in Holland have hardly noticed, one informed source states. It seems to be serious shit, with serious people involved, another one testifies.
We are also treated to extraordinary statistics about the number of gangs involved in the drugs trade in Holland, which are contradictory to the extent that you wonder are the reporters inhabiting the same planet or time-zone? The Irish Times claims that there are almost 400 gangs in the drugs trade in Holland, among them 255 gangs of Dutch origin. Up to 10 drugs gangs control the trade in the Netherlands, The Sunday Tribune tells us, in contrast, quoting the investigative journalist Dan Von Hout, who is a recognised authority on the subject.
Reading the reports, you get the sense that even a terrible incident like this is seen as just another potential weapon in an ideological campaign being waged on the issue of drugs. Maybe Holland is the greatest cesspit imaginable, with gangs of mad psychos from all over Turkey, Surinam, Morocco and Colombia shooting one another in an orgy of ongoing violence and blood. And maybe their vicious efforts are currently being amplified by the arrival of a new breed of ruthless assassins from Serbia, Montenegro and Albania. This is, more or less, what the reports in The Irish Times suggest. But why, then, were there reportedly just 16 murders in the Hague area of Holland in the whole of 1999, of which only a few may have been drug-related?
Too often in this kind of situation, statistics are rolled out that read as if they ve come directly from police sources. Too often they conform to apocalyptic stereotypes: law and order is breaking down, the very civilised world we inhabit is about to come undone at the seams every man to the barricades before the heathen hordes have us all destroyed! Just think how sweet a sound it must be, to honchos in the Department of Justice who want to see a purge of rogue asylum seekers, to hear dire tales of gangs in Holland, from Eastern Europe and Africa who are running amok, sufficient to bring the place to its knees.
But is Holland any more lawless than Ireland, or Dublin in particular, where there have been five verified gangland drug-related murders so far this year? It would serve the interests of those who are ideologically opposed to Holland s more liberal regimes in relation to drugs and prostitution to have us believe that this is so but in fact, on a per capita basis, demonstrably it is not.
So what is really to be learnt from the gruesome murder of three relatively ordinary Irish lads, who were clearly well down the ranks, where drug dealing is concerned? The first thing to acknowledge is that as long as drugs are illegal, this trade will continue as a major area of criminal activity. And in that context, rough injustice of this kind will inevitably be meted out to those who whether by accident or design break the rules. In particular, if police use informers, then we must recognise that there is a very strong possibility that those informers are being induced to sign their own death warrants.
Gardam will probably know the full story behind the double killing of Damien Carey and Patrick Murray in Dublin in January of this year. Both had been arrested at Dublin airport, carrying heroin, in the weeks before they were savagely murdered. Is this why they were stiffed?
In the Patrick Dutchy Holland case, a precedent was set when the court accepted the uncorroborated evidence of a self-confessed accomplice turned State witness, Charles Bowden, that Holland was involved in the importation and distribution of cannabis. Uncorroborated evidence was accepted, again from Charles Bowden, in the trial of Patrick Meehan for the murder of Veronica Guerin.
For the criminal community this is a watershed: all it takes is for some underling to sing and you could be doing a life stretch. So what happens? If you suspect they ve turned State s evidence, underlings are dispensable. You plug them.
Far from controlling crime, there is a convincing case to be made that the War On Drugs promotes it. The rate of drug use and abuse remains constant. The extent, and the brutality, of drug-related crime, meanwhile, gets worse in Ireland as well as Holland. More essentially ordinary Irish boys will, in the not too distant future, find themselves six feet under. It s just the way that it is.
Of course you could take the drugs trade cannabis, ecstasy, heroin, speed, cocaine, the lot out of the hands of criminal gangs by legalising it. But that would be just too logical, wouldn t it? Much better, it seems, to let the murder and the mayhem continue . . .