A prominent republican who stood for the Assembly election in Fermanagh-south Tyrone has called Catholics who have served as judges and prosecutors in Northern Ireland “traitors.”
Gerry McGeough was arrested in 2007 as he left the election count in Omagh and was convicted four years later of attempting to murder UDR soldier Samuel Brush in 1981.
At the weekend he made comments during an interview with Irish-American radio station WBAI that have been described by DUP MLA Maurice Morrow as “nothing short of a blatant hate crime.”
“There are people from republican families who are sitting as Diplock court judges, and prosecutors, and all the other stuff of the day you can’t possibly imagine, and they are arrogantly passing judgement on patriots,” said Mr. McGeough.
Mr. McGeough was also found guilty in 2011 of IRA membership and of possessing the two revolvers which were used in the assassination attempt of Mr. Brush, now a DUP councillor. 
“I remember when I was on the trial, and the trial was an absolute farce, and no research done whatsoever, but they used to talk about bad character. Anyone who had shown any resistance to the British was deemed to have bad character and everything was to be criminalised. So you have Irish Catholics, traitors in effect, administering British rule here in the six counties,” he told the radio station.
When Mr. McGeough was convicted the then Sinn Fein MP for Fermanagh-south Tyrone Michelle Gildernew called for the immediate release of the former IRA man saying the prosecution “should not have happened” because the offence happened before the Good Friday Agreement. 
Mr. McGeough, who is now at odds with Sinn Fein, was then asked during the interview at the weekend about Britain’s decision to leave the European Union. 
“All the Irish republicans that I know, except from Sinn Fein, voted to get out, not because they gave a damn about England or Britain but because they wanted to break up the United Kingdom in order to bring about a United Ireland. The only way we are going to get a United Ireland is by breaking up the United Kingdom.
“What do we need a Border poll for? The English just need to get the hell out of our country. They don’t belong here, they have no right to be here. Their presence here has been at the cost of the blood of the Irish,” he said.
Mr. McGeough added: “I am quite hopeful that this [a United Ireland] will come about but we have to see to it that mass movements get up and running here over the next few years.”
Democratic Unionist MLA Maurice Morrow described Mr. McGeough’s comments as “nothing short of a blatant hate crime and a call for ethnic cleansing” and called on them to be “urgently investigated” by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. 
“The sinister threat contained within these comments show the venom which has become synonymous with this individual. To brand Catholics who are members of the judiciary as traitors simply for doing their job is beneath contempt. We do not forget the fact when Catholic members of the judiciary were targeted and murdered by the Provisional IRA and this latest outburst by McGeough is throwback to those awful days,” Lord Morrrow told The Impartial Reporter.