AP 6/17- IRA Informer Shot, Still Sucking Air Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ............................................................... source - "Edmond J. \(skip\) O'Neill" Irish Republican Army Informer Shot LONDON (AP) -- An Irish Republican Army informer who had been on the run from his former colleagues for eight years was shot and seriously wounded Thursday at his northeast England home. An unidentified gunman ambushed Martin McGartland, 28, in the backyard of his home in the quiet port of Whitley Bay. McGartland underwent emergency surgery for wounds to his abdomen and was reported in serious but stable condition. No group claimed responsibility, but immediate suspicion fell on his many enemies in the outlawed IRA, which called a cease-fire in July 1997. A local radio station received two anonymous calls saying McGartland had been shot shortly after the attack. Adam Parfitt, who published McCartland's 1997 expose on his career as an IRA informer, said his client had been shot six times. Tony Crimmens, the Northumbria Police's assistant chief constable, said he was ``keeping an open mind'' about whether the IRA was responsible. Eamon Collins, another former IRA member who wrote a similarly critical expose of life inside the secret organization, was shot and stabbed to death in January by unidentified attackers. Collins' death, McCartland said at the time, ``proved what I've always said, that the IRA never gives up. No matter how long it takes. They never forget.'' McGartland joined the IRA in his native Belfast in 1988 after being recruited by Northern Ireland police to work as a double agent. His book recounted a dangerous three-year stint that ended when suspicious colleagues abducted him in 1991. He said he jumped out of a first-floor window to escape his interrogators who, he presumed, were going to torture and kill him. He fled Northern Ireland, leaving behind his wife and two sons. McGartland first recounted his experiences in ``Fifty Dead Men Walking,'' whose title reflected the number of lives he says he saved by informing. Last year, he wrote a sequel, ``Dead Man Running,'' which focused on his bitterness over what he viewed as a lack of support from his former police superiors. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-06.23.99-11:37:35-17985