Shebeen killing sickens loyalists

'THIS is a land in darkness,' Pastor James McConnell, Protestant minister to Margaret Wright, told the hundreds of mourners attending her funeral yesterday. 'There is great evil in this land - this land which has a mission hall on almost every corner and a church on each and every road.'

Last Wednesday, Ms Wright, 31, was beaten and killed in an illegal Belfast drinking club near the Donegall Road. It was a loyalist hall where the local Orange flute band used to practise its marches. A sign outside the club says: 'This hall is for band members only - no exceptions.' The windows are blocked with concrete.

Police reported large amounts of blood on the floor. There had been an all-night party and some revellers were still around drinking.

Up the road, in the yard of a terraced house, they found her body. She had been shot through the head several times. It was one of the most brutal murders in the history of the Troubles.

Police believe it was the work of loyalists who mistook Ms Wright for a Catholic or an undercover policewoman. She was neither: she was an epileptic, who could not work because of her illness, and had been struggling to overcome a long bout of depression.

Yesterday Belfast expressed its sorrow. Hundreds followed the funeral procession from the family home in Forthriver Park to the Whitewell Memorial Tabernacle Church on the Shore Road. There were many wreaths at the house: many from people who did not previously know Ms Wright.

Pastor McConnell said: 'It is up to God's redeemed people to do something about the darkness' and then she was buried at Roselawn Cemetery.

The loyalist community rose up in anger and revulsion. Rev Jim Lemon, a Methodist minister, told a crowd that gathered outside the hall on Friday night that it would be closed and eventually demolished. A public collection is to be held for the family and a book of condolence will be opened in the Methodist church nearest the scene. The outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force has ordered all similar illegal drinking places to close permanently within 72 hours and, in a statement, said: 'Anyone involved in the killing should not, and will not, be recognised as a loyalist.'

Orange Order leaders have warned that any member of their organisation convicted of involvement would never be allowed to take part in loyalist demonstrations again.

Police are questioning 18 people, including at least two women, in connection with her death. Some are thought to be members of the flute band.

Ms Wright's mother, Evelyn, originally from Glasgow, said: 'I hope her killers suffer the way she suffered. Prison is too good from them.' They were scum, she added.

Not far from the scene of the murder, police raided a house yesterday and recovered three sawn-off shotguns and a number of cartridges.

Also early yesterday the IRA ended its three-day with four attacks against security forces. Terrorists held a family hostage on the Twinbrook estate outside Belfast and launched an unsuccessful grenade at an Armypatrol in Stewartstown. Earlier shots were fired at two Army checkpoints. A mortar attack was launched on a vehicle checkpoint in County Tyrone. The RUC said that a number of houses were evacuated but no serious damage was caused.

The Irish deputy prime minister, Dick Spring, said the IRA's decision not to extend the ceasefire was 'profoundly disappointing' at a time when the vast majority wanted peace.

Meanwhile, it has emerged that Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, last week wrote to President Clinton about the ceasefire. In the first such letter from Sinn Fein to a US president, he is understood to have argued that the ceasefire should be taken as a sign of his continued commitment to pursuing the peace process with London and Dublin.

Mr Adams also sent letters to several leading figures in the Irish-American establishment, including Senator Edward Kennedy and other members of the US Congress.

There has been considerable disappointment in the Irish-American community that since Mr Adams's visit to the US there has been no visible movement by the IRA towards renouncing violence.

The Rev Ian Paisley will speak in New York on Tuesday at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, the same forum that initiated the visit by Mr Adams in February. In Washington tomorrow and also at the end of the week, Mr Paisley is expected to appear on a series of American television talk shows and see figures on Capitol Hill and in the State Department.

Mr Paisley has not been invited to the White House. That honour has been extended, however, to James Molyneaux, leader of the Official Unionist Party, who arrives in Washington for a visit at the end of next week. Mr Molyneaux is expected to hold talks with Vice-President Al Gore.

(Photograph omitted)