En 1987 en 10 días, tuvieron lugar dos acontecimientos dramáticos que alteraron el curso de las actividades del IRA en Irlanda del Norte.
Uno de ellos era una revelación de cómo los estados canalla patrocinaban actos terroristas, descubierto cuando se encontró un vasto arsenal de armas a bordo de un barco sueco llamado, los Eksund: las armas habían sido suministrados por el líder libio, coronel Muamar Gadafi.
Uno de ellos era una revelación de cómo los estados canalla patrocinaban actos terroristas, descubierto cuando se encontró un vasto arsenal de armas a bordo de un barco sueco llamado, los Eksund: las armas habían sido suministrados por el líder libio, coronel Muamar Gadafi.
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00:00On October 12, 1987, five Irishmen and a dog left Malta for Libya in a freighter.
00:19The dog was a gift for the Libyan spy who had organized the shipment.
00:24Enough weapons for the IRA to fight the British for decades.
00:31In the age of terror, some conflicts never end.
00:37The violence is still uninterrupted and the fighters are irreconcilable.
00:49In 1987, there was no way out for the country of never, which was Northern Ireland.
00:55But in the span of ten days, I observed two dramatic events that made me see that I was wrong.
01:04The first was the revelation of how certain states financed terrorism.
01:12And the second was brutal and bloody.
01:16A massacre of civilians, the manifestation of a day destined to honor the dead.
01:21These events could have sunk Northern Ireland, but nevertheless, in a way that no one had foreseen, would mark the beginning of a long road to peace.
01:35The Age of Terror. Ten days that shocked the rage.
01:52The afternoon of October 30, 1987, a French customs patrol spotted a suspicious ship on the coast of Britain.
02:03They suspected it could carry drugs and decided to intercept it.
02:08The ship was called Exum, and when they boarded it, the French were amazed to see that the crew was Irish.
02:21When they discovered the cargo, they were astonished.
02:32At the same time, in a French house on the lonely border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, the rage was ending another bomb.
02:42I remember growing up in Northern Ireland, where every week you heard how they killed policemen by shooting or the explosion of a bomb.
02:56It was very ... in the end you become quite insensitive, you just think, go another murder and you go on with your life.
03:03But this bomb was different.
03:05It would not only break the lives of those trapped in the explosion, but also turned the way to peace.
03:17In the port of Brest, the Exum revealed their deadly secrets.
03:22They were not drugs, but an arsenal of weapons.
03:26Explosives, pistols, ammunition and missiles.
03:30The French had no idea where they came from or who they were for.
03:37After 10 days, the mystery of the Exum would be revealed, with a great impact on the fight against the rage by Great Britain.
03:51Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, a unit of the rage was looking for a safe route for the bomb in the county of Fermanagh.
04:00It was not an easy task.
04:03The winding roads were heavily guarded by the British army.
04:08One of their tasks was to protect remote communities of Protestants against the attacks of the rage.
04:15The purpose of this rage bomb could not have been more provocative.
04:20The tribute to the fallen in the town of Enniskillen, in the county of Fermanagh.
04:29The rage was a war of exhaustion that would expel the British from the North.
04:34They called this strategy, the long war.
04:38It was a long war.
04:41It was a long war.
04:44It was a long war.
04:47It was a long war.
04:50It was a long war.
04:53It was a long war.
04:56They called this strategy, the long war.
05:03The war would also take place on another front.
05:07A long-term goal was to make the political arm of the rage, the Sinn Féin, a dominant force in Irish politics.
05:15Gerry Adams devised the strategy.
05:26At the end of the day, it will be the cutting edge of the IRA which will bring freedom.
05:32Martin McGuinness is now the Deputy Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
05:37But in 1987 he supported the rage.
05:43The rage dome knew that the long war could only continue if it had the means to do so.
05:49The British also knew it.
05:51Their strategy was to cut the supply lines of money and weapons of the rage.
06:03The pattern of the Exxon was imprisoned in the port of Brest.
06:07The French customs started with their interrogations.
06:11This adaptation is based on what was said in the interrogations.
06:16My name is Adrian John Hawkins.
06:18I am married. I have four children and an Irish passport.
06:23I am in charge of several companies for commercial purposes.
06:29Now, as far as we are concerned, Henry Kearns is a person I have known for some time.
06:36He contacted me in February or March of this year and offered me a business.
06:42He told me that he knew an entrepreneur who wanted to buy a cargo ship.
06:49The cargo ship was the Exxon, now intervened and anchored in the port of Brest.
06:58Adrian Hawkins had background in Ireland.
07:07Before he had been the owner of a tourist business, but everything failed when the offices disappeared due to a mysterious fire.
07:18Then he set up a travel agency, but also failed by abandoning customers.
07:27His economic problems grew and in the mid-1980s he found a way out, selling and delivering ships.
07:36But the Exxon sank.
07:41Hawkins was the only one of the five Irish who revealed the secret.
07:45He explained how he had bought the Exxon and how he had taken it to Malta to deliver it to a man named Henry Kearns.
07:54I met Kearns and three men, the crew of the ship in a hotel in Malta.
08:00They did not have a captain. They told me that he was not available.
08:07They offered me to take his place. I accepted.
08:10Two hours after picking up one of them, James Bowen approached me and told me that his colleagues and he were members of the provisional IRA.
08:19Bowen made me two offers.
08:23One was that they would pay me well.
08:29And the other was that my family would be safe.
08:34I took that as a threat to my family.
08:40In the meantime, in the county of Fermanagh, the IRA was preparing one of the attacks most sadly remembered in this long war.
08:50They were getting closer and closer to the objective.
08:55The tribute to the fallen.
08:58The tribute to the fallen.
09:01The tribute to the fallen.
09:04The tribute to the fallen.
09:07The tribute to the fallen in Eniskilen.
09:13For the Protestant community of the town, this ceremony was a special day to remember the family.
09:23When I was very young, my father always attended the tribute.
09:29He lost his leg in the First World War.
09:33And the Day of Remembrance was very important to him.
09:39The regiments that grew up in Ulster suffered great losses.
09:44Two thousand died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
09:49For some people, like Samuel Gould, who had served in the Royal Police of Ulster, the emotional burden of the Day of Remembrance was not a thing of the past.
09:59The memories I have of attending the Day of Remembrance are almost a family pilgrimage.
10:08It was not only a commemoration of the World Wars, but also to the friends of my father who had been killed in the conflicts.
10:29In France, Adrian Hopkins gave surprising information on the first day of the interrogations.
10:37He revealed that his clients, the IRA, had told him to take the Exxon.
10:43Boyle approached me and told me that they had the mission to go to Libya.
10:49Libya
10:55The rich lands in oil in Libya were the home of Osama Bin Laden of the time.
11:01A man whom President Ronald Reagan had called the crazy dog of the Middle East.
11:06Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.
11:10Gaddafi used the money obtained from oil to finance revolutionary terrorism around the world.
11:16And the IRA was one of his favorite clients.
11:20The relationship was going back to the 1970s.
11:23Gaddafi did not hide his support for the struggle for the freedom of the IRA.
11:30We believe they have a just cause.
11:35Irish is Irish and Britain is Britain.
11:39We consider the existence of Britain in the north of Irish is a kind of imperialism.
11:51In the mid-1980s, the relationship between Gaddafi and Great Britain had hit rock bottom.
11:56First, a British police officer was killed when patrolling a demonstration at the door of the Libyan embassy in London.
12:04The shots came from inside the building.
12:07The diplomatic relations were broken.
12:11Then it was when the American warplanes bombed Libya as retaliation for the support to terrorism.
12:18The F-111 planes took off from British bases and the enemy of Gaddafi's enemy became his friend.
12:26Libya had delivered weapons to the IRA before, but now it began to do so on a large scale and without cost to the IRA.
12:38What was your reaction to the seizure of the Exxon?
12:42I think first of surprise and then relief.
12:50Because that large arsenal had been seized.
12:54And the IRA was not going to use those missiles, the Semtex explosives or the short weapons in the war.
13:07It was a joy for such a detention.
13:12And for the blow to the supply of weapons.
13:23The interrogations continued in France.
13:28The third day of interrogations, Adrian Hopkins stopped pretending to be innocent.
13:38Actually, I have not told the truth.
13:45Because I fear for my life.
13:50The facts were as follows.
14:02Three years ago, Kearns, whom I knew,
14:07he got in touch with me.
14:10He thought I was from the IRA.
14:12He proposed that we could use my yacht to transport weapons from the Mediterranean.
14:16Due to my financial difficulties at that time, I accepted.
14:20Because they were going to pay me a lot of money.
14:23Through Kearns, I met a man named Maliki.
14:27We talked about the conditions.
14:31It was necessary to transport five tons of weapons.
14:35In return, they would pay me 100,000 pounds.
14:42Adrian Hopkins announced something that made the British get their hair done.
14:49The Exxon was not the only ship with which he had gone to Libya.
14:55He revealed that in the last two years, he had taken four loads from Libya to Ireland.
15:05I took between 100 and 130 tons of weapons and ammunition to Ireland in the last four trips.
15:23They unloaded the goods at a place on the Irish coast called Loga Strand.
15:30It was a monumental failure of the intelligence.
15:38How could they have passed four loads along the border?
15:43Both the British and the Irish intelligence had failed to discover Hopkins and his regular trips to Libya.
15:50And there were important clues.
15:53In January 1986, after the first trip to Hopkins, the Irish police found two weapons depots.
16:01In these two rounds, they found more than 80 AK-47 rifles and other weapons.
16:10I think they also found pistols.
16:13But something important was that they found a box that said,
16:18weapons of the Libyan army or something like that.
16:22Which made it obvious that they came from somewhere in Libya.
16:26I think it said Libyan Armed Forces.
16:29Yes, that's fairly specific, isn't it Peter?
16:32Libyan Armed Forces.
16:34I think we have to admit that it is a step back in the discoveries of our intelligence system at that time.
16:41That's short.
16:43During my investigation, I saw an intelligence document.
16:47It said, secret, non-transferable.
16:51It revealed the magnitude of the weapons that Adrian Hopkins had already introduced in Ireland before Lexun intervened.
16:59The arsenal consisted of 36 missile launchers, 10 ground-to-air missiles, 26 machine guns, hundreds of missiles, thousands of projectiles, more than 200 grenades,
17:1010 flamethrowers and enough Semtex explosives to cause damage for a couple of years.
17:19The document also revealed that the Libyans had paid 10 million pounds in metal to the IRA funds.
17:28For the British, this meant more dead soldiers, more dead police officers and more innocent dead.
17:36And a nightmare that could last for years.
17:41There was a widespread alarm when it was discovered that this was not the only shipment and that there had been previous shipments.
17:51And so there was a large arsenal hidden somewhere in the Republic,
17:56that could use the IRA so that this long war could go on for a very long time in the military sense.
18:05Did that scare you?
18:06Yes.
18:11The sense of joy for the intervention of Lexun changed very soon and became a feeling of assimilation.
18:22You may have taken Lexun, but more than 130 tons of weapons have already entered the Republic of Ireland to be used by the IRA.
18:40The sympathizers of the IRA on the ground realized that the IRA had successfully unloaded an incredible number of weapons
18:50and that it would have an important reserve of weapons to continue with the conflict for about 20 or 25 years.
19:00While the British were realizing the magnitude of Hopkins' revelations,
19:04the operation of Enniskillen was reaching its culminating point.
19:12On Saturday, November 7, they transported a bomb weighing more than 20 kilograms to the target at dusk.
19:23We believe that at some point on Sunday, a unit of the provisional IRA moved it secretly to the outskirts of Enniskillen.
19:32Secretly?
19:33Yes.
19:34Some members had occupied positions along the way to ensure that there were no security forces.
19:41There was a group of sympathizers with the provisional IRA in Enniskillen in charge of watching that there were no members of the security forces.
19:49At midnight, the manager of a club called The Reading Rooms was playing cards with some friends before closing.
20:03When they were playing last hand, they thought they heard footsteps on the upper floor.
20:18No, no, no, no, no.
20:24Someone was placing the bomb against the cabinet of the building.
20:29The wall looked towards the cenotaph where the crowns of flowers were to be placed the next morning.
20:34Yes.
20:40The bomb of Enniskillen was a homemade explosive charge, made from fertilizer,
20:47and they placed it, as we believe, in the cabinet that was adjacent to the road, next to the commemorative monument.
20:55It was detonated by an electronic timer that was scheduled to explode at 10.43, the morning of the day of commemoration.
21:04My first memory of that morning was that I was watching cricket on television when my mother came into my bedroom and I asked her if I really had to go, I did not want to go.
21:31She told me that she would make my father happy. She also told me that we would go together, and so we did.
21:41We were having a family day.
21:48And Serena, our eldest daughter, the head of her school, was there to place the crown of flowers.
22:01My husband and our youngest daughter, Marie, had planned to go to Enniskillen to commemorate the war.
22:12As always, he had planned to go to the Methodist church to play the organ before the parade reached the church.
22:19We set off as usual to go to the parade, and my father and I were there, meeting with acquaintances, people who maybe you did not see the rest of the year, but you always found yourself in the parade.
22:44Gordon and Marie left to go to the celebration.
22:53Do you remember how you said goodbye to her that morning?
22:57I remember it very well. I was in the kitchen when she came in quickly and rushed out the back door and said,
23:06Goodbye mom, and I asked her if she was wearing an umbrella. She said, Of course I'm wearing it mom, don't worry.
23:26As it was 11 o'clock, the crowd gathered to watch the parade of military bands and how they placed the crowns.
23:39Many took their preferred place next to the club. It used to be the best place to look.
23:47My father always liked to see it from behind, right in front of the club, next to the fence.
23:56He liked to get early because it was the best place to see the bands, to see them arrive on the street.
24:02My daughter was laying the wreath next to the cenotaph and I went down to take a picture.
24:18We couldn't see well, Jim couldn't get a good picture, so we moved around the fence.
24:33So we were there in front of the fence, my father and I. I was in the middle, my mother on the left and my father on the right.
24:43And we waited there.
24:49I remember the last thing I said to my father.
24:53There was a policeman who was with my father at the Royal Police of Ulster.
24:58I asked him who he was, I never got an answer.
25:03I remember a conversation about ...
25:08My father told me something about umbrellas, I don't remember exactly what it was.
25:12You brought the umbrella or something.
25:14Just at that moment the bomb exploded.
25:32I just had time to think that it was an explosion before it hit me.
25:59I knew I was flying, I knew I was going to die because there was rubble everywhere.
26:08I was aware when they hit me in the head.
26:15A large piece of wall hit me on one side of the face.
26:20After the blow, when I was on the ground, a building collapsed on me.
26:27I remember raising my head and touching my face with my hand and seeing all the blood.
26:35I thought I was seriously injured.
26:43I just know that all the bricks and all the dust fell on me.
26:48I felt a great weight on my back.
26:51I remember that I thought it was a bomb.
26:54The explosion broke the fence and the wall fell on the people who were in front.
27:01I think I was unconscious for a few seconds.
27:05Because when I woke up there was only silence and I saw the dust and I was buried to the knees.
27:12Everything seemed to be silent for a moment.
27:16And then everything was chaos.
27:24It's a scene out of a movie.
27:27It's just pandemonium.
27:30There are people running, screaming, people injured on the ground, people crawling.
27:37Pieces of wall, people pulling others under rubble.
27:42At one point I saw some bodies covered with coats.
27:46They had died.
27:54Screaming, screaming, crying, broken glass, scattered rubble.
28:06People asking for help, screaming.
28:19I started to scream.
28:22I knew I was screaming.
28:25And I ran to find Jim.
28:30I found him because I saw his shoulder.
28:44I went to my mother who was lying under the rubble with her arms like this.
28:49I took the bricks off her as fast as I could.
28:53I threw them aside in a hurry.
28:56From what I saw of her I knew she was dead.
28:59I can describe what I saw.
29:05It looked like a horror movie.
29:09There was blood everywhere.
29:12It bothered me that the army took me away from there.
29:16They surrounded me with their arms.
29:19And they took me away from where I was trying to get Jim out.
29:23I screamed to them to get him out.
29:26Do you remember being conscious under the rubble?
29:30No.
29:32I just remember a darkness and a horrible silence.
29:37It was a stillness that I can not describe.
29:51What condition was Jim Dickson when he saw him?
29:55He was the figure of a man in distress.
30:02He was a victim.
30:08I remember screaming at him.
30:13Jim, you're alive and I'm alive.
30:17I did not understand why he did not speak to me.
30:20We were alive but Jim did not answer me.
30:29I turned to my father.
30:32He had a concrete block on top.
30:34It was a very large slab.
30:37I tried to push it but there was no way to move it.
30:41I remember how life, nerves, tremors.
30:45I knew he was dead too.
30:48He was lying in front of me with his eyes closed.
30:58My first reaction was to ask where my father was.
31:01When I found him, he was lying on my feet.
31:05When I looked at him, I knew he was dead.
31:09His head was between the slabs of the slab.
31:15It was like an egg when you took the top off.
31:19His skull was open.
31:22When I saw that, I knew he was dead.
31:25I was in Northern Ireland when it happened.
31:29I went to Enniskill on that same night.
31:32I was devastated and perplexed.
31:35Why would the IRA have carried out such an operation?
31:39Desecrating the day of commemoration.
31:42The experience made me think that the IRA did not want to hurt civilians.
31:47Not like Al-Qaeda today.
31:49It didn't make sense.
31:52I don't think that their intention was to kill 11 civilians
31:57or seriously injure another 40.
32:00The target may have been the British security forces
32:05who were present.
32:08Nevertheless, that's another issue.
32:11What they did was to place the bomb on the ground.
32:14And this is what happened.
32:17The horror of the explosion was reaching other parts of the town.
32:40I was watching the broadcast of the London ceremony.
32:44And I heard a loud noise.
32:47Which went directly to the kitchen.
32:50And I wondered what that was.
32:56I kept watching.
32:59And I didn't realize until my son arrived.
33:02And he came back and came in and said,
33:05Did you hear that noise?
33:08I said, I heard something.
33:10He told me, it was a bomb that exploded in the town.
33:15I see smoke.
33:18I think it's near the monument to the fallen.
33:21That scared me.
33:24Because Gordon and Marie were there.
33:28I hoped nothing terrible had happened.
33:31The hospital was full of victims.
33:34And of relatives who wanted to be with them.
33:38Cups of tea.
33:41Everywhere you went, there were cups of tea.
33:44If they saw you without a cup of tea,
33:47they'd put another one in your hand.
33:50I'm sure there were hundreds of cups everywhere.
33:53And at that moment, I realized,
33:56I was going to die.
33:58My coat.
34:01My coat.
34:04My coat.
34:07My coat.
34:10This was a new coat.
34:14The buttons were gone.
34:17I have been in the explosion.
34:20They took Jim Dixon to the operating room,
34:23with serious head injuries.
34:26I remember saying to the surgeon,
34:29to hit me in the head with an ax,
34:32because I couldn't take it anymore.
34:39I felt as if I had descended into hell itself.
34:43The terror was so real.
34:46It was suffocating.
34:49I was suffocating with fear.
34:55We traveled quickly to the hospital.
34:58And I kept asking Peter, my son,
35:01where is Marie?
35:04We've heard that your father has a broken arm,
35:07but where is Marie?
35:10He told me he didn't know.
35:13We were brought to Gordon's bed.
35:16He was sitting up in the bed,
35:19and my son and the specialist
35:22wanted to talk to us,
35:25and they explained to us that Marie was in the operating room.
35:28They had identified her.
35:31Her jewels had been identified by my children.
35:50I was sitting down and thinking,
35:53what was going on?
35:56Did he realize at that moment
35:59that he had lost his parents?
36:02I was assimilating it.
36:05From what I had seen, my mother could not be alive,
36:08and I knew that my father was dead as well.
36:11I think I accepted it at that moment, I didn't deny it.
36:14Maybe they were still alive,
36:16but I knew they were dead.
36:19And I just thought about what I would do.
36:31I was absolutely terrified
36:34to see Marie intubated.
36:37I took her hand,
36:40and it was cold.
36:43And I think I stammered.
36:46It was cold.
36:49And the nurse told me
36:52that they had left the machine running,
36:55and that her heart was still beating just for that.
37:02As we stood there,
37:05watching her life dim,
37:08it ebbed away,
37:11and she passed away,
37:13Did you say goodbye?
37:16Yes, in my own way.
37:19I touched her.
37:22I was so surprised.
37:25I don't think I said goodbye loudly,
37:28but I said it with my heart.
37:38And I don't remember leaving that room
37:40until I reached Gordon's room.
37:43And he said,
37:46What happened to Marie?
37:49And I said she had left.
37:58Eleven people died because of the Eniskillen bomb.
38:01They were all civilians.
38:04They were all Protestants.
38:07The day after the explosion,
38:10Marie Wilson's father, Gordon,
38:13gave an impressive interview
38:16that was talked about all over the world.
38:19We were there 10 or 15 seconds out,
38:22and bang.
38:25And we were pushed forward.
38:28That was my sensation.
38:31I could speak, and I could move a little,
38:34but I couldn't get out. I was trapped.
38:37And then I was aware that someone had touched my hand.
38:40And he asked, Are you your father?
38:43I said yes.
38:46He asked me if I was okay.
38:49I said yes, but my hand hurts.
38:52How are you, dear?
38:55Good.
38:58Then I heard her scream.
39:01I asked again, How are you, Marie?
39:04Are you okay?
39:07Yes.
39:10She told me again.
39:13She told me again, but she was still screaming,
39:16and I couldn't understand why she was telling me she was okay,
39:19and at the same time she was screaming.
39:22And when I asked her for the fourth or fifth time,
39:25she said, Daddy, I love you very much.
39:28Those were the last words she said.
39:31I'll never forget them.
39:34But I bear no grudge.
39:36He says he bears no grudge.
39:39It must be very difficult for you
39:42not to feel anger towards the people
39:45who had put the bomb.
39:48I haven't really had time to think about it.
39:51I really don't feel bitterness.
39:54People are surprised at the bomb, but I don't.
39:57I prayed for them last night.
40:00Sincerely.
40:03And I hope you have the courage
40:06and the blessing to continue to do so.
40:12Incredibly,
40:15the massacre at the border could have been worse.
40:18When the dust settled,
40:21the news was known that Ennis Killeen's parade
40:24had not been the only point of view of anger.
40:27A unit had also chosen as a target
40:30a ceremony in a town called Tully-Homon,
40:33about 30 kilometers away.
40:36They were the brigades of boys and girls
40:39and the bands, and maybe three or four members
40:42of the uniformed security forces
40:45who were depositing the crowns.
40:48However, the brigades were of boys and girls
40:51about six years old.
40:54Yes, but they were the target of anger.
40:57Boys of that age?
41:00The purpose of the attack was the day of commemoration,
41:03the society and the community of Fermanagh.
41:07The bomb was four times bigger
41:10than that of Ennis Killeen,
41:13but it did not explode.
41:16It is said that a tractor passed over the detonator cable,
41:19thus avoiding the massacre that could have
41:22surpassed that of Ennis Killeen.
41:27Ennis Killeen was already enough
41:30to create a wave of hatred and aversion.
41:36I could scarcely believe it,
41:39because anyone who would do such a terrible thing
41:42would be condemned the world over, by every nation,
41:45and I hope that will happen, and no help to them.
41:48No matter if any countries had sympathy with them before,
41:51no help to them now, not ever.
42:00Margaret Thatcher's sentence had a reaction
42:03in a place that no one expected.
42:07The official press association of Libya
42:10denounced the fact on its own.
42:15Libya is aware of the difference
42:18between legitimate revolutionary actions
42:21directed at civilians and against innocents.
42:24This action does not belong to legitimate revolutionary operations.
42:28One of Gaddafi's henchmen
42:31had been supplying Hopkins' ship
42:34a few weeks earlier,
42:37arming Lira to the teeth.
42:40Now Libya condemned them for the attack.
42:44For Lira and Sinn Féin,
42:47Ennis Killeen became the mother
42:50of all the disasters of advertising.
42:53Years of propaganda,
42:55in which Lira was shown
42:58in his struggle for liberation,
43:01were erased with a bomb.
43:04The Republican leaders
43:07were more nervous than ever.
43:10Well, it was terrible
43:13that anyone could attack
43:16a commemoration day.
43:19To find out that Lira
43:22was involved in the attack
43:25left me perplexed,
43:28as I think many of our supporters.
43:32I think the political revolutionaries
43:35of the Republican movement
43:38had to face a negative effect.
43:42How can you disguise the murder of civilians,
43:45the murder of a young student,
43:48the murder of people praying?
43:51How can you disguise that as part of a legitimate war?
43:53The reality was that it was not possible.
43:56The Republican leaders
43:59did not try to defend what cannot be defended
44:02in this crisis situation?
44:05It hurt us,
44:08and it affected the fight
44:11for which our comrades had died,
44:14for which we thought we had gone to jail,
44:17and for which we had suffered.
44:20Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Féin,
44:23continued to warn Lira
44:26that these disasters could not be repeated.
44:29He said that Lira should be very careful.
44:32I heard that later,
44:35on the day of the explosion,
44:38Martin McGuinness went to the border
44:41to talk to units of Lira.
44:44I wanted to find out why the operation had gone so badly.
44:47Did you want to talk to leaders of Lira?
44:50I think so.
44:53What happened then
44:56was that there was a debate,
44:59a speech, whatever you want to call it,
45:02just after,
45:05in which it was raised that if it was like this,
45:08as if things were done,
45:11could not progress.
45:14I think it deeply affected his strategy.
45:17Enieskilen was an unequal calamity for Lira.
45:20He promoted new ideas.
45:23It had several effects.
45:26I was in Sinn Féin's dome
45:29at that time,
45:32and I remember that Gerry Adams proposed
45:35that we meet with the army
45:38and opponents of the nationalist community,
45:41the Social Democratic Labour Party,
45:44and we had several serious conversations with them.
45:47Things started to move.
45:49Gerry Adams began to speak with the PLSD.
45:54Conversations in which
45:57the foundations of the long war
46:00and the long road to peace were laid.
46:03After those ten days of fear,
46:06a chilling reality passed through the British minds.
46:10The four loads of modern weapons
46:13that Adrian Hopkins had brought from Libya
46:16were still buried in secret bunkers throughout Ireland.
46:20I think there was a feeling of alert
46:23that that ammunition could allow the long war
46:26in a military sense for a long time,
46:29unless we could find a political solution.
46:34I think it reinforced the idea
46:37that despite having to continue the fight in a military sense,
46:41we wanted to end it.
46:44So you preferred a political solution?
46:46Yes, yes.
46:52Adrian Hopkins
46:55spent five years in prison
46:58for his involvement in the shipment of weapons from Libya to Iraq.
47:01After Ennis Killen,
47:04many of those weapons were used with a devastating effect,
47:07but it also served to remind the British
47:10that they had to find a solution to end the long war.
47:17The slow river that would become the process of peace
47:20had to have many floods.
47:23Those floods would have to be Ireland, Great Britain and the United States.
47:27But atrocities like Ennis Killen's bomb darkened the way.
47:32Many had to accept
47:35that Republican leaders, with their hands stained with blood,
47:38would share power in Northern Ireland.
47:42How did you feel about Martin McGuinness becoming Deputy Prime Minister?
47:46It's hard for the stomach.
47:49But I think having peace in Northern Ireland
47:52is the best thing that could happen.
47:55I think it's hard to assimilate,
47:58but I prefer the point where we are now
48:01to be like during the conflict.
48:04I'm very pleased to see that Dr. Paisley
48:07is working with Martin McGuinness.
48:10And I think it will be good for the other.
48:13How do you see Martin McGuinness?
48:16I regard him as a good politician.
48:21I'm sure he has a lot to learn.
48:24We all learn from experience.
48:27But it was a big step for him.
48:31And I wish him well.
48:34As for Ian Paisley,
48:37I want to wish you all the best
48:40as we step forward towards the greatest,
48:43yet most exciting challenge of our lives.
48:46Thank you very much.
49:16Peace can resurface from the ashes of the conflict.
49:20It requires dialogue, patience
49:23and an extraordinary capacity to forgive.
49:26Those ten days of terror
49:29were the beginning.
49:47A film by
49:52A film by
49:57A film by
50:02A film by