Caroline Moreland (IRA murder victim)

Caroline Moreland 1960 - 17 July 1994, IRA murder victim.

Background[edit]

A Catholic and a native of West Belfast, Moreland was a mother of three young children. She was suffering from cancer of the spine.

In July 1994 she was abducted from her home, some two weeks prior to the first IRA ceasefire. Over the week she was held by the south County Armagh IRA, tortured, shot, her body dumped at the border.

The IRA are believed to have abducted, interrogated, tortured, and killed her in the belief she was an informer. Journalist and author, Ed Moloney, believes she was sacrificed to cover up double-agents within the IRA:

[Her] offence was, so I have been told, to betray an arms dump containing a single rifle. (Maybe if she had just said that it was an act of anticipatory decommissioning she would have lived. But she didn’t.)

She was killed in July 1994 just a month before the first peace process, IRA ceasefire was called. When the Army Council met to decide, inter alia, whether to confirm her death sentence, IRA and Sinn Fein leaders were faced with a dilemma. Her offence was relatively minor and the war was about to end, so what the hell, maybe she should be spared. But if the leadership let her live then it would have sowed suspicion in the ranks of those in the IRA who still believed the leadership line that the peace process was merely a tactical device to wrong foot the Brits and not a plot to go constitutional. The dissidents-in-waiting, if you like, would have been needlessly alarmed.

And so poor Caroline Moreland was given the thumbs down by those seven men in a room. There was a brief discussion on how to handle her killing. One person suggested that she be disappeared, that is killed, her body dumped in a secret grave and lies told to her family about what had really happened. Who came up with the idea?

The idea was dismissed by one figure on the Council, someone who was aware that the whole issue of the disappeared of the 1970’s might well return to haunt him and that it would be foolish to add to that problem.

She was the last alleged IRA informer killed prior to the first IRA ceasefire. Her body was found at Clogh, near Roslea County Fermanagh. Her murder case has never been solved.

External links[edit]

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Caroline Moreland (IRA murder victim)

Background[edit]

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