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U.S.
border and immigration agents threaten to deport Seán
Ó Cealleagh for “moral turpitude.”
One of the “Casement Three,” he was convicted
of kidnapping, GBH, and “aiding and abetting”
the March 19th 1988 murder of Derek Howes and David
Woods, British corporals, at the funeral of IRA volunteer
Kevin Brady, which in turn followed the Gibraltar
killings and the attack by Michael Stone at Milltown.
He denied that he was present when the corporals were
killed, and that after he had babysat for his aunt
in Poleglass, his taxi home had been caught up in
the crowds coming from Brady’s burial down Andytown
Road. The Diplock court, citing television footage
from a helicopter and press coverage, obtained a sentence
of life for Seán Ó Cealleagh at Long
Kesh.
After
8 ½ years, he was released but never pardoned.
Emigrating to the suburbs south of Los Angeles, he
married, had a child, and found work a bar near the
beach. As the L.A. Times opened its article:
“Customers at O’Malley’s pub in Seal
Beach knew Sean Kelly as the burly bartender with
a brogue who helped them forget their troubles by
belting out wry Celtic ballads and serving up pints
of Guinness.” Yet this stereotypical slant on
an oul’ Belfast native conflicts with the post-9/11
crackdown by American officials of “convicted
felons.” Since Ó Cealleagh’s conviction
was still on the British books, the U.S., although
admitting him without knowledge of his conviction,
now seek to deport him. Having secured permanent resident
status in 2001, this retroactive reaction by U.S.
enforcers now denies Ó Cealleagh the earlier
freedom granted him by his adopted nation.
His
lawyers, Jim Byrne and John Farrell, contest the U.S.
action on grounds that the British unfairly persecuted
and prosecuted the Casement Three. The defendant and
his counsel will respond that the case against Ó
Cealleagh must be reviewed by an American and not
a British judge, and that inconsistencies in the original
Diplock court and its exclusion of witnesses and evidence
must be re-examined according to U.S. standards. Therefore,
the potential of this case upon other republicans
and their ability to enter or stay in the U.S. becomes
noteworthy. The Federal officials insist that Ó
Cealleagh falsified information on his “green
card”; he counters that he had told U.S. authorities
of his past prison term during the application process.
The
Long Beach Press-Telegram in its coverage explained
further points the Times omitted. First, that
Ó Cealleagh and not Kelly is the surname preferred
by the defendant. Such a detail may appear minor taken
against the larger case against him. Yet, in my opinion,
the right—in Ireland and abroad—for Irish
to use their Gaelicised names rather than their Anglicised
ones remains symbolic of the greater issue: respect
for an indigenous culture and language too often denied
in this age of globalisation, when accents and fadaí
become resistance against the homogenised word-processor
(which I pound awkwardly against to make fadaí!)
and the government application that boxes and bubbles
us into discrete units. (In a future article, I will
explore these ideas further.)
Next,
that “moral turpitude”--according to spokeswoman
Virginia Kice of the U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement as quoted in the Press-Telegram:
Although there is no specific formula for moral turpitude,
people are denied entry to the United States if they
have been convicted of such crimes as murder, voluntary
manslaughter, rape, arson, bribery, alien smuggling
and perjury. Crimes not involving moral turpitude
include simple assault without a weapon, vagrancy,
carrying a concealed weapon, tax evasion and possession
of narcotics, and these are not an automatic barrier
to enter the United States.
Refusing
to let Ó Cealleagh remain in his new homeland,
in the name of a supposed heightened “security,”
saves nobody. If terrorists lurk to overthrow the
U.S., I doubt that they will be found among Irish
émigrés. Labelling with a creaky harrumph
as “moral turpitude” what has been documented
as a very weak case against Ó Cealleagh only
weakens any moral foundation upon which the U.S. officials
can claim to pursue justice.
Speaking
of morals, defining “murder” leads to another
problem with Ó Cealleagh’s case. Beyond
his own involvement (or what the silenced witnesses
and ignored evidence would presumably prove to be
his innocence in a fair judicial setting) involvement
we must open up the responsibility of those in Casement
Park who ended the lives of Howes and Woods. In republican
thinking, do the actions of those who killed the two
corporals constitute murder? This is not to diminish
the brutality of the way in which these two soldiers,
in civilian clothing, met their death. I refuse to
engage in “whataboutery”—this only
takes us back to Brady, to Stone, to the Gibraltar
Three, who in turn….Still, the time and place
in which these deaths occurred and the crackdown by
the Thatcher government cannot easily be packaged
for media or local consumption, as burly balladeering
barmen.
Ó
Cealleagh was railroaded. Soldiers were butchered.
Fingers point back and forth. But, as Nicholas Eckert’s
book Fatal Encounter: The Story of the Gibraltar
Killings (Poolbeg, 1999) documents, the fear and
hatred which these two men sparked as they veered
onto the sidewalk into the cortage, the reaction by
all levels of the British and local authorities against
hundreds of innocent people in one of the largest
investigations ever, and the injustices perpetrated
after that horrible month of March demand that any
attempt to rectify past criminality must not itself
lead to more criminal behaviour, not only in Belfast
but through evils instigated at the hands of the Crown
and the U.S. government.
Ó
Cealleagh’s now at the Federal jail on the fittingly
named Terminal Island, near the harbor. He had gone
back to Belfast as godfather at his nephew’s
christening. Waiting to disembark at Los Angeles airport,
he was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration officials.
They claimed they had “been alerted to his criminal
past as he was leaving Ireland,”according to
the Times. He will appear April 20th for a
hearing to determine his future. The Press-Telegram
notes that defense counsel “Farrell said the
chance for O'Cealleagh to have his case reviewed in
an American court is "huge" because many
of the controversial elements used against him under
British law won't apply”.
At
the evidentiary hearing, the defense will be able
to present declarations from Ireland that will be
accepted as testimony and the government will be given
the opportunity to refute the evidence. The prosecution
will also present certified original documents pertaining
to the conviction that were not available” at
the hearing on Tuesday, March 23rd. O’Malley’s
held a fundraiser last weekend and raised $7500 in
a couple of hours.
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