The Irish Republican Army has shot or bludgeoned more than 50 people in "punishment" attacks in the last year, Northern Ireland's police chief said Wednesday. Chief Constable Hugh Orde said the IRA continues to assault its criminal opponents, a decades-old practice that enforces IRA dominance in hard-line Catholic areas and deters community cooperation with the police. But Orde said gathering evidence that could be used to charge IRA members with the attacks, which usually involve shattering the victims' limbs with bats or bullets, had proven next to impossible. "Their victims are simply too terrified to cooperate with the police," Orde told the Northern Ireland Policing Board, a civilian committee that oversees police operations here.
| Kneecapping always makes me feel that way, too... |
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