Two arrested in Northern Ireland after prison officer killing

(Vatican Radio) Northern Ireland police arrested two suspected Irish Republican Army militants today on suspicion of killing an off-duty prison officer. The two men were arrested at their homes in Lurgan, in Co Armagh. A gunman in a passing car shot the 52-year-old prison guard, David Black, as he drove to work yesterday on Northern Ireland's main motorway.

“Here we are 18 years after the paramilitary ceasefires in Northern Ireland so paramilitary violence is a real and continuing threat…”, says Belfast based political analyst Robin Wilson the murder.

He also told Lydia O’Kane that another concern at the moment, is that loyalist paramilitaries, “might think about some kind of reprisal actions.”


David Black was the first prison officer to be killed in Northern Ireland since 1993 a year before the paramilitary ceasefires.

No IRA splinter groups has as yet claimed responsibility for the killing. Listen to Lydia O'Kane's interview with Robin Wilson