N. Ireland Murder Suspect Found Dead in Cell Apparently Was Slain

“Definitely not guilty to any of them murders,” said David Keys last week when he was charged with killing two men at a country pub in the Northern Ireland village of Poyntzpass.

On Monday, police opened another murder investigation. This time, Keys himself was the victim, found hanging in his cell Sunday in the Maze prison outside the Northern Ireland capital, Belfast.

Detectives said Monday that the 26-year-old alleged terrorist and former soldier apparently was strangled and then hanged to make his death look like suicide.

They didn’t have far to go to look for a suspect: Monday night, they accused one of Keys’ 30 fellow inmates in H Block Six. He was not immediately identified.

Among the prisoners locked together by their own choice in the cellblock were three other alleged members of the Protestant terrorist Loyalist Volunteer Force, or LVF, accused along with Keys of the Poyntzpass slayings of March 3. The Maze, supposedly the most secure prison in Europe, is reserved for convicted Roman Catholic and Protestant terrorists and for those awaiting trial on terrorist charges.

At the Maze, each wing is occupied exclusively by prisoners of the same political group. Cells remain unlocked, and prisoners may move freely within their own blocks. Prison officers seldom enter.

Keys’ killing was the second in the Maze in the past three months: Billy Wright, leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, was shot to death right after Christmas by gunmen of a splinter Catholic terrorist group firing from an adjoining block.

Keys, who described himself as unemployed at his court hearing last week, served in the Royal Irish Regiment, a mostly Protestant British army unit in a province where sectarian violence has claimed more than 3,000 lives since 1969.

Keys apparently had moved to the Banbridge area in County Armagh and switched allegiance from another Protestant militant group to the LVF after being wounded in an internecine struggle in his native Belfast.

The other three men jailed in the shooting deaths of two friends, Catholic Damien Trainor and Protestant Philip Allen, as they sipped soft drinks at the Railway Bar in Poyntzpass, are thought to have served in the same regiment as Keys, although the army would not confirm that.

Keys was the first of the four men arrested in the Poyntzpass killings, and British newspapers speculated that under interrogation, he might have led police to the other three accused killers. The new slaying brought immediate calls for a shake-up of the Maze prison administration.

“This murder indicates this jail is no longer under the control of the prison authorities,” said Protestant nationalist politician Peter Robinson, demanding a judicial inquiry into the Maze.

The British government, which administers the six-county Protestant-majority province of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom, rejected such calls for an investigation.

Under Maze practices, Keys and the other three accused men signed requests to be held in the LVF wing, and they had to be accepted there by the “officer commanding,” the prison leader of the faction.

Among groups that often hate one another even within the same denomination, and are rigorously segregated, the LVF wing is known as “Jurassic Park,” sources in Belfast said, because of the unreconstructed virulence of the group’s members.

The LVF is not associated with any of the Protestant parties participating in ongoing peace talks on Northern Ireland.

Although little progress has been apparent on the surface, the multi-party talks aimed at building new political structures in the contested province are entering the endgame, Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, the British Cabinet minister in charge of Northern Ireland, has told American reporters here.

Mowlam met reporters before traveling to the United States, where she and leaders of both Catholic and Protestant parties represented at the talks will be among the guests at President Clinton’s St. Patrick’s Day party in the White House tonight.

Sinn Fein, the political arm of the outlawed Catholic Irish Republican Army, is expected to return to the peace table in Belfast next week after a suspension decreed by co-sponsors Britain and Ireland following two killings attributed to the IRA.

Sources say a draft agreement drawn up by Britain and Ireland will be presented to the conference next week, with an Easter target for approval. Under the proposal, Northern Ireland would remain part of Britain but have its own government and elected assembly.

At the same time, though, north-south bodies with executive authority would be established to coordinate policies of common interest to both halves of the British province and the neighboring Irish Republic.

As part of the overall agreement, the republic would amend two constitutional articles asserting sovereignty over the north.

Mowlam told American reporters that differences remain on 10 or 12 points but that she shares British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sense that the province is “agonizingly close” to a broad-based political settlement at long last.

Many observers expect that Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern will take more vigorous control of the talks chaired by former U.S. Sen. George J. Mitchell as agreement nears.

Clinton, a strong supporter of an eventual settlement, is contemplating a visit to Northern Ireland in advance of a referendum in May to approve the new arrangements.