INLA inmates in the Maze and Portlaoise prisons have issued a statement supporting Gino Gallagher's group, which is involved in a feud in which three people have been killed.
Gallagher's associates, who insist they alone are the INLA, are engaged in a feud with a group which calls itself "GHQ Staff". This group is understood to have conspired in January to kill Gallagher, the organisation's former chief of staff.
In a statement yesterday, INLA inmates said that members of the "GHQ staff" group were expelled from the organisation five months ago. "By their apolitical actions they oversaw the degeneration of the republican socialist movement", the statement said.
The feud started last April when a statement was read out in a Dublin courtroom on behalf of four men arrested after an arms find in Balbriggan, Co Dublin. It declared an unconditional ceasefire.
The INLA leadership said this statement was made without its authority. Individuals linked to those who made it were dismissed from the movement.
Meanwhile, the INLA yesterday gave details of the circumstances surrounding the killing of Gallagher. A spokesman said that the weapon used to kill Gallagher was discovered in the back of a car stolen from a member of the Royal Irish Regiment in Annadale Flats in south Belfast in July, 1994.
The car thieves sold the Walther pistol to the then INLA chief of staff. He was expelled from the movement last November for allegedly supporting a ceasefire without the authority of the movement.
The INLA spokesman said that this individual then conspired with others, whom he named, to kill Gallagher in an act of revenge.