FROM THE ARCHIVES:Shooting in the legs, known as "kneecappings", was one of the favourite methods used by the Provisional IRA to maintain order in nationalist areas in the North, as Andrew Pollak reported in this piece from 1985 which was prompted by indications that less violent methods of dealing with delinquency would be used in future. – JOE JOYCE
IT IS 12 years since the first kneecapping of the present round of troubles in Northern Ireland took place, although kneecappings as a method of internal IRA punishment date back to the 1920s. Since the RUC started keeping detailed statistics on such shootings in 1973, there have been over 900 kneecappings, around two-thirds of them carried out by Republican organisations and the rest by Loyalist groupings.
neecappings have never been the most common form of paramilitary punishment in Catholic working-class areas. In the early 1970s “tarring and feathering” was particularly common, and beating with hurley sticks have been a regular “punishment” for delinquency.
Those most likely to be kneecapped were aged from 16 upwards and were believed by the Provisional IRA to be involved in several crimes. If they were still in their teens, their parents would at first be informed about their alleged offences and then a beating might be carried out. The beating would usually result in the youth being very extensively bruised, possibly receiving a broken limb or limbs, and requiring hospital treatment.
The kneecap victims would normally be youths or men who had been beaten on previous occasions. The form the kneecapping usually took depended on the “crimes” of which the victim was suspected. A victim suspected of something such as mugging an old-age pensioner and believed to be a habitual criminal might be shot in both legs and both arms.
In most of the shootings, the wounds would be to the fleshy part of the limb, but there have been many cases where a joint or bone has been shot through and the victim has been crippled for life. All are scarred permanently.
The only known case of someone dying as the result of a kneecapping was when a 28 year-old man from the Waterside district of Derry, Colm Carey, bled to death after being shot in both legs by the IRA.
It is believed that the IRA have tried to avoid kneecappings when the youth suspected of involvement in crime had an obviously low IQ and was seen to be acting like a child.
All kneecappings are thought to be suggested by Provisional IRA members from the areas where the intended victims live. In Belfast, the punishment squads have to get the go-ahead from the IRA’s Belfast Brigade before weapons are made available and the shootings carried out.
This involvement of the Belfast Brigade has apparently been designed to stop kneecappings being carried out because of personal grudges, which was believed to have been a fairly regular occurrence at one time in the early 1970s.
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