BELFAST—In mid-February, Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell finished coaching his son’s soccer team and was putting soccer balls into the trunk of his car in Omagh, Northern Ireland, when two masked gunmen shot him multiple times in front of his son.
British authorities suspect that pro-Irish republicans targeted Mr. Caldwell, who remains hospitalized. If so, he would be the most senior police officer picked out by such groups since the Good Friday Agreement was signed 25 years ago, ending the three-decade-long civil conflict known as the Troubles that killed about 3,700 people, injured tens of thousands more and traumatized a generation.
On Tuesday, U.S. President Biden will travel to the British province to celebrate the deal’s anniversary along with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Irish Taoiseach
Leo Varadkar.
Mr. Biden, whose ancestors were Irish, will hail the deal that brought an uneasy peace between a mostly Protestant community that sees itself as British and wants to remain part of the U.K., and a mostly Catholic community that endured decades of discrimination and which views itself as Irish and aspires to see a united Ireland.
Within hours of Mr. Caldwell’s shooting, the leaders of the province’s five main political parties—which include pro-British unionist parties and pro-Irish nationalist ones—condemned the attack.
People from both sides of the sectarian divide rallied to protest the shooting of Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell.
Photo:
Brian Lawless/Zuma Press
Among them was
Michelle O’Neill,
head of the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin party, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which killed at least 277 police officers during its attempts to end British rule before it formally ended its campaign with the peace agreement. She condemned the shooting as “horrific.”
Police arrested a group of men they suspect belong to the New IRA, dissident republicans who have refused to accept the Good Friday Agreement. After the incident MI5,…
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