TUES. JULY 2, 1996: Carmen Proetta, a witness at the inquest into the SAS shoot-to-kill operation in Gibraltar in 1988, which killed three Provisionals, settled her claim for damages against RTÉ.
A judge in San Francisco's District Court rejected an attempt by lawyers to invoke a UN treaty against torture which bans the extradition of people likely to be abused in the case of Belfastman Jim Smyth (42), fighting a case in the US against his extradition to Britain.
The largest military aircraft carrier in the world, the USS John F Kennedy, arrived at Dún Laoghaire harbour in County Dublin. It was met by protests from the Stop the Warship Campaign, who said that the visit of a ship with nuclear capabilities had serious implications for Irish neutrality.
WED. JULY 3, 1996: A nationalist family were asleep at 3am when their house on Orritor Street, Cookstown Co Tyrone was attacked by a loyalist gang throwing beer bottles.
THURS. JULY 4, 1996: A nationalist home in Alexandra Park Avenue, a largely unionist area of north Belfast, was daubed with sectarian slogans and had its windows broken.
FRI. JULY 5, 1996: The number of people out of work in the 26 Counties was up by 3,800 to 285,200.
SAT. JULY 6, 1996: Two flats in Lisburn were petrol-bombed, firstly in Grand Street and shortly after a flat in the nearby Delacherois Avenue was petrol-bombed at around 10.20pm.
The RUC decided to re-route an Orange parade to take place on Sunday, July 7 away from the nationalist Garvaghy Road area of Portadown, Co Armagh.
SUN. JULY 7, 1996: Patrick Mayhew, British supremo in the Six Counties since 1992, announced that he will not be standing at the next Westminster election.
An Orange parade to Drumcree church in Portadown refused to be re-routed away from the nationalist Garvaghy Road and a stand-off developed with the RUC. Loyalists all over the Six Occupied Counties began blocking roads in support of the Orangemen at Drumcree.
MON. JULY 8, 1996: A part-time taxi-driver, Michael McGoldrick (31) from Lurgan, Co Armagh was shot dead when he was lured to a destination outside the town in the early hours of the morning.
The loyalist roadblocks continued to disrupt people all over the Six Counties while Orangemen converged on Drumcree.
Holiday-makers accused the RUC of refusing to do anything to move loyalist roadblocks on roads leading to Aldergrove
Airport, Belfast.
A British High Court judge in London, Maurice Kay, banned reporting by the media on the first day of a legal challenge by Irish political prisoners over the conditions they have been held in for over two years.
The freed British army murderer, Lee Clegg, announced that he is to lodge a fresh appeal against his life sentence for the shooting dead of a nationalist teenager, Karen Reilly, in Belfast in 1990.
TUES. JULY 9, 1996: People in the Garvaghy Road area remained virtual prisoners in their homes as the loyalist stand-off continued. Meanwhile a meeting took place in London between John Major and the unionist leaders, David Trimble, Ian Paisley and Robert McCartney and Orange Order Grand Master, Rev Martin Smyth where the unionists warned that if the RUC decision was not reversed within 48 hours the Six Counties would be "paralysed" and 100,000 loyalists would converge on Drumcree church to force their way down the Garvaghy Road.
Several nationalist families were forced by loyalist gangs to leave their homes in Torrens Drive, north Belfast. The families moved to emergency accommodation in the Ardoyne Community Centre where camp beds were set up.
Two Catholic schools were badly damaged in arson attacks on July 9. Tens of thousand of pounds of damage was caused to Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School at Ballysillan where arsonists climbed on to the roof, ripped off slates and poured inflammable liquid into the classrooms. It was the 21st attack on the Catholic school.
St Mary's Primary School on the Shore Road was gutted when wire grills were removed from windows and petrol bombs thrown inside. In Derry city Mark Hutton, his fiancé Melanie Bradley and their 15-month-old son were forced to flee their home in the largely-Protestant Fountain estate in the city centre because he is a Catholic. Ms Bradley's mother also left her home because she feared a similar attack because her daughter was involved in a relationship with a Catholic.
The Ulster Unionist Party pulled out of the Stormont talks at Stormont Buildings.
Tyroneman Pearse McCauley, who along with Nessan Quinlivan of Limerick, escaped from Brixton prison in Britain in 1991, and is awaiting extradition proceedings to Britain, has jumped bail in the 26 Counties and been on the run since June 16.
WED. JULY 10, 1996: Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble had a meeting at Drumcree with the leading UVF man in the Portadown area, Billy Wright (known as 'King Rat').
There were at least 50 separate incidents of nationalists being forced out of their homes by loyalists. A number of homeowners in the Collingwood Road area of Lurgan fled after loyalist mobs pelted their houses with over 30 petrol bombs. Three hundred loyalists went on the rampage in the Longstone Road and Manor Park areas of Lisburn burning five vehicles and damaging 15 businesses before turning their attention to nationalist property.
A nine-year-old boy, Conor Johnston, narrowly escaped being burned alive when a petrol bomb was thrown through his bedroom window and set his bed on fire in the Firmount Drive on the Greystone estate, Co Antrim. As the boy, the oldest of three children in the house, ran from his room a second device ignited in the family's kitchen. A Catholic church in the largely unionist town of Donaghadee, Co Down was firebombed by loyalists.
The 1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment arrived at Aldergrove Airport, Belfast, the first of the 1,000 extra soldiers that the British moved into the Six Counties to prop up the statelet.
THURS. JULY 11, 1996: The culmination of five days of Orange mob rule in the Six Counties was a complete British surrender when 1,000 RUC forced the 1,300-strong Orange parade down the nationalist Garvaghy Road. Nationalists were batoned off the road when they attempted a sit-down protest.
That evening the RUC moved in to the lower Ormeau Road in Belfast and imposed a curfew on nationalist residents prior to their allowing an Orange parade through the area on July 12.
Following the Garvaghy Road incidents and the curfew on the lower Ormeau trouble broke out immediately in nationalist areas as people's anger exploded on to the streets. During rioting in Belfast around 20 nationalist families were put out and their homes wrecked in Craigwell Avenue.
Bernadette Moyna (44), a mother-of-six from Springfield Road in west Belfast needed six stitches to her face and suffered severe bruising on her chest, arms and legs when the RUC attacked nationalist residents during a confrontation with a loyalist mob.
Republican Sinn Féin members John Joe Ruane, Athenry, Brendan Madden, Tynagh and Sean Kenny, Gurteen were subjected to raids by the 26-County Special Branch, backed up by uniformed 26-County police. Houses in Conamara were also visited by carloads of raiders but the occupants were not at home.
FRI. JULY 12, 1996: Orangemen paraded throughout the Six Counties, including the lower Ormeau Road in Belfast as the residents were kept under a curfew by British Crown Forces..
Rioting continued in nationalist areas and was at its fiercest in west and north Belfast and in Derry where the British army had to be brought in to take over from the RUC at 1.30am. In Armagh a nationalist man was seriously injured when he was knocked down and run over by an RUC armoured Land-Rover.
In the early hours the RUC invaded the casualty department of Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry and baton-charged nationalists who were seeking medical attention for being assaulted by the same British police force. One man, lying unconscious from an earlier blow, was beaten where he lay by the RUC, an eyewitness told RTÉ television that night.
Three RUC members were shot in two gun attacks by the INLA in Belfast, two in Ardoyne and the other in Duncairn Gardens. Long Kesh escapee Jimmy Smyth had his emergency request to halt extradition proceedings against him from the USA to Britain denied by a US court.
SAT. JULY 13, 1996: On the second night of rioting in Derry, a 35-year-old nationalist, Dermot McShane, was crushed to death by a massive armoured British Saxon army personnel carrier, weighing more than 10,000kg. Youths who attempted to rescue him were fired on with plastic bullets. Ten thousand people later marched through Derry in protest at his killing.
At 11.40pm two warning were telephoned by a caller claiming to be from the IRA to the Killyhevlin Hotel in Enniskillen that there was a bomb outside in an Isuzu jeep. Half-an-hour later, a bomb consisting of 1,250lb of home-made explosives, went off, wrecking the 44-room hotel and about a dozen cars parked outside. The hotel had been evacuated and 17 people were treated for shock.
The SDLP announced that they were pulling out of the Belfast Forum.
More than 300 people attended a public meeting in Salthill, Galway, organised by Republican Sinn Féin to show support for Northern nationalists.
MON. JULY 15, 1996: British Labour MP, Tony Benn, called for a British withdrawal from the Six Occupied Counties.
The Irish Council for Civil Liberties expressed serious concern at allegations of brutality against the 26-County police in Limerick made by people who were arrested after a policeman was shot dead and another wounded recently.
It was reported that the RUC fired 6,002 plastic bullets in the Six Counties in the period from July 7-14. 339 of these were used against loyalists, the rest against nationalists.
TUES. JULY 16, 1996: The condition of a 16-year-old Derry boy, Kevin McCafferty from Balmoral Avenue, injured when he was hit by two plastic bullets on July 11 deteriorated and he was moved from Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast where he was described as "critically ill but stable".
Another plastic bullet victim from Derry, Patrick Friel, injured on July 11, was also moved to the Royal Victoria Hospital where he was described as stable.
A nationalist woman was threatened and then burnt out of her home in Craigavon, Co Armagh.
Three Republicans, Michael Hegarty (Co Clare), Robert McGilloway (Derry) and Patrick Fee (Co Monaghan), appeared before the Special Court in Dublin in connection with an explosives find in County Monaghan on November 10, 1995. They were remanded until October 8.
THURS. JULY 18, 1996: The area around O'Connell Street in Dublin city centre was closed off for six hours on July 18 after a hoax bomb alert by the UDA/UFF death squad.
The British direct-ruler in the Six Counties, Patrick Mayhew, speaking after an Anglo-Irish conference in London, said that he could not give a guarantee that "some massive demonstration of force will not overwhelm the RUC if they seek to stand up against it".
FRI. JULY 19, 1996: It was revealed that the bill for the damage caused during rioting and arson attacks arising out of the Orange stand-off and march down Garvaghy Road will reach £20 million.
SAT. JULY 20, 1996: A public meeting took place in Eyre Square, Galway, organised in the wake of the British capitulation to Orange mob rule in the Six Counties.
The 20th anniversary of the death on active service of IRA Volunteer Patrick Cannon, Raheny, Dublin was marked by a graveside ceremony in Balgriffin Cemetery attended by close family members including his mother, Cathleen Cannon and sister, Margaret O'Moore.
The number of nationalists forced out of their homes by loyalists was estimated to be at least over 300.
The results of a telephone poll published in the Irish News showed that there were 8,915 calls on the question of whether or not the British RUC paramilitary police was a fair or impartial force. A total of 7,908 people, eight out of every nine callers, said they did not believe the RUC was fair or impartial while 1,007 said it was.
MON. JULY 22, 1996: The number of people out of work in the Six Occupied Counties is now 86,600.
TUES. JULY 23, 1996: A nationalist family were petrol bombed out of their home at Lisnally Gardens in Armagh city. In the Meadowbank estate in Dungannon, County Tyrone, a house was destroyed by petrol bombs.
WED. JULY 24, 1996: A 29-year-old man, his wife and five children were injured when petrol bombs were thrown through their livingroom window house in their house on the New Mossley estate in Newtownabbey on the outskirts of Belfast by several masked men.
THURS. JULY 25, 1996: The condition of Armaghman, Martin Connolly (19), who was hit by an RUC Land-Rover during a riot on July 11 deteriorated and he is now described as "very critically ill" in the intensive care unit at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast.
FRI. JULY 26, 1996: St Mary's Teacher Training College in the Finaghy Road North area of Belfast was extensively damaged in an arson attack.
SAT. JULY 27, 1996: At least eight nationalists were hit by plastic bullets fired by the RUC in Keady, County Armagh and one man, Martin Toner (25), lost the sight of one eye after being hit by a plastic bullet as he was walking out of Mass at St Patrick's Cathedral.
A family of eight escaped injury after flammable liquid was poured over the front door of their home in Glebe Avenue, Coleraine and set alight.
SUN. JULY 28, 1996: The Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble told the Sunday Tribune newspaper that Patrick Mayhew ordered the British army and RUC to back off from confronting the Orangemen massed at Drumcree Church on Wednesday, July 10.
A 24-year-old man was found hanging in his cell in Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn. The man was being held on remand on charges of rioting. Wellworth's Store, on the corner of Dobbin Street and Ogle Street in Armagh city was attacked with petrol bombs.
MON. JULY 29, 1996:
Seven people were charged with riotous behaviour at Armagh magistrates court in connection with the incidents in Armagh the previous day.
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