Dissident republican Mr Bobby Tohill who survived an alleged Provisional IRA abduction attempt in Belfast city centre on Friday night has claimed that his kidnappers told him they were going to take him across the Border and kill him.
And while Sinn Féin said that people should not rush to judgment, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Mr Hugh Orde, insisted the IRA was responsible.
Six men were being held in custody last night after Friday night's abduction attempt. Four were arrested after police intercepted a van in Castle Street in Belfast city centre and freed Mr Tohill who had been badly beaten. Two men were arrested on Saturday in a follow-up operation, according to the PSNI.
Mr Orde said on Saturday: "We are very clear on this. I met with my senior commanders last night, and I met them again this morning and I am very clear that this was a PIRA operation."
Mr Orde said that local uniformed officers, responding to a call that Mr Tohill had been abducted from Kelly's Cellars bar on Friday, made the arrests.
"This was not some deeply covert operation. It was very public. Many people knew it was going on almost at the same time as we did," he added.
The chief constable said that two of his officers acting with "incredible bravery" were chiefly responsible for the arrests and the release of Mr Tohill, after they rammed the abductors' car.
Mr Tohill was drinking in the bar, which is off Royal Avenue and close to the Castle Court shopping centre, on Friday evening when several men wearing balaclavas and carrying special US police-type batons burst in and attacked him.
He fiercely resisted his abductors because he feared they were going to kill him, he told yesterday's Sunday World, but they eventually overcame him when they sprayed some form of gas in his face that rendered him unconscious.
Mr Tohill (47), by his own admission, was involved in the IRA from his teenage years. He subsequently was a leading figure in the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) and survived an assassination bid during one of that organisation's murderous internal feuds.
He is now viewed as being sympathetic to the "Real IRA". Last September he told the Sunday World that the IRA was planning to kill him because it believed he was linked to the "Real IRA" murder of Danny McGurk in west Belfast "They have tried to blame Danny McGurk's murder on me but everyone knows I didn't do it," he said at the time.
Mr Tohill was rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital and received over 80 stitches for injuries, mainly to his head. He released himself from hospital and is now understood to be in hiding from the IRA.
He told the Sunday World that his abductors said to him: "We're taking you to the Border. We're going to torture you, and we're going to execute you."
He added: "They told me I was going to be killed. That's why I fought for so long. In the end they had to spray some sort of gas in my face to take me down."
This incident will add further strain to an already stressed political situation. Both Sinn Féin and the DUP are to meet Northern Secretary Mr Paul Murphy in Stormont today as part of the review of the Belfast Agreement.
The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, said he would challenge Mr Murphy to give a ruling on the state of the IRA ceasefire today. "This kidnap operation is a timely reminder of the fact that Sinn Féin/IRA are not fit to serve in the government of Northern Ireland," he said.
The IRA has been accused in recent years of several breaches of its ceasefire. Allegations that it was operating a spy ring at Stormont and that it infiltrated the police Special Branch offices at Castlereagh in Belfast, coupled with the charges against the so-called Colombia Three, were critical in the suspension of the Assembly in October 2002.
Sinn Féin has said that none of these charges were proven, and suggested a British "dirty tricks" dimension to the allegations.
The IRA was also blamed for the murder of dissident republican Joe O'Connor in Ballymurphy in west Belfast in October 2000, and for the suspected murder of Gareth O'Connor who disappeared from his home in Armagh last May. The IRA denies these claims.
There are long-running tensions between the IRA and the "Real IRA". Last August the PSNI warned Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams that the "Real IRA" was planning to assassinate him.
Mr Adams said yesterday: "The PSNI have claimed that this was an abduction by the IRA. There have been such claims about the IRA before. They have proven to be without foundation. But Hugh Orde's speedy allegation follows a pattern going back to the old RUC which was also quick to point the finger at republicans while turning a blind eye to others."
