Ira Is Strong Enough To Banish Man From Home

LONDONDERRY, Northern Ireland - Michael Williams lived with his wife, Mavis, and eight of their 12 children in a cramped but tidy rowhouse in Bogside, this city's Catholic ghetto.

One afternoon he heard a woman's hysterical screams next door and did what any good neighbor would - he ran to the nearest telephone and called police.

But the two young gunmen in his neighbor's home were no ordinary hoodlums.

As a result of that phone call, one man is in prison for 10 years, another committed suicide and Williams is condemned to a bizarre exile from his home and family under threat of death by the Irish Republican Army.

It is a story that demonstrates the power the outlawed IRA wields in its urban strongholds.

The two young intruders were IRA members who had commandeered the house and a car for an attack on British soldiers. By calling police, Williams betrayed the ambush.

"Michael Williams was responsible for the capture of an IRA volunteer and IRA materials," said Hugh Brady, a city councilman and member of Sinn Fein, the IRA's legal political wing. "The IRA's position was a reasonable one - he can return home to his family on the same day the captured volunteer can return to his."

Williams remains in hiding on the island of Jersey, hundreds of miles from home, more than a year after his banishment. "The IRA reckon they're fighting for a cause, but that doesn't justify what they've done to me," he said in a telephone interview arranged through relatives. "If I appeared in my own home, I'd be dead tomorrow. That's for trying to help my poor neighbor."

On that day 14 months ago, Williams said, he saw two young strangers come to the home of his neighbors, the Garnon family. There had been a rape in the area not long before, Williams said, and when he heard Mrs. Garnon scream, he phoned police.

"House-taking" is a common IRA tactic in such communities, and Sinn Fein officials say Williams should have gone next door to determine the identity of the intruders before calling police, or at least he should have warned them after he made the call.

The only person Williams warned was Clifford Garnon, 33, who was on his way to the house when Williams told him his mother was being held.

Garnon had a very different notion of what to do. He ran to the local Sinn Fein office to report what had happened, but by then it was too late to alert the gunmen.

Police had sealed off the area, arrested Martin O'Neill, 22, and seized a high-powered rifle and grenade launcher. The second intruder escaped. Police also arrested Clifford Garnon and held him two days for questioning.

When Mavis Williams heard what her husband had done, she said, "My whole body turned to jelly. I screamed at him; I won't tell you the language I used. You have to understand the situation here. If you say too much, they'll say you're an informer. I'm not brave; the police, the army, the IRA - to me they're all the same."

The next day Michael Williams was summoned before an IRA tribunal to explain his actions. He took along a priest to ensure his safety. The group seemed to accept his story and assured him no harm would come to him or his family.

But Mavis was uneasy. A few days later she insisted her husband leave town temporarily.

As it turned out, her instinct was correct. While Mavis was away from the house one day, four men in ski masks came to the front door and told the couple's 16-year-old son Robert to pass a message to his father: "Tell him if he comes back, he'll be executed."

The family has conducted a long, fruitless campaign to get Williams back home, enlisting support from the local press and the Catholic Church.

The IRA has waged its own publicity campaign in response, alleging that Mrs. Garnon had never screamed and that Williams knew when he phoned police that the men in the house were IRA members. Its main witness was Clifford Garnon, who told a news conference that Williams had lied about the incident.

Soon after, Garnon committed suicide by jumping from a bridge into the Foyle River. Family members say he felt under intense pressure from all sides in the affair and also was depressed by the death of his father a year earlier.

After conducting yet another secret inquiry, the IRA said it had changed its death sentence against Williams to banishment from Bogside until O'Neill's release. Sinn Fein officials who helped mediate pronounced themselves satisfied.

"The IRA didn't get its way, and the family didn't get its way, either," said Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein leader in Londonderry. "I think most people in the community felt it was a satisfactory outcome."

Michael Williams says he is angry at not being able to see his wife and children. But he has learned his lesson. "I chose the wrong option," he said.