Sinn Fein claims video proves riot police 'bias'

Sinn Fein said yesterday that it would ask Northern Ireland's police ombudsman to investigate the way officers handled violent clashes at a flashpoint area of east Belfast.

Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Fein's chairman, accused police and the Army of a one-sided approach to disturbances in the Short Strand area after an evening of sustained violence along the peace line on Thursday night. He said police were lying when they claimed nationalists were instigating clashes in the area, a claim denied by Unionists.

Mr McLaughlin said a video taken by nationalist residents showed the area under attack for six hours from the loyalist side of the peace line. "There appears to be an institutionalised form of an acceptable level of violence so long as that is visited upon the nationalist community," he said.

There were reports of further violence in north Belfast yesterday with several hundred people involved in disturbances in the Catholic Ardoyne area. Police were investigating claims of shots being fired in the neighbouring Protestant Glenbryn district.

Mr McLaughlin toured the glass-strewn streets of the Short Strand area, where families said they were attacked with missiles, including nuts and bolts, and fireworks. Glass bombs and pipe bombs were also thrown, they said.

Unionist politicians and loyalists accused Short Strand residents of initiating much of the violence on the peace line this summer.

Video footage of last night's disturbances taken by nationalists was given to two local television stations in Belfast. Sinn Fein said a copy of the film was being given to the British and Irish governments and to the police ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, to support its call for an inquiry into the policing.

The video showed a build-up of violence, with fireworks being fired over the peace line, Sinn Fein said. It also showed police and the Army moving into the nationalist Clandeboye Drive area when it was deserted, and a loyalist rioter firing objects with a catapult from an area where the security forces should have had a permanent presence.

Unionists in east Belfast disputed Sinn Fein's claims, saying "astonishing" violence was directed at Protestants. Trevor Ringland, a former rugby international, who earlier this week urged people to condemn sectarian attacks against Catholics, said: "I saw naked sectarian hatred being directed by republicans against their neighbouring Protestant community."