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- WORLD, Page 59World NotesNORTHERN IRELANDPlugging Up The Leaks
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- Since its formation in 1970, the 6,400-member Ulster Defense
- Regiment, the British army's largest, has lost 180 men, nearly all
- to terrorists of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. Terrorist acts
- are also committed regularly by extremists on the Protestant side,
- most of them members of paramilitary groups like the illegal Ulster
- Freedom Fighters. Last week, acting on growing evidence that
- members of the U.D.R. were leaking confidential information on
- I.R.A. suspects to such Protestant extremist groups, Belfast police
- took the unprecedented step of mounting raids against a fellow
- security force. Some 300 members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
- detained 28 U.D.R. soldiers. Twenty-two of them were released, and
- six were charged with possession of ammunition and a firearm.
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- The arrests were prompted in part by the murder last August of
- Roman Catholic Loughlin Maginn, 29. The appearance of his name on
- a leaked list obtained by the Ulster Freedom Fighters is believed
- to have led to his death. Last month two U.D.R. men were charged
- with Maginn's murder.
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