I'm being led into the so-called punishment lanes in the back streets of Derry - Alleyways where people are brought to be shot in the arms, hands, elbows and ankles for the crime of selling drugs.
 
GARRY DONNELLY:  This is where a lot of punishment attacks have taken place, where young people have been shot here and this lane over here would be an area of high activity amongst what people describe as dissident Republicans.
 
REPORTER:  They are brought down here to be shot?
 
GARRY DONNELLY:   People have been shot in these lanes and the lanes over here, and around the Creggan shops.
 
The shootings are carried out by a group of vigilantes called the RAAD. The Republican Action Against Drugs. Gunmen who have drawn up their own laws here, with punishments ranging from kneecapping to execution.
 
GARRY DONNELLY:    People in RAAD are members of this community. They target people because the community - the people in this city - demand it almost of them, to deal with certain people who are dealing in drugs.
 
Garry Donnelly is the local leader of the 32 Sovereignty movement - a group seeking the full reunification of Ireland. Many call it the political arm of the much feared Real IRA.
 
REPORTER:  How is it justifiable to actually shoot people. Why can't you just warn them?
 
GARRY DONNELLY:  RAAD are on record as saying that anybody who wants a way out of this, all they’ve got to do is stop selling drugs.
 
Policing Derry streets is what is meant to be a new impartial force. It should be them dealing with drug sellers.
 
GARRY DONNELLY:  In a normal situation that would be the job of the police. Unfortunately six counties of Ireland are still under the control of the English. Therefore what we would have in Derry and other towns and villages and cities in the six counties is a British police force. In areas like Derry, this British police force by and large is not acceptable.
 
RAYMOND COYLE, RAAD VICTIM:  First one... First one got me there. He basically shot me at random in the same leg that brought me down, that one. It went through both my legs, that bullet.
 
Raymond Coyle is one of RAAD's victims, shot through the legs for selling marijuana seeds.
 
RAYMOND COYLE:  He raised the gun up as slow as he could. I was saying to him “Don't do it, man, don't do it.” And he did it.
 
Ray has recently received another warning.
 
RAYMOND COYLE:  I had the police coming to my shop and tell me they had received information that I was to be executed.
 
REPORTER:  Executed?
 
RAYMOND COYLE:  Mh-mm.
 
GARRY DONNELLY:  Seems to be mostly in the legs, people would be shot, in the legs. Most of the times it's not the actual pain or discomfort of the injuries, it's the stigma. Once that happens to you in communities like this, you're disgraced.
 
REPORTER:  How does it work? Do they get invited to come along?
 
GARRY DONNELLY:  Sometimes they may be ordered. Other times they may be abducted and brought here. There is an element that some accept their punishment and show up.
 
REPORTER:  How many of the punishment shootings have included parents bringing their children?
 
GARRY DONNELLY:  I wouldn't be aware. There has been one or two recently that have claimed, you know.
 
A year ago RAAD turned its attention to Andrew Allen, his mother Donna says he was one of six young men who received death threats delivered with bullets.
 
DONNA SMITH:  Just dissident Republicans and that could be a number of groups. You know.
 
REPORTER:  Did they say why?
 
DONNA SMITH:   They didn't say, on the death threat why. It was just if you don't leave Derry within 24 hours, you will be executed.
 
Andrew took it seriously and moved just across the border to the Irish Republic but it wasn't far enough.
 
DONNA SMITH:  I was sitting here when I got the phone call from them, to say that he had been shot, and then some minutes later I got another phone call back, to say that he had died.
 
Three weeks later RAAD claimed responsibility for the killing saying Andrew had been selling drugs. But the family reject that. They think a member of RAAD was seeking revenge over a personal conflict. Andrew's 19-year-old brother David says young men in the area now live in fear.
 
REPORTER:  What is it like for young guys like yourself living in this area at the moment with this threat?
 
DAVID SMITH:  It's unbelievable. As soon as you're in bed and you hear your next door neighbour’s door close and it’s a bang, you jump out of bed. You think someone is coming for you.
 
DONNA SMITH:   Sometimes you are just waiting for something to happen. So, yeah, you're just waiting like, if you're sitting in the house at night, and you hear a car outside, sitting for ages, you’re sitting and wondering, "Is that them?" Or, you know, something like that, like.
 
Police are investigating the killing but the family is publicly seeking an arrest despite the dangers.
 
DONNA SMITH:   They just don't care. They do not care. They are running around here and they have been allowed to run around. It's a disgrace. So it is. In this town here, what's been allowed to happen. My son was murdered. Who is gonna get on to that? Who is gonna help me with that?
 
Peter as we will call him, is a long term drug dealer. He has been forced out of Derry by RAAD.
 
REPORTER:  You take it seriously?
 
PETER:   Very seriously.
 
We can't identify him and had to meet in a quiet location as London is within RAAD's reach.
 
PETER:  They sent my sister a message, “He's never to come back again. There is not a chance or he will be shot dead. There is no way he will ever come to Ireland, not just Northern Ireland, the whole of Ireland.” I fuckin’ hate them. They have killed a lot of my friends, they have shot a lot of my friends. A lot of friends are out and over here. They're scum, that's all they are.
 
Derry's police headquarters was bombed by Republicans just last year. I came here to find out why they seem unable to stop RAAD.
 
SUPERINTENDENT CHRIS YATES, POLICE SERVICE OF NORTHERN IRELAND: This group is not easy to catch. They are forensically aware. They operate in a tight geographical area. There is a certain ambivalence in the area in which they operate. Unless you have people that are prepared to give you information about what they do in life, information about what they are doing. Unless you are prepared to stand up and provide us with a statement that will support prosecution, they are not going to be easily caught.
 
REPORTER:  Ambivalence or support?
 
SUPERINTENDENT CHRIS YATES: Let me give you a practical example, ambivalence is actually turning a blind eye to them. They see them going up the street with balaclavas on and guns in their hands and they don’t phone us, that’s ambivalence. Support is allowing them into their house afterwards to forensically clean themselves.
 
REPORTER:  How much of it is Republican, how much of it is actually, potentially dissidence, dissident Republicans who don't accept the political deals?
 
SUPERINTENDENT CHRIS YATES:  I think you need to be careful here. Dissident Republicans to us have a political connotation. They are fighting for political ends. I don't see any of that with Republican action against drugs - I would describe them as pure criminals. It's criminality. There is a real psychosis in there. These are dangerous and particularly nasty individuals who seem to thrive on creating an intimidating atmosphere of fear in the communities in which they operate.
 
For the people of Bogside and Creggan there is one local alternative to getting shot. Veteran IRA member Hugh Brady and Tom McCourt are mediaters between RAAD and those who have been threatened. Today for the first time they are meeting William Allen, uncle of the man killed by RAAD, Andrew Allen. Hugh has been given information that Andrew's murder may have been an accident.
 
WILLIAM ALLEN:  Being seen to kill someone they didn't mean to kill, it would have made them look completely ridiculous.
 
HUGH BRADY:  See, I would disagree with you. What I would say to you is that in the areas over here, people see them as sorting out drug dealers.
 
They say they have had threats lifted on over 100 young men in a desperate community.
 
TOM MCCOURT, IRA VETERAN:   If the government is not willing to put those resources in place then you have a vacuum. That's the issue. The problem with the vacuum is that people turn around and say well if there a drug dealer in our streets and the police are not able to deal with it because they have no evidence or because like many people believe sometimes the police use these people for information gathering or whatever.  Secondly, if there are no programs available, to actually get these kids engaged and put a stop to it. Then some parents sit down and say, if my kid is coming down the street and somebody is going to stick a drug in his mouth or a needle in his arm, and some guy wants to with a baseball bat or a gun to put a stop to that drug dealer,  I'm not going to shed any crocodile tears.
 
The main Republican areas of Bogside and Creggan are depressed communities, there are few jobs and virtually no visible government investment and for many there has been no improvement here since the peace process began with an IRA cease-fire in 1994.
 
PETER:  People would like for their kids somewhere to go. They would like jobs, everybody needs money. And a lot of people put in that situation of austerity, they have got no way to turn, you know what I mean. Some of them will end up alcoholics and some of them will end up junkies. It's not drug dealers doing that it's the country.
 
The majority of people in Northern Ireland want peace but in these areas of Derry I have found a growing sentiment that the Sinn Fein Peace Process is not delivering economic process nor the united Ireland that many Republicans seek.
 
TOM MCCOURT:   As a Republican I want a 32 County Socialist Republic, am I going to get it through this Peace Process – I don’t think so. Instead you have an economic crisis. So, what better prospects?  Friggin’ half the country’s unemployed. There are like 4,000 people…. I think over 4,000 people applied for 17 jobs last week in Derry. 17 friggin’ jobs with 4000 people applying for them. That’s the economic crisis we’re in. There’s a growth in anti-social behaviour. There is a growth in drug abuse. Young kids have lost hope.
 
All of that is happening, spiralling within our communities and people are saying “well this isn't what we thought the peace process would bring about.” We're not blaming the peace process for it, we know there’s an economic crisis. But we are not happy. This is not where we want to be and we have no control over it because we're constantly told by Stormont we can't do anything about it, we don’t hold the purse strings. They are held by Westminster. And we are saying “Well then, we are still under British control!”
 
We're seeing a police force which everyone is getting pushed down our throats that you must accept and give your allegiance to. The standing army in the north is the British army, the flag of the north is part of the United Kingdom, the Union Jack. We're seeing the Republican leadership shaking hands with the British crown and the British Queen being accepted in Britain. The whole link with Britain is becoming normalised.
 
People are saying “How is this taking us towards a united Ireland, it’s leading us away from it?” It's stabilising the entire system that was so close to collapse at one point.
 
Derry was a centre of the dissident Republican movement and while it may be small some of their armed members are part of RAAD. It was at this point while we were filming this story that things took a dramatic turn. Accompanying me was a journalist from the Guardian newspaper. He received a call saying the real IRA would meet him and he left immediately, he was met on the street driven out of Northern Ireland and left on a dark country road.
 
HENRY MCDONALD, JOURNALIST ‘THE GUARDIAN.’:  Thoughts did cross your mind. Lonely country roads I have been up so many of them in my career where dead bodies have been dumped, been executed by para-militaries. Always at the back of your mind there is a concern and worry and I was left there for 10 minutes, seemed like a lifetime waiting for another car to pull up. That car pulled up and there was a statement produced. I was asked to copy it in a pool of light. I have never seen these individuals before in my life and I copied it, it was burnt, the car drove off and another car came and drove me back to the city.
 
The statement read: ‘Following extensive consultations Irish Republicans and a number of organisations involved in armed actions against the armed forces of the British crown have come together within a unified structure under a single leadership subservient to the constitution of the Irish Republican Army.’

It was a declaration of a return to arms bringing together several different dissident groups including RAAD under a new IRA leadership.
 
HENRY MCDONALD:   This grouping has the potential to cause trouble and destabilisation. There are several hundred of them and it remains to be seen if their unified command can produce acts of terrorism that will steal the headlines and cause destabilisation. But they are potentially a dangerous force.
 
HUGH BRADY:  I believe that amalgamation of all of those groups will - it will be a very dangerous situation for the peace process.
 
REPORTER:  How big is this group do you think?
 
HUGH BRADY:  The talk is hundreds. 200 to 300 people.
 
REPORTER:  Is that a significant force?
 
HUGH BRADY:  That's a major force. I mean, during the height of the war against the British forces the provisional IRA's active people would have been in the 2 to 300 group. I believe you'll have an escalation of attacks on the British forces here.
 
Some believe RAAD's actions here have also been part of this battle between those who support the Sinn Fein peace and those who oppose it because they feel it will never deliver a united Ireland. The inclusion of RAAD in this new IRA group supports that view.
 
SUPERINTENDENT CHRIS YATES:  I think locally we have been placed under a severe terrorist threat for the past five years. There are a number of very small terrorist groups in this city that would seek to do us as a police service harm. If RAAD were to declare themselves political and actually start to target us as police officers I don't think that changes the situation overall to any large extent at all. It would be another terrorist group that we would have to deal with.
 
But from the Republican point of view the new IRA force could pose a significant threat.
 
HUGH BRADY:  They would obviously want to mount a spectacular attack to attract support and to show that they are capable of taking on the might of the British empire. So either a spectacular attack here in Ireland, which is not, in my opinion, feasible, so what you're looking at is the primary target for Republicans always was England. I would be imagining that would be their number 1 target. Their secondary targets would be anywhere where there is a British base in the world.
 
For Donna and her sons the loss of Andrew is still raw and painful.
 
DONNA SMITH:   My heart is like a jigsaw and there is a peace of it missing that can never go back in because Andrew is not there.
 
They are not interested in sectarian politics, they simply want justice.
 
DONNA SMITH:   If they are not stopped, it will happen again. They will murder somebody else because they are getting away with it.