Northern Ireland secretary agrees with head of police that parts of PIRA remain intact despite the group declaring it would militarily dismantle in 2005

Northern Ireland secretary Theresa Villiers has admitted she is not surprised that the Provisional IRA (PIRA) still exists.

Villiers said on Monday that she agreed with the analysis of Northern Ireland’s chief constable that some structures of the organisation remain intact.

George Hamilton, the head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), said at the weekend that the PIRA still exists but was not primed to go back to armed struggle.

He was commenting in relation to the murder of former IRA assassin Kevin McGuigan in east Belfast almost a fortnight ago. Hamilton said the PSNI believed that members of the PIRA killed McGuigan as revenge for the murder of their former Belfast commander, Gerard ‘Jock’ Davison, in May.

The chief constable stressed, however, that the McGuigan killing had not been sanctioned by the PIRA leadership.

Reacting to Hamilton’s assessment, Villiers said: “It didn’t come as a surprise to me. My understanding is, very much in line with that of the chief constable, that a number of the organisational structures of the Provisional IRA still exist but that there is no evidence it’s involved in terrorism or paramilitary activity.”

Her comments will further cloud the toxic atmosphere at Stormont between unionists and Sinn Féin, with the latter party denying that the PIRA played any part in McGuigan’s murder. In 2005, the PIRA publicly announced it was ending its ‘war’ with Britain and dismantling all its military structures as a fighting force. The PSNI’s assessment on Saturday appears to contradict the widespread belief that the PIRA had “left the stage” back in 2005.

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The family of McGuigan and republican sources in Belfast insist that the PIRA leadership in the city gave the order for the 53-year-old’s killing.

Over the last 24 hours there have been reports that McGuigan was spotted several weeks ago staking out the home of a prominent PIRA figure from west Belfast. A PIRA surveillance unit that was monitoring McGuigan’s movements observed him around the republican’s home a few weeks before the shooting, the reports said.

The individual being watched by McGuigan was part of an internal PIRA unit set up to investigate the Davison murder. This secret unit concluded that McGuigan had killed Davison in revenge over a longstanding vendetta between the two former PIRA comrades. However, McGuigan, through his solicitor, had denied any role in killing Davison.

One republican source told the Guardian that the sight of McGuigan stalking the senior PIRA figure just a few weeks ago was another reason why republicans were prepared to risk a fresh political crisis and kill him outside his home in the Catholic Short Strand district on 13 August.

This incident before McGuigan’s death was said to have convinced the internal PIRA unit that unless they moved against their former estranged comrade, he would eventually move against them.