An Irish foreign minister was whisked offstage Friday while delivering a speech advocating peace in Belfast after a “suspect device” was discovered in a nearby parking lot.
A van was hijacked and the driver was forced at gunpoint to head to the venue, the event’s organizers told Reuters. The van, which was driven to the parking lot of a venue where Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney was delivering a peace-building talk, was believed to have been loaded with “explosives or something purporting to be explosives,” Member of Parliament Claire Hanna told the BBC.
“There is a security alert and the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) are currently assessing the situation. Everyone has had to evacuate the center,” Tim Attwood, secretary of the Hume Foundation, which organized the event, said.
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Coveney was giving a speech at an event organized by the John and Pat Hume Foundation, which was created in memory of Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume and his wife and fights for “peaceful change for social justice.” His speech was given to honor the Humes’ legacy.
During the middle of his speech, he was informed of the threat and then told the audience, “I’m afraid I have to leave. I hope I’ll be back in a few minutes. You’ll just have to understand that,” according to the Irish Times.
The foreign minister later said the incident “saddened” and “frustrated” him.
“Saddened & frustrated that someone has been attacked & victimized in this way and my thoughts are with him & his family. My thanks to PSNI,” he tweeted.
The Houben Centre, where the event took place, was then quickly evacuated, and Coveney was escorted to a safe location. The PSNI has the situation under control, according to a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman.
The driver of the vehicle was in tears and apologized for being coerced into driving near the venue.
“I spoke to the poor man whose van was hijacked,” Aidan O’Kane, the manager of the center where the event was being held, told reporters. “He’s lost his memory. He’s traumatized. It’s just unreal.”
Not the morning we expected, discussing reconciliation with people of all constitutional views & none. The people in the room this morning have spent their lives standing up to violent, divisive ideology & will keep doing so. The wreckers will fail as they always have done. https://t.co/FN3nV1Wq7s
— Claire Hanna (@ClaireHanna) March 25, 2022
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A motivation for the hijacking is not immediately clear, and there are no reports of explosives detonating after the device was discovered. Police established a 400-meter, or 0.2-mile, exclusion zone and advised drivers in the area to take alternative routes, reports said. The status of the hijacker is not immediately clear.
Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, has been subject to terrorist attacks from groups such as the Irish Republican Army, which wants to subvert British rule over the region. Such attacks have cooled off over recent decades. Three days prior to Friday’s bomb scare, British authorities lowered its Northern Ireland-related terrorism threat level. It is unclear whether anti-British sentiment motivated Friday’s incident.
