A leading Northern Irish Republican legislator has accused an Irish Republican Army (IRA) splinter group of trying to "intimidate" him.
Garry Kelly, the Legislative Assembly member (MLA) for Belfast North and a junior minister in the devolved government, claimed dissident republicans were responsible for posting a picture of him with a threatening message opposite the office of his Sinn Fein party's Northern Ireland central office on Falls Road in the west of the city.
It was accompanied by a redacted version of a list of Police Service for Northern Ireland (PSNI) employees, accidentally released by the force last week in response to a Freedom of Information request.
"This is a very obvious attempt by dissident Republicans to intimidate me," said Kelly in a statement. "Even more sinister, this is a very public indication that the dissidents do have access to the sensitive information in the data leak document, it, therefore represents a very real threat to the officers, and the civilian staff involved."
The MLA said he had reported the incident to the police and urged anyone who knew those responsible to inform on them.
Sinn Fein is currently the largest single party in the Stormont Assembly and the power-sharing regional government with unionist parties mandated by the 1999 Good Friday peace agreement.
Kelly insisted that his party "represents the vast majority of people in the nationalist community," while splinter factions such as the New IRA "have virtually no support" and "offer nothing but disruption and threats in an attempt to make themselves relevant."
"They should disband and end their anti-community activities," he added.
Several revelations about Kelly's career as an IRA paramilitary have surfaced in recent years.
In 2009, former Royal Ulster Constabulary detective George Clarke claimed in his book that a senior IRA "godfather" tipped off British authorities to the 1973 bombing outside the Old Bailey courthouse in London in return for a pay-off of £15,000 ($37,000 at the exchange rate of the time).
Despite that and other warnings hours ahead of the terrorist attack, one person was killed and 243 injured by the blast.
Kelly, Marian and Dolours Price and Hugh Feeney were arrested and convicted of the attack. Kelly was one of 37 IRA prisoners who escaped in the mass breakout from the Maze prison in County Antrim in 1983, shooting and seriously injuring a prison officer in the process.
After three years on the run, Kelly was arrested in the Netherlands. Dutch authorities demanded all outstanding prison sentences against him be quashed before they would extradite him to the UK. The Republican revealed in 2015 that he received a royal pardon for the 1973 bombing as part of that deal.