THEY call it the “Padre Pio”, but even by the sinister standards of Belfast punishment beatings it is particularly grotesque.

At least three teenagers are known to have fallen victim to the IRA’s latest mutilation technique: with their hands tied together as if in prayer, they are shot through both palms with a single bullet from point-blank range.

Named after the stigmata of Christ’s wounds from the Cross, the punishment is designed to teach a lesson to youths who dare to stand up and challenge their local IRA leaders. Given the strong Roman Catholicism of republican areas of Belfast, the symbolism of the attacks is lost on nobody.

Padre Pio was an Italian monk who was said to have borne stigmata on his hands for 50 years.

All three victims, aged 17 to 19, are believed to have been shot because they took on the wrong people with their fists — and their tailor-made punishments were selected precisely because they were “good with their hands”.

At least two were shot after being involved in fights with people from republican families. In a practice known as “exiling”, one of the victims — a 17-year-old from the Short Strand district of East Belfast — has also been told to leave Northern Ireland and that if he ever returns he will be killed. According to neighbours, he has been told by doctors that he will never regain the use of fingers on one hand.

The attacks, all of which took place after the IRA’s alleged involvement in a £26.5 million bank robbery before Christmas, have been used by Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, as proof of the utter disregard by Sinn Fein and the IRA for democratic politics.

He has accused the Provisionals of deliberately “turning on and off” punishment beatings to suit the republican movement’s wider political agenda.Loyalist and republican terrorists continue to engage in punishment beatings but the fact that the “Padre Pio” attacks have happened at a time of serious crisis for the peace process has enraged Unionists.

They believe that the shootings are an act of outrageous arrogance by a terrorist group that has become convinced that Sinn Fein’s growing electoral mandate means it can get away with criminal acts.

But amid growing signs that neither the Government nor Dublin is prepared to tolerate IRA misdemeanours any longer, Mr Ahern this week linked the Provisionals to four other recent robberies.

Not long ago being an IRA volunteer was about fighting for a united Ireland and getting the “Brits out”; these days, the old romantic ideals of the armed struggle have been supplanted by the quest for power, money and influence.

In a sign of the times for republicanism, a senior IRA figure is suspected of killing a 33-year-old man in a pub brawl in Belfast last weekend. He has been released without charge, but an investigation is continuing. As well as fuel smuggling and the sale of contraband cigarettes, security sources confirmed that the IRA’s activities included the theft of more than three million cigarettes from a lorry passing through South Armagh in December, 2003. The IRA is also suspected of stealing goods worth £4 million from a store outside Belfast last May.

In total the IRA is believed to make up to £20 million a year through criminal activities, from diesel smuggling across the border to the production of counterfeit DVDs.

Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, said that the decision by both Tony Blair and Mr Ahern publicly to blame the IRA for the £26.5 million robbery of the Northern Bank had “scuttled” the chances of the IRA disarming. In a statement on Wednesday night, the terrorist group said that any plans to scrap the rest of its arsenal were now off the table and that both governments had “tried our patience to the limit”.

Observers said yesterday that the main purpose of the IRA’s statement was almost certainly to placate its own rank and file.

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