How The Truth Of ‘The Troubles’ Is Still Suppressed

The scene at Heights Bar, Loughinisland, after six men were shot dead by Loyalist paramilitaries, June 18, 1994 PA Images via Getty Images

On August 31, 2018, I was in the Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, waiting for my flight to New York, when I received this text on WhatsApp: “Trevor and Barry had their doors kicked in this morning in dawn raids and are presently in police custody for breach of s5 of Official Secrets Act.”

With a few clicks and a hasty review of a police press release from Belfast, Northern Ireland, I was able to grasp the basics. Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, two producers on a documentary film I had directed, No Stone Unturned, had been arrested and held for questioning for the “theft” of classified documents relating to the Loughinisland Massacre, the subject of the film. The arrests had been noisy.

Some 100 police officers, fully armed, had turned up at the homes of Birney and McCaffrey, and the offices of Birney’s company, to take them into custody and confiscate their computers and digital records—everything from company hard drives to personal cellphones.

Russia was an odd place to receive this news. On a trip to meet Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, I was carrying a newly wiped Chromebook and burner phone to forestall hacks into my systems either by Russian gangsters or by government spies. But the threat, it suddenly seemed, was not as present in Moscow as it was in the United Kingdom, where police, confronted with compelling evidence of likely suspects in a grisly mass murder, avoided reckoning with the homicides and sought instead to harass filmmakers for trying to reveal the truth.

A further call revealed that Birney and McCaffrey weren’t the only ones wanted by the police. There was one other suspect: me.

*

I first became involved in the story when Birney, a Belfast-based producer with whom I had worked on the Irish portion of Mea Maxima Culpa, a film I directed about clerical sex abuse, alerted me to the Loughinisland story.

I directed a short about it for ESPN called “Ceasefire Massacre,” but then, intrigued by new clues in the case, I returned for a more rigorous investigation.

On the evening of June 18, 1994, the headlights of a red Triumph Acclaim pierced the twilight of midsummer’s night as it rumbled its way past the paddocks and small farms of County Down, toward Loughinisland (pronounced “Loch-en-island”), some twenty miles south of Belfast.

The village itself is little more than a church, a Gaelic football pitch, and a pub, the Heights Bar, where, that night, a group of men huddled around a battered TV set to watch Ireland play Italy in the World Cup.

Few expected powerhouse Italy to lose, but, just after half-time, Ireland was leading 1–0. Everyone in the bar was focused on the TV, transfixed by a giddy sense of possibility.

A few minutes later, the Triumph pulled up outside. While one man waited behind the wheel, two men in coveralls and balaclavas burst from the car with automatic weapons in hand.

One man held the door, and the other knelt in a military stance in the entryway and opened fire. Bullets from a Czech-made VZ–58 assault rifle tore through the backs of the men watching the TV. Six men were murdered that night—including eighty-seven-year-old Barney Green, the oldest man killed in the Troubles—and five were wounded.

While the Troubles finally claimed more than 3,500 lives, this particular mass murder struck a universal nerve. The victims, from a sleepy small village, were so defenseless, and the killers so ruthless.

Witnesses said they heard one of the death squad shout “Fenian bastards” as the shots rang out, and the gunmen were heard laughing as they ran back to their car. The loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), claimed credit for the attack. While all the victims were Catholic, none of them had any connections with paramilitary or terrorist activity.

Letters of condolence poured in, including one from the Queen and another from the Vatican. The British secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, pledged that the police, then known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), “will never give up until the perpetrators of this heinous act are brought to justice.” In following every clue, they would, as relatives were told, “leave no stone unturned.”

The funeral procession for two of the victims of the Loughinisland Massacre, Barney Green and Dan McCreanor, June 20, 1994 John Giles/PA Images via Getty Images

That proved an empty boast: no one was ever charged with a crime, despite an extraordinary amount of physical evidence and damning testimony. When families of the victims called for an accounting of the investigation, they learned that much of the evidence and testimony had been destroyed.

“I don’t think they ever lifted a stone,” said the widow of one of the victims, Clare Rogan, “let alone turned it.” She and the other grieving survivors came, in fact, to believe that there was a systematic cover-up of the crime, possibly because the RUC was implicated in it.

This is where I came in, moved by the struggle of the families to learn the truth. Initially, for the ESPN short, I had explored the possibility that the killing was part of an effort to sabotage the peace process. But urged on by Trevor Birney, I returned to do a longer film because of emerging evidence that supported the suspicions of Rogan and others.

During the Troubles, the British government tried hard to recruit informants, or “touts,” as they were called, among the paramilitary gangs on both sides of the conflict.

Maintaining these sources meant that the state, which represented the rule of law, sometimes had to look the other way as their double agents committed crimes. For the paramilitaries, committing violent crimes such as punishment beatings or even murder often became a rite of passage. For the double agents in their midst—and their handlers—the more gruesome the atrocity, the more convincing their cover.

With our investigation leading us into this murky realm, other themes surfaced. As the film took shape in the cutting room, we began to wonder out loud how a society can best come to terms with an ugly, traumatic past. Given the fragile peace in Northern Ireland, did it make sense to stir up the embers of smoldering sectarian hatreds?

This was not just an abstract moral question for us, but a life-and-death issue for some of our potential sources: one police officer we spoke to declined to give us critical information about the likely suspect, not because he wanted to protect the man, but because he was afraid that friends or the families of the Loughinisland victims might seek revenge.

But we, too, were entering a minefield. By collecting intelligence from terrorists engaged in deadly criminality, the state can be complicit in those crimes. And when informants commit murder, the state has an incentive to keep its homicidal secrets hidden from the citizens it is sworn to protect. This raised the biggest question of all: What secrets should the government be able to keep forever? That issue would cause the filmmaking team itself to become a target of the government of Northern Ireland.

In our interviews with the survivors and victims’ families, it was clear that they felt betrayed: they wanted to know what had happened and who had pulled the trigger, and as citizens of the United Kingdom, they felt that their own government was keeping that knowledge secret.

To address such concerns, Northern Ireland established in 2000 the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland (PONI) to look into past crimes and assess, on a case-by-case basis, whether the RUC had failed in its duty or, worse, been guilty of collusion with paramilitary groups.

Emma Rogan, the daughter of Adrian Logan who was murdered in the Loughinisland Massacre, protesting outside Belfast High Court, January 19, 2018 Charles McQuillan/Getty Images

On June 24, 2011, the Police Ombudsman’s Office—under the leadership of Al Hutchinson, a former Canadian Mountie—published a report on Loughinisland that largely exonerated the RUC.

Clare Rogan and the other family members reacted furiously to what they saw as a whitewash—and they succeeded in getting the report quashed. A new ombudsman, Michael Maguire, was appointed and opened a new investigation.

Maguire was working on this report while we were filming; he declined to cooperate with us, and we feared that his investigation could simply be a repeat of the first.

It was immediately clear from our research that the original 1994 RUC investigation of the murders was either staggeringly incompetent or intentionally bungled.

During the Troubles, it was common practice for terrorists to torch their getaway vehicles to eradicate potential forensic evidence such as fingerprints, footprints, and hair. But remarkably, in the Loughinisland case, both the car and weapons were recovered—along with DNA evidence that would connect to one of the suspects.

Even more astounding, the car was found in a field a stone’s throw away from the family home of the chief suspect.

Despite that fact, not a single RUC officer bothered to knock on the door, much less search the place, immediately after the crime. Once the initial phase of the investigation was completed, all of the interrogation logs—along with the car—were destroyed.

When the leading suspect was finally arrested, he had already received a tipoff from the police the night before, enabling him to dispose of any incriminating evidence.

Trevor Birney, himself the son of an RUC cop as well as a veteran reporter on the Troubles, was producing my film. In October 2015, Birney called me to say that he had a “walk-in,” a whistleblower with critical information: a former RUC officer named Jimmy Binns who had been involved in the Loughinisland investigation and present for the questioning of the prime suspect.

In an on-camera interview, Binns revealed that the “interrogation” of the suspected shooter had lasted only ten minutes, with a handful of laughably perfunctory questions: “Did you do it?” Answer: “No.” Then, according to Binns, the detective in charge of the interrogation spent the next ninety minutes or so trying to persuade the suspect, a known member of the UVF, to commit another killing—of a local IRA gunman.

Binns also related how his superiors had directed him to stay away from certain witnesses and lines of questioning that might lead to arrests of the actual perpetrators. Last, Binns shared details that led us to believe that the Special Branch, the intelligence division of the RUC, may have known about the attack in advance. (Many of the details in Binns’s testimony would later be confirmed by the Maguire report.)

Further evidence came from our visit to Patsy Toman, a retired local councilor. A few months after the massacre, he had received an anonymous letter written in longhand that began: “Dear Mr. Toman, I am writing you to advise you of certain facts… in your quest to cage the Loughinisland murders [sic].” The letter went on to reveal that “the gunman was one Ronnie Hawthorn, a married man from Clough. Gunman Two was Alan Taylor, single from Dundrum. The driver of the getaway car was Gorman McMullan, a convicted terrorist from Belfast…”

Ronnie Hawthorn pictured here on the left holding the ladder putting up election posters for the DUP

This document, which had been turned over to the police in 1994, contained other extremely significant details, including a confession that the author was involved in planning the crime but “pulled out of the attack due to a prior engagement… this information will somehow ease my conscience, but will never fully clear my name.

But I do this for the family and children of the men who were slaughtered in Loughinisland.” None of the men mentioned above has been charged, and none has had the opportunity to present a legal defense against the allegations.

Thanks to the letter, we had names of potential suspects—and one, Hawthorn, matched the name of the man whose interrogation Binns had observed. But for official confirmation, we would have to wait for Maguire’s report.

While Maguire had declined to share any information with us, he did give us permission to film his presentation on June 8, 2016, of the PONI Report to the families of the victims. When he addressed the crowded oak-paneled room in the Loughinisland Athletic Club, he said, “I have no hesitation in saying that collusion was a significant element in relation to the killings in Loughinisland.”

As he paused over the word “collusion,” there were audible gasps from the crowd. Some began to cry: they had waited nearly twenty-five years for any official recognition of their pain—now the UK government was finally acknowledging its complicity in the massacre. The collusion Maguire detailed included the supply of weapons to the terrorists and Special Branch’s secret knowledge of the death squad.

*

In the wake of the announcement, Birney, McCaffrey, and I retreated to an office in Belfast with a copy of the report to dig into the details. But we still had one other vital source. A few months earlier, McCaffrey had opened his mail to discover a plain envelope with no return address. Inside was a photocopy of an early draft of the first PONI report on Loughinisland.

This draft did not contain the whitewashing conclusions of that first report and it gave far more forensic detail. Last, and most important, it was unredacted. All the names of the suspects and their dates of interrogation were revealed.

This was the document that would cause the police to send some 100 officers to arrest Birney and McCaffrey for its “theft.” It was also the key to understanding the original cover-up.

In Maguire’s report, both suspects and police officers were identified only with letters or numbers, but with the leaked copy of the draft PONI report, we were able to correlate names and dates and crack the code.

What emerged was a remarkably detailed account of collusion and cover-up, as well as confirmation of the names of the prime suspects. The author of the anonymous letter was revealed: Hilary Hawthorn—the wife of the man she had named as the gunman.

Why would she turn in her own husband? In her letter, she claimed it was her sorrow for the victims. In fact, we later learned, she had ratted out Ronnie when she discovered he was having an affair.

In 1994 the police had twice arrested Ronnie Hawthorn for questioning but never charged him. But more damning, Hilary had also been questioned and admitted to the police that she was the author of the letter.

As a confessed accessory, why hadn’t she been charged? Or why, at the very least, hadn’t the police used her information to compel cooperation from her husband (with whom she had by then reconciled)?

For answers, we sought out one of the officers involved in the investigation. The name of the detective who had questioned the suspects, Albert Carroll, appeared in the leaked report. He refused to be interviewed on camera, but he did confirm to us crucial details contained in the documents.

When asked why he let Hilary go so quickly, he said she was a “proper lady,” from a “nice background.” In fact, she worked at the nearby Newcastle police station, which was assisting in the murder investigation. Carroll told us that he decided to let her and her husband go only on the strength of Hilary’s “cooperation” that would hopefully “ensure that Ronnie would never kill again.”

There was another question to answer: Among the Loyalist killers, had there been an informant? By cross-referencing the Maguire report with the draft PONI report and some information from Niall Murphy, the attorney for the survivors and victims’ families, we concluded that the three named suspects were part of a four-person gang that had likely committed other murders in the County Down area.

Through legal disclosure, Murphy told us that one of the four men was an informant for the British government at the time of the Loughinisland Massacre. Another document we obtained suggested that two of the four had been touts. Finally, we were able to obtain government confirmation that the gang had included at least one informant.

Just before the film’s final edit, we offered the named suspects a “right of reply,” sent by registered mail; our letters went unanswered. We informed the Ombudsman’s office of the likely suspects the film would name.

PONI then passed that information on to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the successor to the RUC. We wanted to be sure the PSNI was informed in case there was any concern for the safety of the suspects or in case the police had any other compelling reason why the film should not be released. We received no response.

No Stone Unturned premiered at the New York Film Festival in 2017, and shortly thereafter at the London Film Festival; it went on to receive a successful theatrical release in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

The film made waves in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where discussions resumed about how to reckon with the past. There was no official government reaction to the release.

*

I had never intended the film to be a relitigation of the Troubles. In fact, I purposefully avoided the theme of sectarianism and treated the murders simply as a cold case in the hope that, if we could come close to identifying the suspects, it could bring some salve to the psychic wounds of the survivors and families of those who had been killed.

I also hoped that the film might spur the police to investigate, properly this time, the mass-murder it could have solved but deliberately didn’t.

Certainly, the police should have been embarrassed into acting. Investigators had had all the suspects in custody, had physical evidence, including DNA, the murder weapons, the getaway car, intelligence linking the suspects to a chain of prior murders, and a written confession from one of the conspirators.

Then there was the destruction of evidence, the refusal to acknowledge how much was known, and the concealment of government collusion. Since the release of the film, however, there has been no move by the police to bring the killers to justice. Instead, last August, we saw a major police operation to punish and silence the messengers.

Following their arrest, Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey were held for questioning for fourteen hours. After they were released on bail, Birney told me that the potential charges were: theft of government documents, the disclosure of the whereabouts of a police officer, and violation of Section 5 of the Official Secrets Act.

When I hired my own lawyer, he told me that stealing confidential information (as opposed to computer records) is not an offense as you are stealing a piece of paper (which has no value) rather than what is written on it. In revealing the whereabouts of Detective Albert Carroll, there is only one guilty party: the French telephone book, which is where McCaffrey found Carroll’s address.

Button Section 5 of the UK’s Official Secrets Act is a serious charge that allows for the prosecution of newspapers or journalists who publish secret information leaked to them by a crown servant or government contractor, and it can carry a two-year prison term.

There were other odd aspects to the arrests. Although PSNI officers carried them out, the PSNI was not officially in charge of the investigation. In cases of political sensitivity, the PSNI calls in an external police constabulary—in this case,  from Durham, England—to reassure the public that the police aren’t improperly investigating themselves.

Rosemary Nelson and Pat Finucine both executed by loyalist death squads on the orders of MI5, Special Branch and the British government

The precedent stems from an instance in 1999, when a solicitor named Rosemary Nelson (pitcured above) raised questions about police collusion before US Congress. Shortly after she complained that local police were threatening to kill her, she was murdered.

In our case, the police claimed that they were pressed into action by a complaint of “theft” from the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. But Michael Maguire confirmed to me that PONI had never made such a complaint.

To date, no charges have been filed but Birney and McCaffrey are still restricted by terms of bail—they must, for instance, ask permission to leave the country. I, also, must inform the Durham police of any entry into the UK, in case there is a desire to question me.

In challenging the search warrants, Birney’s lawyer, Niall Murphy, who also represents the Loughinisland victims’ families, accused the PSNI of using a dramatic show of force as a kind of warning shot to other journalists who might want to investigate police corruption or criminality.

There’s no doubt that it’s part of a global trend of governments harassing, prosecuting, and even murdering journalists who expose state secrets. In the United States, where our president has called the press the “enemy of the people,” the CIA has fought a bitter battle against reporters and filmmakers to prevent any accountability for the agency’s failure to prevent September 11 or for the likely crimes of its post-September-11 torture program.

Myanmar, a former British Territory, used its own Official Secrets Act to jail two reporters for seven years over their reporting of a government-backed massacre of Rohingya Muslims. Two Russian journalists and a filmmaker were murdered recently while investigating the alleged involvement of Yvgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef,” in mercenary operations in the Central African Republic.

And most notoriously of all, there was the Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, assassinated and dismembered in the Saudi embassy in Istanbul by agents of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, a favored ally and friend of the Trump administration. A total of fifty-three journalists were killed last year for doing their jobs.

Journalists Trevor Barney and Barry McCaffrey, with their solicitors Niall Murphy and John Finucane behind, arriving at a Belfast police station for questioning, November 30, 2018 Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images

It’s hard to know why the police waited for a year to burst into the homes of Birney and McCaffrey, but I can guess at reasons for such a display of force. They may have hoped to intimidate McCaffrey into revealing his source—though he has said he has no knowledge of who sent him the draft report. More likely, the police may be acting on behalf of British intelligence and security services, which have little patience with being held to account for past crimes and want to send a message.

As if to underscore this point, the Police Service of Northern Ireland recently informed the ombudsman’s office that it had withheld as many as 13,000 pages of police records that PONI had requested for another investigation into murders tainted by possible collusion, a 1992 attack by Loyalist paramilitaries on a bookmaker’s shop in Belfast that killed five people.

While the PSNI has blamed the failure on clerical errors, Niall Murphy sees evidence of “dark forces” determined to keep government misconduct hidden from the public. Murphy also claims that these records relate to the same shipment of weapons—from South Africa, arranged by a British agent—that were involved in the Loughinisland case.

“These VZ–58 weapons had never been in this jurisdiction before ever,” Murphy told the Belfast Telegraph this month. “They would then go on to kill over seventy people. The arms importation that had Browning handguns, grenades, rocket-propelled launchers would go on to kill 229 people.”

The Loughinisland story matters because it raises universal questions about how societies reckon with the past, particularly when that history involves crimes committed in an internal conflict. Many people in North Ireland and the Republic of Ireland are anxious, with good reason, not to revisit the Troubles.

It may be that in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement, there was little stomach to re-investigate Loughinisland lest the cause of justice upend the delicate balance of peace.

Today, with the specter of a hard Brexit, Ireland and Northern Ireland may have to return to an old paradigm and “build a wall” between the two countries where the current marking of the border is nothing more than a sign on the highway. That prospect is already inflaming tensions between paramilitary groups—Irish nationalists and loyalists alike—which retain many of their weapons.

With that prospect, the willful denial of past crimes can be a first step down the road to perdition. Government officials argue against disclosing secrets because it may expose sources and methods.

But in the long run, transparency is vital for democracies to ensure that mistakes are not repeated and misdeeds not overlooked. Intelligence services always resist declassification and reappraisals of covert operations lest they undermine the morale of those who put themselves at risk to protect the citizens they serve. But what about the morale of all those who observe the rule of law yet see those who subvert the rules to deadly effect never held to account?

In the case of No Stone Unturned, the police—or whoever is issuing the orders on which the police are acting—have fired a warning shot aimed at those who are willing to reveal dirty secrets and tell uncomfortable truths about government informants and handlers involved in past atrocities.

From the perspective of the government, keeping secrets is the price of law and order. But from the perspective of victims and survivors, a secret that hides the truth is not any kind of justice; it means getting away with murder.

Film still from No Stone Unturned (2017), directed by Alex Gibney

No Stone Unturned can be viewed worldwide on Amazon Prime.

With many thanks to: NYR Daily and Alex Gibney for the original posting

Fintan O’Toole

Joe Cahill’s deception of Irish America for MI5

Added here is Joe Cahill’s deception of Irish America for MI5

Posted by Chris Fogarty

Will the news media publish the contents of a very revealing, signed Sinn Fein report dated Nov. 2, 1988?

Irish-America generally believed veteran IRA-man Joe Cahill when he came to New York in late 1988 or 1989 to vouch for Gerry Adams’s character and leadership.

Many of us had doubts, but Joe Cahill carried much weight. He persuaded much of Irish-America into supporting Gerry Adam’s (actually MI5’s) “process” that would become total surrender of the disputed Six-Counties to Britain via the Good Friday Agreement (GFA). The GFA’s vaunted effect on violence is largely bogus, as political murders had peaked in 1972 (at 472) and had dropped to 69 by 1984, fourteen years prior to the 1998 GFA, and was continuing to drop.

Cahill distributed into a few collaborating hands his 103-page Report dated Nov. 2, 1988 and signed by him and Ted Howell. Some years later our alienated leader, Frank O’Neill,* under FBI Mole David Rupert’s control, gave me a copy. It was a coast-to-coast survey, ostensibly of the strengths and weaknesses of Irish-American support groups as observed by two Sinn Fein emissaries; Declan Kearney (son of then-respected Oliver Kearney) and Oistin McBride (brother of IRA volunteer Antoin McBride killed in 1986 by British soldiers). Declan and Ostin were accepted on the bases of those connections. While in Chicago they lodged with my wife and me.

Here are the facts known today: The violence had peaked in 1972 and had essentially ended (excepting mostly British violence) prior to the GFA; making the “violence” issue bogus, except by British forces, which Sinn Fein no longer reports or objects to. Framing and incarceration of suspected republicans continue as ever; so does internment without trial, as does abuse of prisoners; all acquiesced to by Sinn Fein. Most violative of all is the de facto immunization of the known and mostly named perpetrators of Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, Loughinisland, Dublin/Monaghan, McGurk’s Pub and Omagh atrocities. All were perpetrated by British forces; the latter a joint-venture atrocity arranged by MI5 and the FBI. These facts combine to shed new light onto the Cahill/Powell report. The report now reveals which groups in Irish-America were deemed by Cahill/Powell as their collaborators. These are presented favorably and extensively in the report. For example their report on Chicago is strongly positive about only one group; an FBI false-flag group impressively-named Drumm/Markievicz/Farrell branch of INA. It did enormous damage until “outed” and expelled by INA (not sure which occurred first).

A copy of the GFA was mailed to every household in Ireland prior to the Referendum in early 1998. I was present when it arrived to my father in Co. Roscommon. Curious; I read it and promptly described it in my newspaper column as “Sixty-seven pages of aspirational posturing, mutual contradictions, and bafflegab; none of it enforceable excepting a one-third page of declarative sentences uncontradicted elsewhere.” That enforceable part mandated the gutting of Articles 2 and 3 of Ireland’s Constitution that had laid permanent claim to the entire island and its territorial waters. It became the largest surrender of national territory in history absent catastrophic military defeat (and the IRA were not MILITARILY defeated (they were betrayed by their leadership). The GFA fulfilled its purpose; its enforceable part made Britain the victor of the 1968-1998 conflict. The rest of it served to conceal its true purpose and to give false hope. Though clearly fraudulent it was promoted by the Irish and Irish-American news media.

Framing and incarceration of suspected republicans continues as ever. So does internment without trial; and most violative of all; the de facto immunization of the known perpetrators of Bloody Sunday, Ballymurphy, Loughinisland, Dublin/Monaghan bombings, McGurk’s Pub and subsequent to the GFA, Omagh. All were perpetrated by British forces; the latter a joint-venture crime involving MI5 and the FBI and a RIRA bomb.
Copy/paste the below link into your URL. It is a 2014 report on how British Intelligence “flipped” Joe Cahill decades ago having caught him raping a 14-year-old girl. However, it is by reading the vicious purposes, the low-cunning so clearly evident in Cahill’s report that one can believe the newspaper report that he was also a pedophile. Cahill’s (and MI5’s) two accomplices, Kearney and McBride are now high-ranking Sinn Fein officials along with Gerry Adams.

Copy/paste this link into your URL.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/british-spies-recruited-paedo-ira-4466798

*Frank O’Neill was our leader but split from our FOIF in 1995 when we persisted in voting down his demand that we buy and send guns to the IRA. We had defeated the second FBI frame-up of us in 1993 and the FBI (through Mole David Rupert) was trying to entrap us via too-trusting O’Neill. O’Neill learned that Rupert was working for MI5 and the FBI only in 2001,2 when the Crown had to “out” Rupert to use him as a “witness” in the framing of Michael McKevitt (Bobby Sands’ brother-in-law).

below is the Daily Mirror as published in 2014 into Cahill’s Report.

British spies recruited paedo IRA chief: Spooks used pictures of Joe Cahill to ‘turn him’

British authorities covered up the child sex abuse and used damning evidence to turn Cahill into one of the British Army’s most valuable informants, it has been claimed

Brothers in arms: Cahill with Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams

The British authorities covered up a case of child sex abuse by a senior figure of the IRA in order to use the damning evidence to turn him into a double agent, military intelligence sources have said.

Joe Cahill, who helped found the Provisional IRA, was pictured abusing a 14-year-old girl in a car in the 1970s, the sources said.

But instead of being prosecuted, the images were used by military spooks to turn the Republican hero – and close ally of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams – into one of the British Army’s most valuable informants.

A source revealed that Cahill – who died in 2004 – was being followed by a covert unit as he drove around Belfast when the pictures were taken.

They apparently showed the paramilitary, then in his 50s, abusing a 14-year-old girl, who was later identified.

Joe Cahill cover up: Joe Cahill in 1971

The source said: “The pictures clearly identified both Cahill and his victim. Her father would have killed him if he had found out. He was never prosecuted and instead the pictures were used to turn him. He was a prized asset.”

The allegation is the latest paedophile scandal to hit the IRA and Sinn Fein.

Last week Cahill’s grand-niece, Mairia, revealed the IRA covered up the alleged abuse she suffered as a 16-year-old at the hands of another IRA figure. Mairia was not Cahill’s alleged victim in the 70s.

The Ministry of Defence did not comment on our story last night.

But a military source said: “This kind of thing has been unthinkable for many years now. There were some very questionable techniques deployed in the 1970s but they were put a stop to very soon afterwards.”

targeting
Several secretive military intelligence units operated in Northern Ireland at the time, including 14th Intelligence Company, also known as the Det, and several special collation teams.

Female operatives were said to have slept with IRA figures for information.

Cahill’s role as a key British agent was known to only a small handful of individuals. But a senior IRA source revealed that there was suspicion that he was a “tout” – slang for informer.

The IRA’s chief of staff was a priceless source of intelligence as the terror outfit stepped up its bombing campaign across Ireland and the mainland.

Denial: Gerry Adams

He was responsible for arming the paramilitaries with weapons and explosives from allies such as Libya and raising money from republican sympathisers.

A high-level agent like Cahill could be used to save lives and also to exert pressure on the IRA and Sinn Fein to join the peace process, which took place in the 90s.

In a separate case, Mairia Cahill last week waived her right to anonymity to speak out against alleged sexual abuse she suffered as a 16-year-old over a year in 1997 at the hands of another senior IRA figure.

Ms Cahill said she was raped and later interrogated by the IRA about her claims. She later went to the police and a case was brought against the alleged rapist and those said to have been involved in the IRA inquiry.

The man she accused, Martin Morris, has consistently denied her claims and was acquitted of all charges, which were dropped after Ms Cahill withdrew her evidence.

She said: “The only word I have for it is interrogation, because that’s exactly how it felt. They told me that they were going to read my body language to see who was telling the truth and that they were going to bring him into a room.”

Fiona Woolf

Fiona Woolf, who is leading an inquiry into alleged abuse by MPs, is expected to be asked to widen her remit
Gerry Adams has denied telling Mairia that sometimes abuse victims “actually enjoy it”.

Last year he came under fire after his brother Liam was jailed for sexually abusing his own daughter.

The 59-year-old is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence for raping and abusing Aine Dahlstrom when she was aged between four and nine in the late 70s and early 80s.

During a first trial which collapsed, Mr Adams told the court he confronted his brother about the allegations in 1987 and Liam denied the abuse.

He then revealed his brother later confessed to him in 2000.

Liam’s conviction led to pressure on his brother to explain why he did not contact police over the abuse allegations when he first learnt of them.

Gerry Adams told the first trial in April last year, that he warned a priest, who is now dead, about his brother’s sinister past and the pair became estranged after the allegations emerged.

Recent allegations of historical child abuse against political figures has forced the British Government to set up an official inquiry.

No surprise: Labour MP Simon Danczuk

Chairwoman Fiona Woolf is expected to examine abuse by MPs, in care homes and schools, and is now facing calls to expand her investigation to cover the role of the intelligence services.

Labour MP Tom Watson said: “There have been rumours that the intelligence services had knowledge of child abuse for a number of years.

“That is why it’s essential that the inquiry is given full access to intelligence service files on this subject.”

Labour MP Simon Danczuk, who exposed the truth about paedophile Liberal MP Cyril Smith, said: “The exploitation of children by the secret services and members of the establishment comes as no surprise.

“We are discovering a history of poor children being treated like disposable goods by people in high places and no one batted an eyelid.”

When approached about our story regarding Joe Cahill, a Sinn Fein spokesperson said: “This is contemptible. It is gutter journalism of the worst kind”.

With many thanks to: Mary O’Sullivan for the origional story

How can amnesty serve the demands of justice?

ON THE floor of a nondescript building in Sarajevo, beside the city’s Catholic cathedral, you will find a long, carefully lit corridor. Occupying most of the space on one wall is a large panel.

Irish Children shot dead by brave British State Forces. Another reason I would never wear your blood stained Poppy.

Impossible to ignore, it pins you to the spot, painfully catching your eye as if it were a magnet dropped in a box of nails. About the length of a bus and around six foot tall, it is covered in neat type, the words roughly the size used in the headlines on the pages of this newspaper. The words are in fact names. They are arranged alphabetically, making it obvious that the same surnames are repeated many, many times.

Their first names are male, and there are 8, 372 listed in all. These men and boys – grandfathers, fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, nephews, cousins – all died in and around the town of Srebrenica within a bloody few days of each other in the middle of July 1995.

On that July 11th, while we were getting excited about Drumcree in our own petty sectarian squabble, thousands of miles away on the far side of Europe Serb forces began systematically murdering thousands of Bosnians because they were Muslims.

Drumcree 1995

Hubris meant that the Serb army filmed many of the atrocities they committed in Bosnia for the entertainment of the audience at home – footage later used to help secure convictions for war crimes. The latest of those was delivered this week. On Wednesday Ratko Mladic, the Serb general, was found guilty of genocide by the special United Nations court that has been considering war crimes perpetrated during the collapse of the former Yugoslavia. Even before he and his troops rolled into Srebrenica in July 1995, Mladic was known as ‘the butcher of Bosnia’.

Ratko Mladic – The Butcher of Bosnia – was sentenced to life

What happened next were crimes “among the most heinous known to humankind”,  as presiding Judge Alphons Orie put it as he read out the court’s judgement and gave Mladic a life sentence. The survivors of Srebrenica didn’t need anyone to tell them that Mladic was guilty. They knew already, because they were there. They were there when thousands of refugees fled Srebrenica and crammed into an old battery factory at Potocari, a few miles away; it should have been a safe haven, as it was under the control of UN peacekeepers, in the guise of Dutch soldiers. There were there when Mladic threatened to systematically kill all of the Muslim men – a hallmark of genocide – and taunted the peacekeepers.

Old battery factory at Potocari

They were there when the Dutch, hopelessly outnumbered on the ground and lacking support, capitulated and effectively handed them over to Mladic. Chilling eye-witness accounts speak of summary executions and rapes as Serb soldiers picked victims at random from the crowd at Potocari.

It would be crass to draw comparisons too tightly, but there are at least resonances between the Bosnian experience – with its competing views of nationalism, religion and the past – and our own Troubles

A baby had its throat slit because its mother could not stop it crying; children were beheaded; a woman pregnant with twins was cut open and the babies beaten to death. Television footage shows Mladic’s soldiers, disguised as UN peacekeepers, trick groups of fleeing Muslim men into the open and shooting them. Men and boys were loaded on to buses and lorries and brought to execution sites, where they were dumped into mass graves. It is unspeakable and seems otherworldly – until you remember that these horrors happened in Europe, to people like you and me, as recently as 22 years ago.

It would be crass to draw comparisions too tightly, but there are at least resonances between the Bosnian experience – with its competing veiws of nationalism, religion and the past – and our own Troubles. There are post-conflict echoes, too.

Politics hasn’t worked there either, nor is there any agreement on how to deal with legacy issues or victims. We have had a fresh reminder that this week with the spectre of a Troubles amnesty returning to haunt what passess for our own political debate. It goes to the heart of how we consider justice.

Do we take the view of Darko Mladic, who not only denounced the judgement against his father as wrong but also said: “It does not achieve anything….. and will be an obstacle to future normal life in the region.”

Enniskillen bombing

In the North of Ireland’s terms, that’s the ‘let sleeping dogs lie, victims and society should move on’ position, the ‘let’s not bother with investigating collusion or atrocities like Loughinisland and Enniskillen’ argument; let’s offer an amnesty, because raking over the coals of the past will just re-ignite old enmities in the future. Would Mladic, a soldier who argued he was following orders, deserve an amnesty?

Or do we follow Munira Subasic, a Remembering Srebrenica ambassador and president of the Mothers of Srebrenica Association. She explained how her world had changed when her son and husband “were taken from me in the most brutal and inhumane way imaginable”. ” I have now waited for over 20 years for the man responsible for their deaths to face justice and I am pleased he has finally been held to account but this verdict will never bring back the thousands of lives he has destroyed.”

An amnesty for Mladic and his cronies just wouldn’t have cut it; her words will resonate with many victims of the Troubles hungry for justice in the circumstances around their own bereavement, life-changing injury or trauma. How we face up to our own troubled past remains just about most vexed question facing our society. Justice demands that we deal with it correctly.

With many thanks to: William Scholes, The Irish News for the origional story.

 

THE LOUGHINISLAND MASSACRE

 

Irish Republican History & Remembrance.

Loughinisland Massacre: COLLUSION IS NO ILLUSION !!!

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18th June 1994: While the Republic of IrelandItaly game is going on, two members of the Loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) walk into The Heights Bar in Loughinisland Co. Down with assault rifles and kill six Catholics who are watching the game. It was the third attack by UVF in three days in retaliation for the killing the of three of their members by the Republican Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) on June 16th.

 

[The dead included 87 year-old Barney Green, his nephew Dan McCreanor, Adrian Rogan, brothers-in-law Eamon Byrne and Patrick O’Hare and Malcolm Jenkinson]

[read more @ http://irishistory.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/loughinisland-ombudsmans-report-but-key.html%5D

 

 

MP URGES PLEDGE FOR ARRESTS OVER MASSACRE

THE PSNI is facing new demands to explain why it has not made any fresh arrests over the UVF massacre at Loughinisland

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As the 19th anniversary of the atrocity in the village nears, South Down MP Margaret Ritchie is seeking assurances from the Chief Constable that police have not given up on catching the killer gang. Miss Ritchie has written to Matt Baggott demanding assurances in the wake of the serious crime review. The Sunday World first revealed this year that Assistant Chief Constable Drew Harris, who was leading the review of evidence gathered by detectives after the UVF murders of six Catholics at the HiHeights Bar in June 1994, had completed the review.

JUSTICE

“It is vital that there is justice for the families of the six men killed in Loughinisland, and the five seriously injured,” said the SDLP MP. “If there is an opportunity to bring prosecutions as a result of a re-examination of the evidence, then it should be taken.” The PSNI has refused to reveal if the review has thrown up any new leads. But Miss Ritchie pointed out that 19 years after the massacre, there has not been one single prosecution. In former Ombudsman All Hutchinson’s 2011 report he ruled out security force or police collusion in the murders. But the families overturned that finding following a Judicial RReview last December. The new Ombudsman Michael Maguire is currently carrying out a new investigation. Relatives of the six men maintain the RUC and its successor, the PSNI, have had enough evidence to bring charges against members of the East Belfast-based UVF gang. They suspect a number of RUC agents operating inside the UVF were involved in the murders. The six men who were murdered included 87 year-old Barney Green and his nephew Dan McCreanor. Adrian Rogan; brothers-in-law Eamon Byrne and Patsy O’Hare, and Malcolm Jenkinson also died.

With many thanks to : Richard Sullivan, Sunday World.

Loughinisland victims’ families begin legal challenge to police report

Barney Green, at 87, became the oldest victim of the Northern Ireland Troubles when he was shot dead in Loughinisland in 1994. Photograph: Pacemaker Press

Barney Green, at 87, became the oldest victim of the Northern Ireland Troubles when he was shot dead in Loughinisland in 1994. Photograph: Pacemaker Press

 

Relatives of those who died in atrocity seek to overturn finding that there was no evidence of collusion between police and UVF

Families of victims gunned down in a bar by loyalists while watching Ireland beat Italy in the 1994 World Cup have started legal action to overturn a police ombudsman report into the massacre.

The relatives of those shot dead in the Loughinisland atrocity are challenging the report’s conclusions that there was no evidence of collusion between the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang responsible and the police.

Lawyers and families of the dead believe the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) investigation was compromised because a number of those directly involved in the shooting were police informers. However, before being able to challenge the report, they are contesting a decision to refuse legal aid.

A judge has granted permission to seek a judicial review of the funding denial, after no opposition was raised at this stage. A full hearing on that preliminary issue will take place in June and the challenge to the ombudsman’s report is expected to follow this summer.

Six Catholic men were shot dead when the UVF sprayed the Heights bar in Loughinisland, County Down, with gunfire on 18 June 1994 – the night the Republic of Ireland played Italy in New York.

Among those who died in the attack was Barney Green, who at 87 was the oldest victim of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Five other men were seriously wounded.

No one has been convicted of the murders, although 16 people have been arrested in connection with the attack.

In June last year, the outgoing police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Al Hutchinson, found there was not enough evidence of collusion between police and the loyalist gang, although he did identify failings in the investigation, criticising it for a lack of diligence, focus and leadership.

The legal challenge into his report will focus on a Criminal Justice Inspectorate review of Troubles-related investigations

WITH MANY THANKS TO : View this story on the Guardian

 

COLLLUSION IS NOT AN ILLUSION”

WE THINK IT’S NOW TIME AL HUTCHINSON FOR YOU TO RESIGN ” COLLLUSION IS NOT AN ILLUSION”

 
 
 
 
 
CIPR Specialist Website of the Year 2011
Investigations & Analysis – Northern Ireland
 
 
The aftermath of the Loughinisland massacre in 1994
 

BY BARRY McCAFFREY

 

THE Detail can today reveal the conclusions of the Police Ombudsman on the Loughinisland massacre: that the failure by police to secure convictions afterwards was down to incompetence and a lack of commitment – but not collusion.

The final report also leaves unanswered a key question of the families of the six men killed at The Heights bar 17 years ago: what the role of Special Branch was either before or after the attack.

More >

 
The six men killed in the Loughinisland massacre
 

Where was Special Branch in Loughinisland massacre?

BY BARRY MCCAFFREY

IF the Police Ombudsman’s report into the McGurk’s Bar atrocity highlighted his reluctance to grapple with collusion, his report into Loughinisland is startling by its absence of another crucial piece of the picture: the role of Special Branch both before and after the massacre.Mr Hutchinson states that he studied all “available intelligence” connected to the killings but important intelligence-related aspects of the case are not even mentioned in the report, raising questions over just how deep his investigation went in this case and, again, drawing attention to a “civil war” within his own office.More >

Inquests will be “front and centre” in dealing with the past – Attorney General

THE Attorney General John Larkin has confirmed that the inquest system here shall have a role “front and centre” in how Northern Ireland deals with the past.

 

Collusion in Loughinisland

 By Barry McCaffrey (for The Detail)


 If the Police Ombudsman’s report into the McGurk’s Bar attrocity
 highlighted his reluctance to grapple with collusion, his report into
 Loughinisland is startling by its absence of another crucial piece of
 the picture: the role of Special Branch both before and after the
 massacre.

 Mr Hutchinson states that he studied all “available intelligence”
 connected to the killings but important intelligence-related aspects of
 the case are not even mentioned in the report, raising questions over
 just how deep his investigation went in this case and, again, drawing
 attention to a “civil war” within his own office.

 One example is the sightings of the killers’ car in the south Down area
 in the weeks before the attack – clearly the domain of Special Branch,
 clearly a critical avenue for Mr Hutchinson to explore; but there is not
 a single reference to this: the context of the sighting; whether or how
 the information about it was dissipated within police circles; and
 whether it provided leads for the investigation.

 Also, more than 10 years ago police told the families that they had
 recovered a hair follicle on one of the killers’ balaclavas.

 The families were assured that police would be able to bring the killers
 to justice if just one bead of sweat was recovered from the balaclavas
 and boiler suits recovered.

 But despite the hair follicle appearing to be one of the most important
 forensic lines of inquiry there is no mention of it anywhere in the
 ombudsman’s report.

 The 56 page report – surprisingly only 26 pages of which is devoted to a
 five year-long investigation – provides no clarity on the Police
 Ombudsman’s relationship with Special Branch and the level of access he
 has achieved into Special Branch during this investigation; a pronounced
 contrast to the work of Nuala O’Loan on Omagh and the Mount Vernon UVF,
 which majored on the role of Special Branch in murders in which it was
 alleged that informers were protected from prosecution.

 Omagh and the Mount Vernon cases spanned the period of 1993 – 1998 and
 the Police Ombudsman found Special Branch activities in that era
 protected killers. Loughinisland occurred within the same timescale:
 June 1994 – yet still the role – or not – of Special Branch remains
 unexplored anywhere in this investigation.

 What is public knowledge, although unacknowledged in the Loughinisland
 report is that:

 *      in September 1994 there were 814 officers in RUC Special Branch;

 *      that by 1994 Special Branch had heavily penetrated both loyalist
 and republican groups, including the UVF in East Belfast;

 *      that the Loughinisland attack was mounted by the East Belfast UVF;

 *      in Omagh and Mount Vernon UVF cases and the murders of Pat
 Finucane, and Rosemary Nelson that Special Branch withheld information
 from the CID murder investigations.

 The apparent removal of this dimension from the Hutchinson approach has
 caused a deep split within the Police Ombudsman’s office – referred to
 recently by the ” Committee on the Administration of Justice “(CAJ)
 report.

 The Loughinisland investigation, in particular, has been known to be a
 source of anxiety internally, with some senior staff distancing
 themselves from the ombudsman’s perceived loss of independence.

 It also ties in with broader developments in investigations into the
 past: The Rosemary Nelson Inquiry reported back four weeks ago and the
 word “collusion” was not mentioned, allowing the Secretary of State,
 Owen Paterson to say that it therefore had not happened.

 Nationalists, led by the SDLP, have protested at the transfer of
 Northern Ireland Office personnel into senior positions within key
 agencies within the criminal justice system following the devolution of
 justice last year – and claims that a new agenda is playing out, aimed
 at shutting down sensitive areas of enquiry, particularly in the
 security sphere.

 So where does all this leave the relatives of the six men who died in
 The Heights Bar 17 years ago and who went to the Police Ombudsman’s
 office back in 2006 as their last hope for answers?

 One of the key questions they wanted addressed was: “the suspicion that
 collusion pervaded the circumstances of the attack … and the subsequent
 police investigation”. After an investigation lasting six years, has
 this fundamental question been answered?

 Tomorrow a political row is likely to play out on what turned out to be
 the focus of the report: the actual investigation by CID and Mr
 Hutchinson’s conclusions that it lacked leadership and commitment and
 failed to properly investigate all available lines of inquiry to bring
 the killers to justice. There’s little doubt that the quality of the
 Ombudsman’s investigation will itself become the focus of intention.

 Will anyone be satisfied with Mr Hutchinson’s final verdict on the
 subject of collusion in Loughinisland and his certainty that it didn’t
 happen in this case?

Dublin
Image by Paul Watson via Flickr

 Collusion in the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings

The Following is a Statement by Former RUC Sergent John Weir :

Weir worked in Co Armagh in a Specialist anti-terroiest unit ( SPG ) Special Patrol Group.

He was part of a Paramiltry Group made up of the RUC, UDR and other Loyalists wo carried

out a bomb and gun attack at the Rock Bar near Keady but that the bomb failed to go off.

Weir said he’d learnt that a farmhouse owened by an RUC Reservist  at Glenanne called

James Mitchell had been used for many of the attacks. He also stated that a UDR intelligence

Officer had provided the explosives for the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

A gang known as the Glenanne gang had carried out the murders of two men returning from

a GAA match in Dublin. They also carried out a bomb and gun attack on Donnelly’s Bar at

Silverbridge killing two men and a teenage boy and on the same night it carried out a bomb

attack in Dundalk which killed two men.

Also in 1976 it carried out an attack on the Reavey family home killing three brothers

John 24, Brain 22 and left thinking they had also killed Anthony 17 but he survied being

left for dead. On the same night it carried out a gun attack on the O’Dowd family home

were three were shot dead and one was seriously injured this was latter to be claimed

by the ( RHC ) Red Hand Commdandos.

Also another loyalist group known as ( DOW ) Down Orange Welfare was manufacturing

weapons at the farmhouse in Glenanne and that they were sold onto the UVF.

In 1977 Sergent Weir and Constable Billy McCaughey and two other notorious UVF

men carried out an attack known as the ” The Good Samaritan Murder; William Strathearn

ran a grocery store in Ahoghill and lived with his wife and seven childern above the shop.

He was awoken in the early hours with someone knocking on the door downstairs and

called out the window to ask what the person wanted. The man said he needed some aspirin

for a sick child. They shot him dead on his doorstep. The gang seemed to injoy attacking

large catholic familys,

Mc Caughey and Weir both received life sentences after admitting to their part.

Mr Justice Henry Barron in 2003 and 2006 also.

This also was held up by the European Court of Human Rights in 2008.

Ballistics evidence from all the attacks emeraged a complex and sinister web that showed

the same weapons turning up again and again in the killings.

They also found that arms found on RUC Reservists James Mittchells farm belonged to

the UVF and he was convicted of storing arms and sentenced.

Justice Barron also found that the farm owned by James  Mitchell was the hub of a loyalist

gang which consisted of members of both the RUC and the UDR, and that the gang was

involved in multiple murders including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and that the

security forces in Northern Ireland knew all about the Mitchells farm from as far back as

1976.  HE WAS NEVER CONVICTED OF ANY MURDERS !

Pat Finucane murder: a scary admission by the state

Hearing ‘state collusion in murder’ acknowledged from the dispatch box is a sobering experience. The fact that it is rare only serves to make it more so.

Owen Paterson delivers a statement in the House of Commons

The Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson, makes a statement in the Commons on the killing of Pat Finucane. Photograph: PA Wire/PA

State collusion in murder is routinely alleged, often on flimsy evidence that doesn’t stand up to daylight. The public admission of “state collusion in murder” by a member of the cabinet is a rare event, to put it mildly.

It happened on Wednesday a few minutes after most MPs filed out of the Commons chamber after prime minister’s questions, leaving the Northern Ireland secretary, Owen Paterson, to utter the chilling words.

Yes, we are talking about the killing of Pat Finucane, the republican solicitor who was gunned by down by a hitman in front of his family during Sunday dinner at home in Belfast in February 1989.

A loyalist, Ken Barrett, was later sentenced to 22 years for the crime, but how did it happen? Who knew? Who did/didn’t do what?

As was pointed out during the Commons exchanges, many shocking things were done on both sides in the 30-year Troubles, during which3,500 people were killed. But the killing of Finucane was one of the most bitterly contested, not least because lawyers were regarded as untouchables under the informal rules of the conflict, also because a then minister, Douglas Hogg, of later “moat-cleaning” fame, made highly prejudicial remarks about the victim.

It’s all a long time ago and the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John (now Lord) Stevens, investigated the crime between 1999 and 2003, took 9,256 witness statements and created an archive with 1m pages.

Stevens concluded there was collusion with “rogue elements” of the state – a handy phrase sometimes is “rogue elements” – which placed the trigger man where he was. So did Canadian judge, Peter Cory (appointed by London and Dublin) in 2004, the year Tony Blair’s government promised the Finucane family a public inquiry.

It was never held because terms of reference acceptable to all sides could never be agreed.

Memories are long in Northern Ireland – the Battle of the Boyne (1690) was only yesterday – and what strikes English voters as history, best forgotten as life moves on, still matters to those directly involved.

Loyalists are just as intransigent as the republican side though they feel – said so again yesterday – that the IRA, its leadership (no names please!) and allies have got favoured treatment during the peace process.

What has brought it back into the news – though there’s been little coverage on this side of the Irish Sea – is that David Cameron invited Finucane’s widow and family to Downing Street on Tuesday to apologise in person and offer a way out of the impasse.

The nationalist (non-violent) SDLP’s leader, Margaret Ritchie, asked him about it towards the end of PMQs on Wednesday. He can read the exchange here along with Owen Paterson’s statement.

What Paterson proposed on Cameron’s behalf was a formula which the Finucanes had rejected 24 hours earlier, as the Guardian reported here. Here’s a BBC Northern Ireland backgrounder to the case which, as you’d expect, got plenty of coverage this week in the province.

What the coalition proposes to do is get Sir Desmond de Silva QC, a veteran of UN war crime prosecutions in Sierra Leone and other challenging briefs like the Gaza flotilla controversy, to “carry out an independent review to produce a full public account of any state involvement” by – Paterson’s own words – “the army, the [then] Royal Ulster Constabulary, the security service or other UK government body”.

You can probably see the government’s problem. Truth is the great healer, as Cameron told MPs on Wednesday, and sunshine – open evidence – is a great disinfectant too.

But the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday dragged on for years and cost £200m, a sum many may not feel was good value. Truth also has consequences, sometimes for institutions (see how the British army’s generally honourable record has been damaged by abuse in Iraq), sometimes for people whose own safety is threatened by their willingness to testify about what they know.

Don’t believe me? This is what Tom Watson, the Labour MP who has driven the backbench campaign against excesses by the Murdoch empire, told Paterson: “The former intelligence officer and private investigator Philip Campbell Smith has admitted to hacking the computer of another intelligence officer on behalf of Alex Marunchak of News International.

“Campbell Smith was arrested for witness intimidation of the very same intelligence officer, who was supposedly the only officer from the intelligence community co-operating with the Stevens inquiry into the death of Pat Finucane.

“It is alleged that when he was interviewed by the police he admitted that a special branch officer working on the Stevens investigation gave that personal information.

“I welcome the secretary of state’s commitment to allowing Sir Desmond access, presumably, to the police statement that was given, but if Sir Desmond wants to interview that special branch officer and that officer refuses, what powers will Sir Desmond have to get to the truth?”

Paterson’s answer was polite, if unsatisfactory. Such issues would be for the QC to resolve, but the MP should not imagine that Stevens and similar public inquiries – there have been several — got all the answers: Ian Paisley was once fined £5,000 for not turning up to give evidence he clearly didn’t want to give.

So Whitehall has come up with a rational solution: De Silva is a serious and experienced lawyer, who will spend the next year or so – his deadline is December 2012 – sifting the evidence, interviewing people and balancing the interests of the state, the Finucane family and the rest of us with a report that (with luck) satisfies everyone.

Does that formula satisfy them this week? As you can imagine, Tory and Unionist MPs endorsed the plan, the SDLP – Sinn Féin MPs don’t attend Westminster, they just draw the salaries and any expenses due from the hated British state – and Labour MPs argued that progress in the province is always made by consensus. If the Finucanes – and the Dublin government (which has its own police collusion murder probe under way) – won’t accept it, then it won’t work.

Even the saintly Paul Murphy, ex-secretary of state and a notably decent man, concluded ministers have made a mistake. Don’t forget that Cameron has generally done well over Northern Ireland – the tone of his apology for Bloody Sunday was well received in Catholic Derry.

But don’t forget either that assorted breakaway IRA men are restless – there was a bomb attack overnight on the City of Culture office in Derry – while Stormont’s deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness (now his career would make an interesting public inquiry!), is on a sabbatical standing for the presidency of Ireland. Just because the situation is currently manageable doesn’t mean it will remain so. Public spending cuts will hit Northern Ireland hard too.

We’ll see what happens next. But hearing “state collusion in murder” acknowledged from the dispatch box is a sobering experience. The fact that it is rare only serves to make it more so.

IRISH REPUBLICAN NEWS SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

 Thursday-Monday, 23-27 June, 2011
1.  POLICE OMBUDSMAN MUST GO
2.  Talks due on sectarian marches
3.  Ireland’s rich grow richer on bailout money
4.  Pressure mounts for release of Brendan Lillis
5.  Irish ship joins Gaza mission
6.  Derry bridge ‘is peace symbol’
7.  Feature: Charles Stuart Parnell
8.  Analysis: Where was Special Branch in Loughinisland massacre?
———————————————————————
>>>>>> POLICE OMBUDSMAN MUST GO
 Nationalists have united behind calls for the Police Ombudsman to quit
 amid outrage over a report in which he denied that the PSNI (then RUC)
 police had not colluded in the Loughinisland massacre.

 Six nationalists were shot dead at point blank range by the unionist
 paramilitary UVF in the County Down village in 1994. The men died when
 two gunmen opened fire with automatic weapons in the packed bar as the
 Ireland soccer team played an opening game in the World Cup. The eldest
 was 87-year-old Barney Green.

 Despite at least one member of the murder gang being in the pay of the
 RUC’s Special Branch, and an admission that the RUC destroyed a car
 containing forensic evidence which could have led to prosecutions, the
 Ombudsman failed to blame the RUC for anything other than “failings” in
 their so-called investigation.

 Other “failings” included a refusal to gather DNA from key suspects, and
 ignoring the provenance of the rifle used to spray the bar with more
 than 200 rounds of ammunition.  The rifle had previously been purchased
 in South Africa by British army agent Brian Nelson.

 SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie called on the Ombudsman to resign and said
 he has “repeatedly failed to measure up”.

 “Despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary he has concluded that
 there was no collusion,” she said. “He has failed to investigate the
 role of informers and Special Branch.”

 She said Mr Hutchinson had “done a great disservice to the families of
 those murdered”.

 Sinn Fein assembly member Caitriona Ruane said collusion “is the only
 conclusion which can be reached” and Mr Hutchinson “needs to explain”
 why he did not find any”.

 The families of those murdered accused Hutchinson of performing “factual
 gymnastics” to avoid finding collusion in the case.

 They were joined by survivors of the 1994 at a press conference in a
 Belfast hotel on Friday to respond to the findings of the probe, which
 they say “redefined the definition of collusion”.

 Among those present yesterday to support the Loughinisland families were
 campaigner Raymond McCord, whose son was murdered by the UVF, and Paul
 McIlwaine whose son David was stabbed to death by loyalists in 2000.

 Niall Murphy of Kevin Winters solicitors, who represents the families,
 said the omission of any reference to the RUC Special Branch in Mr
 Hutchinson’s report was “a case of ‘hear no evil, see no evil, report no
 evil'”.

 “The fact that Special Branch does not appear in the report is an insult
 to the intelligence of the families,” he said. “The Ombudsman had an
 opportunity to find the truth and report on it and he didn’t. He has
 done factual gymnastics to rewrite the definition of collusion.”

 Barman Aidan O’Toole, who was injured but narrowly survived the
 atrocity, described the report as a “whitewash” and an “insult”.

 “The only thing is we are united and determined to keep going until we
 get the truth,” he said.

 “Police told us more than 10 years ago that they had found a hair
 follicle on one of the killer’s balaclavas they recovered.

 “We were told they would catch the killers if there was even one bead of
 sweat on the clothes they recovered.

 “Well there have been huge forensic developments in the past 17 years
 and yet the PSNI can’t even identify one of the killers.

 “We would question why there is no mention whatsoever of this fact in
 the ombudsman’s report.”

 The Ombudsman’s office was also strongly criticised by a human rights
 group last week over a report that the office is staffed by former
 Direct Rule officials pursuing their own pro-British ‘securocrat’
 agenda.

 In the report, Hutchinson dug in behind a narrower definition of
 collusion than previous inquiries, defining police collusion only as “an
 intentional, conscious or deliberate act.” This departed from a
 definition used by former ombudsman Baroness O’Loan, which included not
 just those acts committed by police,but also those they omitted. Judge
 Peter Cory, who also investigated collusion in the North, warned that
 security forces “must not act collusively by ignoring or turning a blind
 eye to the wrongful acts of their servants or agents”.

 In his carefully worded report, Mr Hutchinson said only that RUC Special
 Branch had “no direct involvement” in the Loughinisland case.

 He refused to confirm or deny whether anyone linked to the massacre was
 an informer but said: “I examined all the intelligence related to any
 individuals and I am satisfied that none of the suspects were afforded
 any protection.”

 Mr Hutchinson’s report also revealed the original senior investigating
 officer in the case refused to cooperate with the investigation. He said
 the retired officer’s decision was “unfortunate” and hampered his
 investigation but he had no power to compel the officer to cooperate.

 Asked whether some intelligence was not given to him, Mr Hutchinson said
 that he could “never give a 100 per cent guarantee”.

 Nationalists in the North fear that if the truth behind Britain’s ‘Dirty
 War’ is not uncovered, there is no guarantee that lives will mot
 continue to be lost at the hands of sectarianism and collusion by the
 police.
———————————————————————
>>>>>> Talks due on sectarian marches
 The body that rules on contentious marches in the Six Counties is to
 meet the North’s First Minister and Deputy First Minister at Stormont
 tomorrow [Tuesday] in advance of the climax of the Protestant sectarian
 marching season.

 The talks between the Parades Commission and Peter Robinson and Martin
 McGuinness are expected to include discussion about last week’s mass
 loyalist assault on the nationalist Short Strand, which rocked the area
 for two consecutive nights and resulted in the shooting of three people
 and left one resident in a coma with a fractured skull.

 The attempt to burn down the isolated Catholic enclave was described as
 the worst conflict in the area in at least ten years.

 Loyalist community representatives said that tensions boiled over
 because the British government had not handed out enough money, angering
 the powerful local UVF chief known in the media as the ‘Beast of the
 East’.

 The British government has since announced it will review the level of
 grants issued to loyalist community groups in the area.

 Saturday’s annual Whiterock parade by the Orange Order in northwest
 Belfast, which sparked serious trouble in previous years, passed off
 quietly in the presence of a small, peaceful protest by nationalists.

 Further sensitive parades are looming, including this Friday’s ‘mini
 Twelfth’ in east Belfast, and the Drumcree parade in Portadown, County
 Armagh, as well as ‘the Twelfth’ itself, the anniversary of a famous
 17th century battle victory in County Meath by the Protestant William of
 Orange.

 There had been fears that a loyalist march that passed close to the Short
 Strand on Friday night might spark fresh violence.

 However, the march appeared to have passed off relatively peacefully as
 community “stewards” in high-visibility jackets attempted to keep the
 area calm.
———————————————————————
>>>>>> Ireland’s rich grow richer on bailout money
 Cash from the EU/IMF bailout loans are being used to fund the
 extravagant lifestyles of the 26-County state’s wealthy elite,
 according to reports from a number of quarters.

 News that the chief executive of the ailing Dublin Airport Authority
 (DAA) Declan Collier had appropriated, with the approval of the DAA
 board, a six-figure sum as a “bonus” captured headlines this week and
 forced a public showdown with the Minister for Transport, Leo
 Varadkar.

 Although Collier backed down, the rising salaries and perks being
 funnelled to the top of the public service and semi-state bodies has
 created headaches for the Fine Gael/Labour coalition government and its
 ‘hands off’ management of the economic crisis.

 News that a group of 1,000 academics is costing the 26-County state over
 a hundred million euro a year (142 million dollars) in basic salary
 payments baffled the Minister of Education Ruairi Quinn today [Monday],
 who openly admitted he was unaware of the pay rates.  Students are being
 asked to pay increased tuition fees to subsidise the professorial pay
 bonanza.

 Other reports this week have recounted how property speculators and
 ‘bankrupt’ developers can receive a massive state-sponsored windfall if
 they repurchase their own former properties from the state’s first ‘bad
 bank’, the National Assets Management Authority.

 Meanwhile, Ireland’s multi-millionaire judges are resisting a planned
 referendum to cut their half-million euro salaries, which requires an
 amendment to the state’s 1937 constitution.  Top government broadcasters
 are also challenging a cut to their salaries, which reached up to a
 staggering 850,000 euro (1.2 million dollars) in recent years.

 The government has so far only requested that staff in the public
 service earning more than 200,000 euro (285,000 dollars) make a
 voluntary ‘waiver’ of 15 per cent of pay.

 Senior staff in commercial State companies earning more than 250,000
 euro (360,000 dollars) will also be asked by the government to make a
 similar voluntary ‘waiver’.

 It is understood that no-one has yet volunteered for a wage cut, but a
 number have requested fresh ‘bonus’ payments.

 The continuing boom times for the golden circles of Irish society comes
 amid a declining domestic economy.  The 26-County state’s GNP (‘Gross
 National Product’) plunged by 4.3% in the first three months of the year
 alone, while the value of the state’s government-issued bonds has
 continued to fall on international markets to historic lows, matched
 only by Greece in the eurozone.

 In the first quarter, the state shed 67,000 full-time jobs, while the
 ranks of the unemployed grew by 23,500, pointing to an emigration rate
 of about 3,000 per week.

 The government is still tying its fortunes to a reinflation of the
 domestic economy and property prices, despite major imbalances with
 similar economies around Europe.

 Although his Thatcherite ‘trickle-down’ economic policy is clearly
 failing the vast majority of the people of the 26 Counties, Minister for
 Finance Michael Noonan repeated his ‘shut up and shop’ mantra to
 consumers this week.

 “What we really need is for people to go into the shops and start buying
 again,” said Mr Noonan.  He insisted that recovery could come on the
 back of Ireland’s wealthy spending their money as before.

 “If that starts, with tourists visiting our shores stimulating the
 retail side, and is followed by our own ordinary citizens going about
 their shopping and beginning to spend again, then we begin to lift out
 of the crisis,” he said.

 Sinn Fein Finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty warned that the austerity
 being imposed on the state’s unemployed and working poor was instead
 strangling growth in the economy.

 “Regressive taxes such as the Universal Social Charge, cuts to public
 spending and failure to invest in job creation are squeezing the
 domestic economy,” he said.

 “Rather than acknowledge this basic fact of economics the government is
 set to increase the pressure on domestic demand. Proposals for a
 household charge, water tax and site valuation charge, combined with
 threatened cuts to social welfare and public spending as well as changes
 to tax bands and credits will further contract the economy, resulting in
 more job losses and financial hardship for thousands of already hard
 pressed families.

 “The government needs to wake up to the fact that pursuing the failed
 economic policies of Fianna Fail and the EU/IMF will do nothing to
 assist economic recovery. We need a major economic and family stimulus,
 to create jobs, boost economic demand and return the domestic economy to
 positive growth.”
———————————————————————
>>>>>> Pressure mounts for release of Brendan Lillis
 A meeting next month of the Parole Commission (formerly the Life
 Sentence Review Commission) has raised hopes for the family and
 supporters of former political prisoner Brendan Lillis, who is gravely
 ill at Maghaberry Prison.

 The Commission (and the then British Direct Ruler Shaun Woodward) were
 responsible for returning Mr Lillis to jail. The Commission ruled that
 his release licence should be revoked as he had become “a danger to the
 public”.

 Mr Lillis suffers from a progressive disease called Ankylosing
 Spondylitis which due to other medical complications has left him unable
 to move from his bed for 14 months and his weight has dropped to a
 perilous 6 stones (84 pounds/38 kilograms).

 Due to a series of serious infections and medication which has
 compromised his immune system, Mr Lillis has been unable to eat, sleep
 or hold down even liquids and is constant agony.  His condition
 continues to decline.

 His partner Roisin, who is his only contact with the outside world,
 fears that he will die in his prison bed.

 ONLINE CAMPAIGN

 Brendan Lillis’s family and supporters have organised a petition,
 letter-writing and online campaign to secure his immediate release.

 The Facebook campaign group is located at:
 <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_132734503459781“>
 <a href=”http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_132734503459781http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_132734503459781</a&gt;

 The petition is located at:
 <a href=”http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/releaseBrendylilli/“>
 http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/releaseBrendylilli/</a>

 PRISONER FOUND DEAD

 Meanwhile, a 49-year-old Derry remand prisoner has been found dead amid
 a continuing deterioration in conditions at Maghaberry, the North’s most
 controversial jail.

 Patrick Duffy from Nassau Street in Derry was facing criminal damage and
 assault charges when he was found dead in his cell, an apparent suicide
 victim.

 News of the the death, the most recent of its kind, emerged as the
 North’s prisoner ombudsman Pauline McCabe published a report which said
 the prison system in the Six Counties is “not fit for purpose”.

 She pointed to the long periods of time prisoners were held in their
 cells in Maghaberry, Magilligan and Hydebank Wood prisons.

 “The single biggest issue, and the issue which has caused me most
 concern, is the significant number of lockdowns and periods of
 restricted regime that prisoners have experienced,” she said.

 “The way Northern Ireland’s prisons are run continues to be affected by
 its historical legacy and decades of conflict,” Ms McCabe said.

 “There are fundamental issues to be faced, addressed and overcome before
 we have a service which is fit for purpose.”

 ABUSIVE WARDER

 Also this week, the family of a republican prisoner at Maghaberry,
 Gerard McManus, have complained that a scheduled visit began late and
 was terminated after half an hour by a warder who was drunk and abusive.

 The guard, referring to the prisoner and their family, said that “he
 wished there were still soldiers like [sectarian serial killers] the
 Shankill Butchers to take care of people like them”, according to the
 McManus family.

 The riot squad was then called to remove the family from the visiting
 area and return Mr McManus to his cell. A prison official later declined
 to register a complaint by the prisoner’s elderly father.
———————————————————————
>>>>>> Irish ship joins Gaza mission
 The Dublin government has been urged to ask the Israeli authorities to
 allow an Irish ship joining an international flotilla to be allowed
 access to the port of Gaza.

 National co-ordinator of the ‘Irish Ship to Gaza’ campaign Fintan Lane
 said yesterday that Israel had no legal or moral right to stop the
 flotilla, which is carrying aid to the blockaded Gaza strip.

 “Threats of violence, we believe, should be condemned by all
 right-thinking people and certainly by governments believing in the rule
 of law,” Mr Lane said.

 Twenty-five passengers and crew sailed on the Irish-owned MV Saoirse
 from its point of departure in the Mediterranean on Saturday and is join
 the flotilla today [Monday].

 Gaza has been described as “a densely packed open-air prison camp” with
 over 40% unemployment and massive poverty. The flotilla aims to bring
 necessary humanitarian aid, such as medicine, to the people of Gaza.

 A similar convoy of ships was attempting to reach Gaza last year when
 Israeli forces massacred 9 activists aboard one of the ships, the Mavi
 Marmara.

 Israeli leaders have said they will block the latest aid bid “while
 exercising restraint to avoid injuries”.

 Ten ships, including Ireland’s MV Saoirse, plan to set sail for Gaza
 Tuesday. Mr Lane said he hoped the Israelis would stand back and reflect
 on what happened last year.

 Mr Lane, who is also a member the flotilla’s international steering
 committee, said they would not allow the Israelis board any ships.

 “We have taken a very definite decision that Israeli troops are not
 welcome on our ships, largely because they killed our colleagues last
 year, but also because they have no legal right to search the ships in
 international waters under those conditions,” he added.

 “We will have the ships searched at the ports of departure by the local
 authorities.”

 The passengers and crew of the MV Saoirse will include former Fianna
 Fail TD Chris Andrews, Dublin Socialist Party MEP Paul Murphy, Derry
 Sinn Fein councillor Gerry Mac Lochlainn, former international rugby
 player Trevor Hogan, trade union official Mags O’Brien and skipper Shane
 Dillon.

 Sinn Fein Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Padraig MacLochlainn has sent his
 best wishes to the crew of the ship, which he said should be allowed
 bring aid to the besieged Palestinian people of Gaza.

 “I want to congratulate the organisers of this trip and wish them the
 best of luck. It is an extremely brave thing to do given the murderous
 actions of Israeli forces when they boarded the Mavi Marmara last year
 when the first flotilla attempted to enter Gaza,” he said.

 “This second flotilla should be allowed safe travel and the Government
 here should be speaking to the Israeli authorities to ensure that they
 get it.

 “Furthermore, the Government should be doing all in its power to end
 the siege of Gaza and the suffering of the Palestinian people there
 including calling for an end to the preferential trade agreement
 between the EU and Israel until such time as the siege is lifted.”
———————————————————————
>>>>>> Derry bridge ‘is peace symbol’
 A new bridge in Derry is being described as a symbol of the city’s
 journey out of conflict to a brighter future.

 The 26-County Taoiseach Enda Kenny was joined on Saturday by First
 Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and
 a host of government officials for the open ing of the 15 million pound
 footbridge, which the Dublin government helped to fund.

 Hundreds of people lined both sides of the River Foyle for the
 celebrations, which were marked by schoolchildren singing an anthem
 composed to mark the occasion.

 European Union commissioner for regional policy Johannes Hahn carried
 out the official opening.  He said the bridge would help establish
 lasting prosperity. “It will encourage greater levels of peace and
 reconciliation tor the city,” he said.

 The bridge which links Derry’s Guildhall with the former Ebrington
 British army barracks was built in an S-shape to signify a handshake
 across the river.

 Among the guests at the official opening was former Nobel peace laureate
 John Hume. He said the crowds turning out showed what a great thing the
 bridge was for the city.

 Mr McGuinness said the new bridge was an “iconic” structure and a
 declaration of intent by all the people of Derry.

 “We are seeing the beginning of what is a whole new opportunity for this
 city,” he said.

 Mr Robinson said the bridge and surrounding developments were hugely
 exciting and enabled people to see Derry from a new perspective.

 “This is a bright brand new day for the city and hopefully there will be
 many more of them in the future,” he said.

 Derry mayor Maurice Devenney said the bridge would help bring the city’s
 communities together.

 “The peace bridge reflects the positive way in which our city is moving
 forward as we prepare to celebrate our unique history, culture and
 heritage in preparation for the UK City of Culture 2013,” he said.

———————————————————————
>>>>>> Feature: Charles Stuart Parnell
 ——————————————————————-
 The man known as the ‘Uncrowned King of Ireland’ was born on June 27th,
 1846, 165 years ago today.
 ——————————————————————-
 The Great Famine of 1845 to 1849 left over 1 million dead with a further
 1 million emigrating over the following 10 years. One of the effects of
 the disaster was to demonstrate to ordinary Irish people that the
 English Government had failed them in their time of need and that they
 must seize control of their own destiny.

 Out of the Famine grew several revolutionary movements which culminated
 in the 1916 Easter Rising. In the second half of the nineteenth century
 the main concern of the Irish people was their land and the fact that
 they had no control whatsoever over it ownership.

 Charles Stewart Parnell was the son of a Protestant landowner who
 organised the rural masses into agitation against the ruling Landlord
 class to seek the 3 Fs: Fixity of Tenure, Freedom to Sell and Fair Rent.

 Violence flared in the countryside but Parnell preferred to use
 parliamentary means to achieve his objectives and the result was a
 series of Land Acts which greatly improved the conditions under which
 the Irish agricultural class toiled.

 Parnell’s main ambition was Home Rule for Ireland (local Government) and
 he led the Irish Party, deposing Isaac Butt in the process to achieve
 this aim. He and colleagues such as Joseph Biggar made a science out of
 ‘fillibustering’ and delayed the English parliament by introducing
 amendments to every clause of every Bill and then discussing each aspect
 at length. His popularity in Ireland soared to great heights.

 Speaking at Ennis on 19 September 1880, Parnell declared : “When a man
 takes a farm from which another had been evicted you must shun him on
 the roadside when you meet him, you must shun him in the streets of the
 town, you must shun him in the shop, you must shun him in the fairgreen
 and in the marketplace, and even in the place of worship, by leaving him
 alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry, by isolating him from the
 rest of his country as if he were the leper of old, you must show your
 detestation of the crime he has committed”.

 This type of “moral Coventry” was used in the cast of Captain Boycott, a
 County Mayo land agent, who was isolated by the local people until his
 nerve broke. This led to a new word entering in to the English language,
 boycotting.

 Trouble loomed for Parnell however, in his private life. He had secretly
 courted a married woman, Kathleen O’Shea, the husband of whom filed for
 divorce, naming Parnell as the co-repsondent. He tried to ignore the
 scandal and continued his public life. Public pressure in Ireland and
 from Gladstone in England eventually brought his downfall and he died
 shortly afterwards, in 1891. The Home Rule Bill that he had forced
 Gladstone into introducing was passed in the House of Commons, but
 defeated in the House of Lords.

 In his last speech in Kilkenny in 1891 he said: ‘I don’t pretend that I
 had not moments of trial and of temptation, but I do claim that never in
 thought, word, or deed, have I been false to the trust which Irishmen
 have confided in me’.

 But perhaps he will be most remembered for the quotation that can be
 found on his statue at the junction of O’Connell Street and Parnell
 Street in Dublin City Centre:

 ‘No man shall have the right to fix the boundary to the march of a
 Nation’.
———————————————————————
>>>>>> Analysis: Where was Special Branch in Loughinisland massacre?
 By Barry McCaffrey (for The Detail)
 If the Police Ombudsman’s report into the McGurk’s Bar attrocity
 highlighted his reluctance to grapple with collusion, his report into
 Loughinisland is startling by its absence of another crucial piece of
 the picture: the role of Special Branch both before and after the
 massacre.

 Mr Hutchinson states that he studied all “available intelligence”
 connected to the killings but important intelligence-related aspects of
 the case are not even mentioned in the report, raising questions over
 just how deep his investigation went in this case and, again, drawing
 attention to a “civil war” within his own office.

 One example is the sightings of the killers’ car in the south Down area
 in the weeks before the attack – clearly the domain of Special Branch,
 clearly a critical avenue for Mr Hutchinson to explore; but there is not
 a single reference to this: the context of the sighting; whether or how
 the information about it was dissipated within police circles; and
 whether it provided leads for the investigation.

 Also, more than 10 years ago police told the families that they had
 recovered a hair follicle on one of the killers’ balaclavas.

 The families were assured that police would be able to bring the killers
 to justice if just one bead of sweat was recovered from the balaclavas
 and boiler suits recovered.

 But despite the hair follicle appearing to be one of the most important
 forensic lines of inquiry there is no mention of it anywhere in the
 ombudsman’s report.

 The 56 page report – surprisingly only 26 pages of which is devoted to a
 five year-long investigation – provides no clarity on the Police
 Ombudsman’s relationship with Special Branch and the level of access he
 has achieved into Special Branch during this investigation; a pronounced
 contrast to the work of Nuala O’Loan on Omagh and the Mount Vernon UVF,
 which majored on the role of Special Branch in murders in which it was
 alleged that informers were protected from prosecution.

 Omagh and the Mount Vernon cases spanned the period of 1993 – 1998 and
 the Police Ombudsman found Special Branch activities in that era
 protected killers. Loughinisland occurred within the same timescale:
 June 1994 – yet still the role – or not – of Special Branch remains
 unexplored anywhere in this investigation.

 What is public knowledge, although unacknowledged in the Loughinisland
 report is that:

 *      in September 1994 there were 814 officers in RUC Special Branch;

 *      that by 1994 Special Branch had heavily penetrated both loyalist
 and republican groups, including the UVF in East Belfast;

 *      that the Loughinisland attack was mounted by the East Belfast UVF;

 *      in Omagh and Mount Vernon UVF cases and the murders of Pat
 Finucane, and Rosemary Nelson that Special Branch withheld information
 from the CID murder investigations.

 The apparent removal of this dimension from the Hutchinson approach has
 caused a deep split within the Police Ombudsman’s office – referred to
 recently by the ” Committee on the Administration of Justice “(CAJ)
 report.

 The Loughinisland investigation, in particular, has been known to be a
 source of anxiety internally, with some senior staff distancing
 themselves from the ombudsman’s perceived loss of independence.

 It also ties in with broader developments in investigations into the
 past: The Rosemary Nelson Inquiry reported back four weeks ago and the
 word “collusion” was not mentioned, allowing the Secretary of State,
 Owen Paterson to say that it therefore had not happened.

 Nationalists, led by the SDLP, have protested at the transfer of
 Northern Ireland Office personnel into senior positions within key
 agencies within the criminal justice system following the devolution of
 justice last year – and claims that a new agenda is playing out, aimed
 at shutting down sensitive areas of enquiry, particularly in the
 security sphere.

 So where does all this leave the relatives of the six men who died in
 The Heights Bar 17 years ago and who went to the Police Ombudsman’s
 office back in 2006 as their last hope for answers?

 One of the key questions they wanted addressed was: “the suspicion that
 collusion pervaded the circumstances of the attack … and the subsequent
 police investigation”. After an investigation lasting six years, has
 this fundamental question been answered?

 Tomorrow a political row is likely to play out on what turned out to be
 the focus of the report: the actual investigation by CID and Mr
 Hutchinson’s conclusions that it lacked leadership and commitment and
 failed to properly investigate all available lines of inquiry to bring
 the killers to justice. There’s little doubt that the quality of the
 Ombudsman’s investigation will itself become the focus of intention.

 Will anyone be satisfied with Mr Hutchinson’s final verdict on the
 subject of collusion in Loughinisland and his certainty that it didn’t
 happen in this case?

—————————————————————-

THIS IS A COPY OF THE REPUBLICAN NEWS AS PRINTED : SEACHRANAIDHE1

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IRISH REPUBLICAN NEWS SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION

>>>>> Flash: Families angered by new Loughinisland cover-up
 The families of the men murdered by the unionist paramilitary UVF in a
 1994 massacre in Loughinisland, County Down have vehemently rejected an
 investigation by the PSNI Police Ombudsman into the killings.

 Al Hutchinson’s report refused to blame the attack on collusion, and
 said that the original police investigation had merely failed the
 families of those killed and injured.

 The report admitted the getaway car was destroyed by the RUC police,
 (later the PSNI). But it said only the RUC investigation was “lacking
 effective leadership and diligence”.  It said that records were “lost”
 and “opportunities were missed”.

 Six Catholic men, one of them aged 87, died when loyalist gunmen sprayed
 the Heights Bar in the County Down village with 200 bullets in 1994.

 The shootings at the Heights Bar happened as supporters watched the
 Irish soccer team play Italy during the World Cup.

 The six men who died were Adrian Rogan 34; Malcolm Jenkinson, 53; Barney
 Greene, 87; Daniel McCreanor 59; Patrick O’Hare, 35, and Eamon Byrne,
 39.

 At least one British double agent was linked to the murder gang. An RUC
 Special Branch informer inside the UVF, codenamed ‘Mechanic’, had
 supplied the car used in the shooting, which was subsequently destroyed
 by the RUC.

 Patrick McCreanor, a nephew of Dan McCreanor said: “How long will we
 keep on hearing the same old story. How many times can evidence go
 missing from police custody?”

 Maura Casement, a niece of Barney Greene said that the ombudsman refused
 to investigate a link between admitted British Army agent Brian Nelson
 and the murder weapon.

 The ombudsman’s report also made no mention at all of RUC’s undercover
 Special Branch, who are believed to have worked with at least one member
 of the murder gang.

 Aidan O’Toole who was a barman on the night of the murders said the
 report raised “serious inconsistencies”.

 “In some cases, police did not even bother to take fingerprints or DNA,”
 he said.

 “The RUC and the PSNI could not even identify one of the killers even
 though he left a hair behind.”

 Emma Rogan’s father Adrian was one of those killed.

 “For 11 years after the murder of our loved ones, police did not even
 have the focus and strategy to keep us informed,” she said.

 A solicitor representing the families of those killed also hit out at
 the report’s findings describing them as “unacceptable”.

 “The families consider that Al Hutchinson has performed factual
 gymnastics to avoid a conclusion”, Niall Murphy said

 “The families fear it is a case of see no evil, hear no evil, and report
 no evil by Mr Hutchinson”, he added.

 RESIGNATION DEMANDED

 The SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie has called for the Police Ombudsman to
 resign following his report.

 His findings were contrary “to a mountain of evidence of collusion”, she
 said.

 “After a very long wait the ombudsman’s report has come up short on
 Loughinisland. It completely lets down the victims’ families and the
 wider community.

 “Al Hutchinson paints a picture of an incompetent keystone cops type of
 police force when the reality was that the RUC and Special Branch were
 rotten to the core.

 “The ombudsman has done a great disservice to the families of those
 murdered, as he has done to other groups of victims.

 “It is now time for him to go. The office of the Police Ombudsman is
 vitally important to confidence in policing and justice in the north and
 Mr Hutchinson has repeatedly failed to measure up.”

 The South Down MP said the definition of collusion as set out by Judge
 Cory “involves the area of commission or omission, and in this case
 there has been omission by the then RUC”, Ms Richie said.

 “He seems to think that the failure of the RUC investigators to
 co-operate, the systematic destruction of evidence such as the car, the
 systematic failure to follow leads and even the failure to carry out
 forensics was incompetence – to me and to the families that mounts to
 collusion.

 “I think it is time to provide confidence and leadership in the police
 Ombudsman’s office, he should do the right thing and resign”, she added.

 Despite several arrests, no-one has ever been convicted of these
 murders.

 Local Sinn Fein Assembly member Caitriona Ruane said the report marked
 the beginning of a new phase in the relatives’ campaign for truth.

 “If ever there was a case which demonstrated collusion it is the murders
 at Loughinisland,” she said.

 “That is the only conclusion which can be reached, even from the
 information put in the public domain today by the ombudsman.

 “His failure to reach that very obvious conclusion on the basis of the
 evidence in front of him is a matter which he needs to explain.”
—————————————————————-

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WE THINK IT’S NOW TIME AL HUTCHINSON FOR YOU TO RESIGN ” COLLLUSION IS NOT AN ILLUSION”

 
 
    
 
 
 
CIPR Specialist Website of the Year 2011
Investigations & Analysis – Northern Ireland
 

Loughinisland: the Ombudsman’s report – but key issues remain unaddressed

The aftermath of the Loughinisland massacre in 1994

BY BARRY McCAFFREY

THE Detail can today reveal the conclusions of the Police Ombudsman on the Loughinisland massacre: that the failure by police to secure convictions afterwards was down to incompetence and a lack of commitment – but not collusion.

The final report also leaves unanswered a key question of the families of the six men killed at The Heights bar 17 years ago: what the role of Special Branch was either before or after the attack.

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The six men killed in the Loughinisland massacre

Where was Special Branch in Loughinisland massacre?

BY BARRY MCCAFFREY

IF the Police Ombudsman’s report into the McGurk’s Bar atrocity highlighted his reluctance to grapple with collusion, his report into Loughinisland is startling by its absence of another crucial piece of the picture: the role of Special Branch both before and after the massacre.

Mr Hutchinson states that he studied all “available intelligence” connected to the killings but important intelligence-related aspects of the case are not even mentioned in the report, raising questions over just how deep his investigation went in this case and, again, drawing attention to a “civil war” within his own office.

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THE Attorney General John Larkin has confirmed that the inquest system here shall have a role “front and centre” in how Northern Ireland deals with the past.

 
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