Political Killings in Northern Ireland
01 January 1991
Political Killings in Northern Ireland
artdoc July=1994
Amnesty Attacked
On 9 February, Amnesty International published its latest report
on the UK, entitled Political Killings in Northern Ireland. It
was immediately dismissed by the Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, the RUC and Ulster Unionist
politicians. At the same time, an official United States report
was being presented to President Clinton which, like the Amnesty
report, is highly critical of the British Army and RUC.
Ken Maginnis MP, who speaks for the Ulster Unionist Party on
security issues, said that `Amnesty has clearly set out to
discredit the security service and by doing so discredits
itself'. Amnesty's `glaring disregard for the main cause of human
rights abuse, which is carried out by terrorists, is indicative
of a lack of concern for the victims . . . there is no place for
this self-appointed jury'. Twelve pages of the report, however,
deal with killings and human rights abuses by `armed political
groups', Republican and Loyalist.
Referring to police officers and soldiers, and allegations of
collusion with Loyalist groups, Deputy Chief Constable, Blair
Wallace, attacked the Amnesty report by saying, `it is unjust and
insulting to these brave men and women to infer that they are
anything other than even-handed.' He repeated the now standard
rejoinder: more loyalists than republicans were charged with
offences last year - `do these facts suggest collusion?' (The
Chief Constable's Annual Report for 1992 states, `Some 405
persons - 214 republican and 191 loyalist - were charged with
terrorist-type offences'.)
Collusion is at the centre of the report. It charts the origins
of the Stevens inquiry which lay in UDA/UFF claims that their
killing of Loughlin Maginn in August 1989 was not sectarian but
based on information from RUC files that he was an IRA member.
Within weeks, photocopies of intelligence files on over 250
suspects had been leaked to the media and pasted on Belfast
street walls - `these were security force documents and included
pictures, names, addresses, car registration numbers and
sometimes other details about Republican suspects' movements'.
There was a regular flow of such documents to Loyalist groups,
it was claimed.
The Stevens inquiry
The Stevens inquiry, the report states: `failed to identify
members of the security forces involved in passing on information
to Loyalist armed groups. It also clearly failed to enjoy the
full cooperation of the British Army'. This was evident in the
way military intelligence held on to hundreds of documents given
to them for safekeeping by their agent, Brian Nelson. Nelson was
highly placed within the UDA and was the only person to be
charged with conspiracy to murder as a result of the Stevens
inquiry. Amnesty concludes that:
`the Stevens inquiry would have been very important if its scope
had been wide enough to look at the issue of collusion as a
whole... It did not look at evidence that collusion between
members of the security forces and Loyalist armed groups had been
going on for many years, or at the overall pattern as it related
to both targeted and random killings of Catholics. It did not
examine the authorities' record during this time in bringing
criminal proceedings against security personnel in this regard,
or the official response to evidence of partiality and
discriminatory treatment'.
The killing of Pat Finucane
A major opportunity for investigating collusion was presented by
the Nelson case. But just before the trial, the most serious
charges against him, including two murder charges, were dropped;
he then pleaded guilty to the remaining charges. This led to a
trial in which `only fragments of the truth bearing on
allegations of collusion emerged'. Nevertheless, it was revealed
that military intelligence had taken the entire set of UDA files
into its temporary possession (for the pu