Shoot to kill inquests
01 January 1991
Shoot to kill inquests
artdoc August=1994
Sir Hugh Annesley has succeeded in getting the High Court to set
aside the summons ordering him to produce the working documents
and other papers in the Stalker and Sampson inquiries to the
Belfast coroner. The coroner had demanded the documents at the
inquests into the deaths of the six men - Eugene Toman, John
Burns, James McKerr, Michael Tighe, Peter Grew and Roderick
Carroll - killed in 1982 under the RUC's shoot-to-kill policy
(see Statewatch vol 2 no 4 & vol 4 no 1), reopened in March this
year. John Thorburn, Stalker's deputy, was to give evidence at
the reopened inquests, and needed to refresh his memory from
working papers and other documents held by the Chief Constable.
The inquest could not get to the truth of what happened without
them.
When, in March, coroner John Leckey issued the summonses
calling on Annesley to produce the documents, the RUC chief
constable challenged the order. In May, secretary of state for
Northern Ireland Sir Patrick Mayhew came to Annesley's support
and issued a public interest immunity (pii) certificate covering
the documents, citing national security. The Chief Constable also
objected to the production of the documents to Thorburn, saying
he was `an unsuitable person' to be given sight of them, although
no explanation was given for his alleged unsuitability.
Judge Nicholson ruled that the issue of the summons by Belfast
coroner John Leckey was oppressive and an abuse of the process
of the court. Holding that the function of a coroner's court was
to decide `how' someone died and not `in what broad
circumstances', he went on: `I am satisfied that [Leckey] is
genuinely concerned to deal openly with the fears and suspicions
that there was a `shoot to kill' policy. But the coroner's court
is not the forum in which this kind of issue can properly be
dealt with.' The judge did not, unfortunately, go on to say which
forum will address such fears: twelve years and five coroners
after the deaths the questions of the families and the wider
public remain unanswered.
In the matter of inquests touching the deaths of Eugene Toman,
James Gervaise McKerr, John Frederick Burns, Michael Justin
Tighe, Peter James Martin Grew and Roderick Martin Carroll,
11.7.94.
Statewatch, Vol 4 no 4, July-August 1994