The US has been studying the techniques used by Mi5 and the SAS in
Ireland...their own skills were getting a little rusty.
British police and army officers colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to
murder Irish republicans in the 1980s and 1990s, an official Government
inquiry has concluded.
The 15-year investigation by Sir John Stevens, now head of Scotland Yard,
has found that renegade officers ran an assassination policy under which
personal details of suspected IRA members were passed to loyalist
paramilitaries who then executed them.
Sir John is recommending a series of criminal charges, including conspiracy
to murder, against 23 serving or former army and police officers, including
one serving in Iraq.
The inquiry report, which will be published on April 17, relates to the
activities of an army intelligence group, the Force Research Unit, in
Belfast during the late 1980s and early 1990s. While Sir John concludes
that assassinations were not sanctioned by Government ministers, he does
say that there was an official policy among the FRU and police officers to
pass details of senior republicans to paramilitary death squads.
The disclosure will be seized upon by nationalists and republicans who have
always alleged that the army and former Royal Ulster Constabulary personnel
carried out a policy of collusion with loyalist murderers in the province.
Among those murdered under the assassination policy was Pat Finucane, a
Belfast solicitor who was shot in front of his wife and family in 1989.
Sir John's team believes that the renegade officers approved the murder of
Mr Finucane, who was shot because of his suspected close links with the
IRA. The army officers are also implicated in a 1987 plot to murder Alex
Maskey, now Lord Mayor of Belfast, who was shot outside his home in west
Belfast but survived.
Sir John's inquiry began in 1989 and followed an earlier investigation by
John Stalker, the former deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester, into
claims of an official "shoot to kill" policy run by the army.
Mr Stalker's inquiry was abandoned in May 1986 after he was falsely accused
of corruption and disciplinary offences. Mr Stalker believes that his
inquiry was sabotaged because of the facts he uncovered.
Sir John has questioned serving and former members of MI5 and Special
Branch and has identified the Ulster Defence Association team involved in
Mr Finucane's murder - including men who were working as double agents for
military intelligence. Since 1989, Sir John's detectives have interviewed
15,000 people, catalogued 4000 exhibits, taken 5640 statements and seized
6000 documents.
The report also concludes that the army was responsible for burning down
the headquarters of Sir John's first inquiry team in 1990. Sir John
believes that FRU officers firebombed his headquarters at Seapark,
Carrickfergus, destroying everything inside. Fortunately key documents had
been copied.
- Telegraph
http://theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/30/1048962644995.html
