Marley family seek justice

Posted by Jim on November 21, 2015

Informers within the Provisional IRA are suspected of providing
information that led to the loyalist murder of a senior republican in
north Belfast man almost 30 years ago.

Laurence Marley, known as Larry, was shot dead by the UVF in front of
his wife and new-born son as he answered a knock at the door of his
Ardoyne home in April 1987.

The senior IRA figure was gunned down 18 months after serving a 13-year
jail term for his part in the armed struggle, which included helping to
mastermind the famous Long Kesh prison breakout of 1983.

His family is now preparing to sue the PSNI police, the British Ministry
of Defence and Direct Ruler Theresa Villiers over his death. They
believe the Crown Forces played a part in targeting the father-of-six by
passing information to his loyalist killers, facilitating the attack and
protecting their own agents.

His funeral was delayed for three days after the RUC police launched a
massive security operation and formed a heavily armed cordon around his
home to prevent a republican funeral.

Two attempts to bury the IRA man were aborted after a platoon of RUC
surrounded his cortege. His funeral finally took place six days after
his death.

During the stand-off undertakers had to re-embalm the body in the house
amid threats from the RUC that it would be seized under public health
laws.

The episode led to Bishop of Down and Connor Cahal Daly calling on the
RUC to rethink its approach to dealing with republican funerals.

It is now thought that the senior republican was set up by a number of
agents within the IRA who supplied information to their Crown Force
handlers on his movements — and who in turn passed it on to the UVF.

His son Setanta believes that information was “passed on by republican
agents to their handlers which would have added to the knowledge of my
father’s involvement in planning the ‘great escape’ in 1983 which was a
major embarrassment to the Thatcher administration, especially in the
shadow of the hunger strike.”

Setanta, who was only two week’s old when his father was killed, accused
the PSNI of failing to investigate his death properly.

“The behaviour of the security forces at the funeral is nothing short of
proving investigative bias,” he said.

He said the family wants “accountability and truth on the part of the
British government” and has been “put in a position where they have to
pursue a civil action in the hope that the discovery process divulges
information that can provide assistance and the truth”.

Mr Marley, who is himself a member of the legal team at KRW Law taking
his father’s case, said the family was also engaged with the Police
Ombudsman on the matter.

He said he believes his father’s murder was “sanctioned at the highest
echelons of the British establishment” and described the RUC’s actions
during the funeral as “vicious”.

Mr Marley said that in the months before his father’s death he had been
arrested several times and threatened while being interrogated by the
RUC at its Castlereagh base.

He said that floor plans and diagrams of the family home were also taken
during Crown raids in the run up to his death. Mr Marley said his family
also wants a new inquest under Article Two of the European Convention of
Human Rights.