Question is now about extent of loyalist collusion
Posted by Jim on June 18, 2016
By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)
Let’s hope the Police Ombudsman’s report on the Loughinisland killings
becomes a model for future investigations by his office.
Dr Michael Maguire’s welcome report is unique for a number of reasons.
First, he was not content with simply looking at the events of the night
of the murders in the Heights Bar on June 18, 1994 and the RUC’s failure
to investigate properly what happened.
The Ombudsman set his investigation against a backdrop of endemic
collusion going back to the late 1980s beginning with how loyalists
acquired the weapon used in the killings, a VZ58 assault rifle, a Czech
version of the AK-47 with terrific firepower of 800 rounds a minute.
Much of the account he provides about the loyalist importation of
weaponry in 1988 is already well known but Dr Maguire’s report gives
unprecedented detail.
He also gives details of a number of the 70 murders and attempted
murders in Belfast and Co Down by similar assault rifles after March
1988 and their links to east Belfast UVF individuals.
RUC Special Branch and the secret British military intelligence unit FRU
knew which members of the UVF, UDA and Ulster Resistance were involved
in importing the weapons and how they managed it because most were their
agents.
None of them was ever arrested or investigated. The same lack of
investigation applied to the UVF gang involved in the killings at the
Heights Bar. So nothing new there.
Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the man who ran the FRU, knew all about the
acquisition of weapons from South Africa by his agent Brian Nelson.
Many nationalists find it incredible that the weapons nevertheless made
their way without being intercepted, not only to the north but to the
farm of convicted former RUC reservist James Mitchell who on his own
admission held the biggest UVF arms dump in mid-Ulster.
Many wonder if elements in British intelligence decided it was necessary
to upgrade the firepower of their loyalist agents to compete with the
newly acquired arsenal Colonel Gadaffi had supplied to the IRA in
1985-6.
Why was Nelson sent on his shopping expedition in 1987 but not before?
Did he dream it up himself or did someone in intelligence suggest it to
him?
Although the Ombudsman’s report casts its net wider than previously it
raises many more questions by doing so. The fundamental question is
this. To what extent were loyalist terrorists directed by British
military intelligence and RUC Special Branch?
The response of some unionists to the revelations in Dr Maguire’s report
has been to dissemble, swap definitions of collusion, avoid the issue.
They point to the fact that informers saved lives. Many did. That’s not
in dispute. That’s not the issue.
The issue is not whether, but to what extent British intelligence and
RUC Special Branch either allowed loyalists to act as proxy killers or
in some instances actually directed them towards certain individuals?
To what extent did senior members of the security forces, particularly
British intelligence, encourage agents provocateurs?
We know that the UDA, a criminal conspiracy from the outset, was
maintained as a legal organisation until almost the end of the Troubles
despite being responsible for hundreds of killings.
If they were carrying out operations the security forces couldn’t do
legally the reason for not banning them is obvious.
And don’t say it was the UFF, a fictional organisation devised to help
the NIO explain why they didn’t ban the UDA. Does anyone know where the
UFF wing was in Long Kesh or Maghaberry?
At bottom evidence suggests the British state decided early on to use
any means they could to destroy the IRA. If that meant making loyalist
murder gangs into state agents so be it.
If they continued to kill innocent Catholics that was unfortunate.
The alternative explanation for collusion, failure to investigate
loyalist killings or intercept loyalist arms trafficking is that
important elements in British intelligence and RUC Special Branch were
out of control. Which do you think?