Investigative journalists Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney received an unreserved apology in a Zoom call with the chief constable
23 March, 2021 01:00
PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne `reiterated his unreserved apology’
THE PSNI chief constable has apologised in a face-to-face meeting to two journalists arrested over material that appeared in a documentary on a Troubles massacre.
Over a “constructive” Zoom meeting, Simon Byrne repeated the “unreserved apology” he gave in writing to investigative journalists Barry McCaffrey and Trevor Birney last July after the Court of Appeal quashed a search warrant used to raid their homes and offices in August 2018.
They were detained over the alleged theft of a police watchdog document which appeared in their film `No Stone Unturned’, based on a notorious loyalist massacre in Loughinisland in 1994.
Mr McCaffrey and Mr Birney worked with Oscar-winning director, Alex Gibney on the film which focused on how the RUC handled the UVF murders of six Catholic men at a pub in the Co Down village.Subscribe to our Morning newsletter
A PSNI spokesperson told the investigative news website The Detail the meeting had been “constructive”, saying “the chief constable reiterated his unreserved apology for the distress and upset caused to both men and their families as a result of their arrest”.
The journalists said they recognised their arrests happened before to his appointment.
They also raised recent death threats against reporters working on Northern Ireland titles including Allison Morris, Patricia Devlin and others.
“Even if journalists are pursuing stories that police could view as uncomfortable, they should be respected for their vital role in a democratic society,” Mr Birney told The Detail.
Mr McCaffrey said the PSNI “chose to arrest journalists for simply exposing the truth” in a “disastrous and unforgivable decision which caused untold hurt and pain to the victims’ families”.
“Attacking the media and threatening press freedom is not good policing.”
Amnesty International and the National Union of Journalists have called on the Policing Board to investigate the full circumstances behind their arrest.
The Detail reported an investigation into the leaking of the documents has ceased.
A Michael Stone flag outside the Holy Cross Girls School in north Belfast with the words ‘Hands up if you’re going to be sectarian today’
A flag showing loyalist killer Michael Stone was put up near Holy Cross Girls’ School in north Belfast in a “deliberate attempt to provoke and intimidate”, Sinn Féin has said.
It is understood the flag, showing an image of Stone with his hands raised, was put up along with several Rangers flags around Ardoyne Road early yesterday morning.
The Stone flag, which included the slogan ‘Hands up if you’re going to be sectarian today’, was taken down several hours later.
Holy Cross Girls’ School was the focus of bitter loyalist protests in 2001 and 2002. The protests, which attempted to stop young girls from going to school, prompted headlines across the world.Subscribe to our Morning newsletter
Stone, a former UDA member who was convicted of three murders, was released under the Good Friday Agreement in 2000.
In 2006, he tried to storm Parliament Buildings and was later convicted of attempting to murder Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.
He was released from prison on parole in January this year.
Sinn Féin North Belfast MLA Gerry Kelly said he was appalled by the flag.
“People will remember that this is the girls’ primary school that was blockaded by loyalists causing huge and lasting stress to children and the community,” he said.
“This is a deliberate attempt to provoke and intimidate local residents. This community has come through too much to be intimidated by these criminal elements and hate crimes.
“There is no place in society for this type of activity.”
Michael Jackson March 18, 2021 10:53Relatives for Justice CEO Mark Thompson
RELATIVES for Justice has welcomed a United States Senate resolution that calls for the full implementation of the Stormont House Agreement.
In an unprecedented bi-partisan resolution, 15 members of the Senate Senate have outlined “unresolved issues” set out in the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent political accords.
The resolution calls for progress on a Bill of Rights and “justice for all victims of violence, including state-sponsored violence.”https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1371906523430055940&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fbelfastmedia.com%2Frfj-welcomes-us-senate-resolution-on-stormont-house-agreement&theme=light&widgetsVersion=e1ffbdb%3A1614796141937&width=550px
Welcoming the resolution, Relatives for Justice CEO, Mark Thompson, stated: “For many years Relatives for Justice and families have been received with support and encouragement in Irish America, particularly from the Ancient Order of Hibernians. This has been of immense importance as families continue to face British government intransigence and bad faith on legacy.
“This resolution now speaks to the political support that families have in the United States and we are encouraged that the entire resolution is framed in international human rights law and the peace process. Victims and resolution of their rights to truth and justice are central to the peace process and international human rights law is the key to unlocking the obstacles families face. The inclusive acknowledgement of all victims, with specific reference to those affected by state and state sponsored violence, is particularly welcome given their experience of marginalisation and isolation.
“This resolution now speaks to the political support that families have in the United States and we are encouraged that the entire resolution is framed in international human rights law and the peace process. Victims and resolution of their rights to truth and justice are central to the peace process and international human rights law is the key to unlocking the obstacles families face. The inclusive acknowledgement of all victims, with specific reference to those affected by state and state sponsored violence, is particularly welcome given their experience of marginalisation and isolation.
“That the resolution recognises this on the eve of the 1st anniversary of the British government reneging on their obligations to the Stormont House Agreement, and the week that the European Committee of Ministers call time on British Government continued violation of victims’ rights also calling for the full implementation of Stormont House Agreement investigation mechanisms, means it could not come at a better time for victims. We sincerely thank all of those involved in securing this unprecedented resolution.”
For St Patrick’s Day, the Irish Church Leaders released a joint statement which deals directly with how the churches have been implicated in the island’s troubled past. The Church Leaders Group consists of the Catholic and Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh, the Presbyterian Moderator, the Methodist President, and the President of the Irish Council of Churches.
The statement references 2021 as a year of important (and divisive) centenaries, then goes on to articulate what is in my judgement the churches’ most comprehensive confession ever for their historic contributions to division and violence:
We have an opportunity, in marking these events from our past, to be intentional in creating the spaces for encounter with those who are different from us, and those who may feel marginalised in the narratives that have shaped our community identity. This will require us to face difficult truths about failings in our own leadership in the work of peace and reconciliation. As Christian churches we acknowledge and lament the times that we failed to bring to a fearful and divided society that message of the deeper connection that binds us, despite our different identities, as children of God, made in His image and likeness. We have often been captive churches; not captive to the Word of God, but to the idols of state and nation.
I have long argued that the churches should publicly acknowledge their failures in peace and reconciliation, not only because it is the right thing to do but also because a failure to do so damages their current peace and reconciliation ministries.
You can read the full statement here, or watch a video of the Church Leaders reciting it:https://player.vimeo.com/video/524185127
The confession might have had more impact if it came earlier in the document (and the accompanying video): it is the sixth of nine paragraphs. Even so, it is important that the confession is there at all.
Of course, as the island secularizes, there are fewer people who expect the churches to contribute to public debates or bother to listen to Church Leaders’ statements. At the same time, the churches remain the island’s largest voluntary organizations, with potential for mobilization.
The Church Leaders frame their statement as an opportunity or invitation to help create spaces for encounter. It remains to be seen if their confession will facilitate this process. But at the very least, it is an important first step.
With so much guff, bluff and ritual about it, St Patrick’s Day is a poor bellwether for judging the state of affairs in Ireland remotely – and perhaps no better on the spot either.
One glance at privileged youff crowding Botanic Gardens in defiance of lockdown, you might have groaned with me: “ Not the Holylands again. “ However BBCNI’s news story was encouraging.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=true&embedId=twitter-widget-0&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1372267028933980170&lang=en-gb&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fsluggerotoole.com%2F2021%2F03%2F18%2Fbehind-the-paddys-day-rituals-how-deep-is-the-stormont-crisis%2F&theme=light&widgetsVersion=e1ffbdb%3A1614796141937&width=550px
..when officers were called to the scene on Wednesday afternoon, it took less than an hour for the area to be cleared.
The Botanic story may be a metaphor for the political scene. Two articles in the Irish News discuss the dire state of Assembly politics on either side of the divide, greatly aggravated by the protocol row.
The uncomfortable truth is we are a nation dangerously close to the precipice following England’s decision to take the United Kingdom out of Europe
And Boris Johnson knows the union is tottering.
The only person in these islands so lacking in political intelligence that he cannot see the new realities is An Taoiseach who this week dismissed calls to debate the future of this island, and the case for reunification.
Whatever Martin may think, people are in the trenches now. Irish unity is the best hope we have of getting them out of them.
Martin says he wants to work with the Northern Ireland Assembly and with the British government to build consensus.
The First Minister – toadying to loyalist paramilitaries – is unfit to govern, the executive is a shambles, the assembly is a joke; the British government is in breach of international law and its commitments to the Northern Ireland Protocol; and one of its leading ministers has repudiated Peter Brooke’s assertion that Britain does not have a selfish and strategic interest in Northern Ireland.
By their actions you shall know them. The British government is lobbing grenades at the peace process, and the taoiseach is kow-towing when he should be marshalling the support of Irish America, and President Joe Biden, to protect it.
The world has changed. Brexit has torn the bonds that once held the UK together. Northern Ireland and Scotland, let us not forget, voted remain.
A leader with vision would be acting now to promote a managed reworking of the constitutional arrangements in these islands.
Britain’s misfortune is to have Boris Johnson as prime minister. Ireland’s is to have Micheál Martin
The minutes of a DUP meeting have been leaked to the News Letter, revealing a party that knows how much trouble it is in over Brexit but has no idea what to do about it.
The meeting of the South Antrim constituency association, conducted online on February 25, was attended by MP Paul Girvan, MLAs Trevor Clarke and Pam Cameron and 15 other party members, mostly councillors. Five people sent apologies for their absence.. Clarke is recorded saying an “Irish Language Act will be delivered before next election”, two weeks before leader Arlene Foster revealed this in the assembly. Another note adds: “Arlene needs to sell it to the country!”
So the DUP has learned its lesson from the 2017 collapse of Stormont and the deal the following year that almost restored devolution, before Foster got cold feet over promoting language legislation to her party and its voters.
However, nobody in South Antrim extends this lesson to Brexit – another instance where the DUP has to swallow its pride and sell a difficult compromise. The comparison is valid. There is no reason why inspecting an occasional packet of ham at Larne has to be more contentious a few months from now than bilingual street signs were three years ago.
Perhaps the most revealing detail in the minutes might seem the most trivial. The association’s treasurer reveals that just 12 membership fees are fully paid up for the year in this DUP heartland constituency.
A crucial, little-appreciated fact about unionism’s largest party is that it is a tiny political organisation.
OK so two columns do not make a crisis. But they are supposed to have their ears to the ground.
Although a ritual occasion, ritual is not to be despised. The Biden administration doesn’t waver from the” no hard border” mantra that the GFA has become in all interested international capitals except London. It may not amount to more than moral pressure, but it is being exercised. With what effect? God knows. Britain’s foreign secretary Dominic Raab weighed in on the opposite side – opposite to Ireland’s as well as the wider EU – with a case that is too complicated for Irish America to be bothered to follow – apart from homing in on its fatal flaw, that it may have breached the international agreement they believe protects little Ireland.
The United States must be “equally robust” with the EU when it threatens to compromise the Northern Ireland peace process as it is with Britain, Dominic Raab has said. “Our argument has always been that it has been the EU, by trying to erect a barrier down the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, that is the one challenging both the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Good Friday Agreement,” Mr Raab told the Aspen Security Forum, an annual US foreign policy conference.
On Wednesday Biden touted his Irish heritage and quoted the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. He added: “I’m speaking to you from a White House designed by an Irish hand, and a nation where Irish blood was spilled in a revolution for independence, and for union and freedom through the years. The story of the Irish Americans is the story of people who have weathered hard times, but always come through, spirit intact.”
Martin said he wanted to thank the US president for his “unwavering support for the Good Friday Agreement”. He added: “It has meant a lot and it has mattered, including as we negotiated Brexit.
Although Biden administration officials have struck a cautious note on the Northern Ireland protocol, US lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been more outspoken.
A senior administration official told reporters on Tuesday evening that the US viewed the dispute as “a trade issue to be resolved between the UK and the EU”. “The administration is interested in having strong relations with both the UK and the EU, and we hope that they’re able to find ways to work well together, particularly ways that are in the interest of political and economic stability for the people of Northern Ireland,”
Several lawmakers from both parties have also threatened to block a UK trade deal with the US if the Good Friday Agreement is threatened. Most recently, lawmakers including Bob Menendez, the chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, issued a resolution that said any new trade deals with the US should take account of whether the conditions of the peace deal were met. Northern Ireland deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said a virtual meeting between herself, Northern Ireland first minister Arlene Foster, Biden and US vice-president Kamala Harris had been “hugely beneficial” and “provided a valuable opportunity to discuss how we can build on the progress we have made and continue working to protect the interests of all our people”.
Relatives for Justice CEO Mark Thompson
