Posted by Jim on December 31, 2017
Unionists are seeking to quash findings of collusion between the RUC
police and unionist paramilitaries in up to six Police Ombudsman reports
following a surprise court judgment before Christmas.
A judge claimed that Ombudsman Michael Maguire went beyond his statutory
powers in reaching conclusions about collusion on the Loughinisland
massacre.
Two retired RUC men had challenged a report last June over the 1994
murder of six people at the Heights Bar by the paramilitary UVF in which
the ombudsman concluded that “collusion was a significant feature”.
However, Mr Justice McCloskey ruled that the RUC men were subjected to
“destructive and withering condemnations” in the report without due
process.
The ruling came as a blow to the victims of the massacre.
Emma Rogan, whose father Adrian was murdered in the Heights Bar, said
that last Christmas was the first where they felt that “the truth had
been set free and allowed to breath”.
“This judgment, which has been delivered four days prior to Christmas
Day, has devastated us all,” she said. “We feel that the truth has again
been suffocated. We will study this judgment over Christmas and renew
our efforts to defend the inconvenient truth, in the New Year”
Niall Murphy, lawyer for the families of those bereaved, said the case
had been premised entirely on procedural grounds. He noted that the two
RUC men had not challenged a single fact contained in the Police
Ombudsman’s report.
“The facts therefore remain as facts,” he said, and pointed to the
weight of evidence to support the allegations of collusion.
DUP MP Ian Paisley called on the British government to “move to set
false accusations aside” in six reports by the Ombusdman’s office./
Among the reports is the 2007 Operation Ballast findings by Nuala O’Loan
into the activities of the north Belfast UVF and the killing of Raymond
McCord junior.
The former ombudsman spent three and a half years investigating the 1997
murder of the 22-year-old and a series of related killings and concluded
there was collusion. Then British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologised
to the family of Mr McCord.
Raymond McCord senior said Ian Paisley’s response does not take into
account that the findings were accepted by the British government.
“All the evidence of collusion in my son’s case is there, it has been
well documented, there is no other name for it other than collusion and
instead of seeking justice for victims, Ian Paisley is seeking to
overturn important rulings and investigations.”
Sinn Fein policing spokesman Gerry Kelly defended Dr Maguire, saying his
work “is crucial to current policing and indeed in legacy cases.”
He said the Loughinisland judgment must be appealed “as it has possibly
catastrophic implications for the setting up of the investigative
process of the Historic Investigations Unit”.
Posted by Jim on December 30, 2017
Former Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley.RollingNews
Unionist firebrand leader may have done more than just flirt with paramilitaries.
Irish cabinet papers from 1987 reveal that the Israeli ambassador in London reported to the Irish government that Ian Paisley, then the Unionist firebrand leader, sought arms from Israel.
The Irish Ambassador Noel Dorr reported the bizarre request to Dublin in a confidential transmission.
“He (the Israeli Ambassador) said that Rev Ian Paisley had been in touch with him to obtain arms,” Dorr wrote.
“I expressed surprise at this since I thought it unlikely that Paisley would leave himself open on something like this.
“The ambassador said the request related to border protection. I said I presumed that the emphasis was on surveillance equipment rather than on arms, but the ambassador did not elaborate further. He said he had replied to Paisley that these things could be dealt with only between governments.”
Paisley did flirt with paramilitaries, most notably the armed Third Force he created in the early 1980s. He was denied access to America and had his visa revoked for threatening violence.
Rallies were held on hillsides near Newry, and Armagh. On Dec 3, 1981 Paisley said that the Third Force had between 15,000 and 20,000 members.
The group was established by Paisley as a complement to the security forces (Paisley had previously been associated with the Ulster Protestant Volunteers loyalist paramilitary group). It grew from opposition to the increasing pace of co-operation between the governments of the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland
In a statement, Paisley’s son – North Antrim DUP MP Ian Paisley – angrily denied his father had sought arms from Israel.
“The claims being made by the Press that my father was involved in an attempt to obtain arms from Israel are absolute nonsense,” he said.
“The basis of a chat at a function between officials – where drink was taken – who were hostile Irish Government officials with their own prejudiced agenda, and where there are no official notes other than cloudy recollections – tells its own story. There is no doubt that given our poor border security in the 1980s… my father made it his business to highlight how other countries could protect themselves from border incursions, such as Israel.
“He publicly and privately urged HMG to up its game and protect our citizens. That is a very far stretch from an attempt to go about the private procurement of arms. Obviously, it is easily to slander the dead. If my father was alive this story wouldn’t see the light of day.”
Posted by Jim on
RADIO FREE EIREANN will broadcast this Saturday December 30th th on WBAI Radio 99.5FM or WBAI.ORG at 12noon-1pm New York time or 5pm-6pm Irish time or anytime after the program on WBAI.ORG/ARCHIVES
Author, political commentator Dr. ANTHONY MCINTYRE will make New Year’s predictions on issues like negotiations to revive Stormont, Brexit and review the import of a series of sensational historic documents released by the British and Irish governments at the end of the year.
RADIO FREE EIREANN also wishes listeners a HAPPY NEW YEAR to all our listeners.
Posted by Jim on December 28, 2017
Around 1,000 files have disappeared while ‘on loan’ to the government. This sort of accident is happening too often for comfort
Siobhan Fenton . The Guardian. England. Wednesday, December 27, 2017
The National Archives are home to more than 11m documents, many of them covering the most disturbing periods of Britain’s colonial past. The uncomfortable truths revealed in previously classified government files have proved invaluable to those seeking to understand this country’s history or to expose past injustices.
It is deeply concerning, therefore, to discover that about 1,000 files have gone missing after being removed by civil servants. Officially, the archives describe them as “misplaced while on loan to a government department”.
The files, each containing dozens of pages, cover subjects such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British colonial administration in Palestine, tests on polio vaccines and territorial disputes between the UK and Argentina. It is unclear whether duplicates exist.
The loss of so many documents of such significance has understandably caused concern among historians, politicians and human rights groups. Amnesty International has called on Theresa May to order an urgent government-wide search for the documents, while Labor MP Jon Trickett has warned that the loss “will only fuel accusations of a cover-up”.
Such suggestions may seem far-fetched, but recent history has given many people reason to be suspicious. Documents in the National Archives have previously been key in revealing human rights abuses by the British state.
In 2014, for instance, investigators from the Irish broadcaster RTÉ uncovered a 1977 letter from the then home secretary, Merlyn Rees, to the prime minister of the day, James Callaghan, in which Rees claimed that ministers had given permission for torture to be used in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The information had reportedly been withheld from the European court of human rights.
Also in 2014, the government was accused of a cover-up after it said it could not release information about the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program because the files had suffered “water damage” .
In 2013, meanwhile, the Guardian revealed that more than 1m documents that should have been declassified were instead being unlawfully kept at a high-security compound in Buckinghamshire. Their existence only came to light when a group of elderly Kenyans took the government to the high court, claiming they had been tortured during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion. The Foreign Office was forced to admit it had withheld thousands of colonial-era papers.
Even if the files that have now been reported missing vanished as a result of sloppiness or incompetence rather than malice, that is in a way no less damning. Britain has long failed to acknowledge the horrors that its colonialism and imperialism have wrought on the world.
Many Britons have grown up believing their homeland saved and civilized the world, while atrocities, genocide and human rights abuses often go unmentioned. Successive governments have failed to narrow this knowledge gap, whether by setting up truth commissions, establishing a museum of colonialism or teaching schoolchildren about colonialism as part of the standard curriculum.
In 2014, a YouGov poll found that 59% of those surveyed thought the British empire was more something to be proud of than ashamed of.
The loss of these documents provides an apt metaphor for what colonialism means to many in Britain. Embarrassing facts are neatly filed away, labelled as “the past”, and on the rare occasions that the archives are inspected, damning evidence is nowhere to be seen.
• Siobhan Fenton is a freelance journalist
Posted by Jim on December 27, 2017
Brian Feeney. Irish News. Belfast. Wednesday, December 27,2017.
Absolutely everything people in the DUP say about Brexit is fantasy so it’s no surprise that remarks by blowhard DUP MPs about Irish government involvement in The North is also fantasy. In fact it’s just completely wrong.
Perhaps, because the likes of Deputy Dodds and Donaldson always opposed the Good Friday Agreement— and in Donaldson’s case walked out on David Trimble— it’s understandable that they don’t know what the GFA says about Irish government involvement in The North.
What’s puzzling is that no-one in Sinn Féin stands up and makes a detailed speech spelling out for DUP slow learners Dublin’s guaranteed role in The North. It’s in black and white in the GFA under the heading British-Irish Inter-Governmental Conference (BIIGC). “There will be a new British-Irish Agreement dealing with the totality of relationships.’’ Geddit?
Paragraph 5 is quite instructive. “In recognition of the Irish government’s special interest in Northern Ireland and of the extent to which issues of mutual concern arise in relation to Northern Ireland, there will be regular and frequent meetings of the conference concerned with non-devolved Northern Ireland matters, on which the Irish government may put forward views and proposals. These meetings, to be co-chaired by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, would also deal with all-island and cross-border cooperation on non-devolved issues.”
There’s a lot more. The relevant section in the GFA runs to nine paragraphs. In the absence of devolved administration here, the BIIGC meets regularly as it did during the period 1999-2007.
In fact it met 18 times during those years before devolution returned in 2007, four times alone in 2006 and each time issued lengthy communiqués covering matters like, security, policing, human rights and justice.
The British-Irish Agreement which established the BIIGC actually predated the GFA by a month. It was a fail safe mechanism in case devolution failed. In that event all devolved matters revert to the remit of the BIIGC. When it’s operating it has a full-time secretariat in Belfast. It used to have a staff of 21 – 10 British and 11 Irish officials. In effect it replaced the old Maryfield structures established under the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement which guaranteed the Irish government an input into The North. The new British-Irish Agreement of 1998 replaced the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
Perhaps you can see now why the DUP deny the BIIGC’s existence though they are fully aware of its role? If it’s not obvious, here’s why.
For the hardliners among the DUP MPs, any role for the Irish government in The North has always been anathema. For them Brexit, despite their claims they don’t want a hard border, is a way of bringing them closer to Britain which is their whole reason for existence as Unionists even though partition has brought economic disaster to The North in the past 96 years. Just look at the average income in The North, €23,700 compared to The South, €39,873.
The Republic’s industrial output is 10 times bigger than The North’s but its workforce is only 2.5 times bigger.
The DUP’s hardcore would rather eat grass than connect economically to The South. They don’t care that all their claims about Brexit are fantasy or that over the past 18 months one by one has dissolved into thin air.
What they most certainly don’t want is to lose their favored position of influence over the British government to be replaced by meetings of the BIIGC with Irish ministers putting forward views and proposals. The British-Irish Agreement requires ‘all [BIIGC] decisions be by agreement between both governments.The governments will make determined efforts to resolve disagreements between them.’
Just as they’re prepared to shaft The North’s agriculture, including their own misled and deluded voters, for the Holy Grail of closer connection to Britain, so ideologues like Deputy Doddss demand direct rule right now with no Irish government input. That, as demonstrated here is like his prognostications about Brexit, impossible.
You can see the DUP MPs, for it is they who are running the party, are rattled. They got nothing on the north-south border despite the loudmouth claims of Ian Óg [ young Paisley]. They learnt May can be defeated despite their support. In 2018 they plummet to earth.