Posted by admin on July 5, 2013
CAPITOL HILL. Thursday, July 4, 2013
“I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did — and told the entire U.S. Congress.”
That was how Fr. Sean Mc Manus — President of the Capitol Hill-based Irish National Caucus — reacted to the positively damning report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) on the Historical Enquiries Team (HET).
HET was established in 2005 as a ” cold cases team” to review all the killings during The Troubles, 1969-1998.
Fr. Mc Manus explained: ” HET, and here’s the rub, is part of the Police Service of Northern Ireland ( PSNI). Therefore, it is a case of police and former police investigating themselves. I have always been concerned that HET would cover up State killings. And this Report confirms my fears.”
The Report found, among other things, that the Team’s work did not conform to the European Convention of Human Rights; that it treated police and British Army killings less vigorously; and that it did not conform to policing standards.
The Report unequivocally declares: “The HET treats state involvement cases differently as a matter of policy and this appears to be based on a misinterpretation of the law. This is entirely wrong, and has led to state involvement cases being reviewed with less rigor in some areas than non-state cases.”
Devastatingly, the Report also states: “It is striking that not one state involvement case relating to the British army has to date been referred to the police for further investigation or prosecution.”
Fr. Mc Manus said: ” Like many others I have been hoping against hope that there would be a ” new beginning to policing in Northern Ireland… But now comes this — and on top of the cruel mistreatment of Marian Price, the stonewalling of the British Government over the State assassination of Pat Finucane, etc., etc. It will be seen to add fuel to the Dissidents’ charge that nothing has changed at the core of the judicial and policing establishment in The North.”
Fr. Mc Manus concluded by explaining: ” The Irish National Caucus will be calling for Congressional Hearing into HET’s cover-up.”
END
Fr. Sean Mc Manus
President
Irish National Caucus
P.O. BOX 15128
Capitol Hill
Washington, DC 20003-0849
Tel. 202-544-0568
Fax. 202-488-7537
sean@irishnationalcaucus.org
Posted by Jim on July 2, 2013
By Sandy Boyer
Martin Corey has spent more than three years in Northern Ireland’s Maghaberry Prison. Although he hasn’t been charged with any crime, there is little prospect that he will be released any time in the immediately foreseeable future. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a British Cabinet Minister, has revoked his license – parole in American terms – which means that he can be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial, sentence or release date.
Martin Corey received a life sentence in December 1973, when he was 19 years old for killing two members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Northern Ireland police force, in an IRA operation. He served 19 years and was released in June, 1992.
Martin Corey returned home to Lurgan, County Aramgh. He started a business, formed an ongoing relationship, and became a highly respected member of the local community.
The police appeared at Martin Corey’s door and took him away to prison in the early hours of April 16, 2010, almost 18 years after his release
His younger brother Joe described what happened. “They came to the door at around 6am. There was about twelve of them standing there when I answered the door. They asked for Martin and told me the Secretary of State had revoked his licence.”
‘They gave no reason for this. There was no struggle. He just got up and walked out with them..They brought him to Maghaberry, where he has been ever since.”
He was informed that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland had revoked his license because he was a “security risk.” Later it was claimed that “he was involved with dissident republicans.”
The Northern Ireland Parole Commission, which is appointed by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, held secret hearings where neither Corey nor his lawyers could see the evidence. They returned him to prison, saying he was “a risk to the public.”
A Belfast judge ordered him released on unconditional bail on July 9th because he was being held on the basis of secret evidence.. His family rushed to the prison to bring him home.
But while Martin Corey was sitting in the prison reception area and they were waiting outside, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland overruled the judge and ordered him re-arrested.
His lawyers have announced that they will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. But this is a time consuming process that can consume a year or more.
In 2011 Martin Corey told The Lurgan Mail that “I have been in prison for nearly a year and a half, and I still haven’t been given a reason. They have put forward a number of allegations against me, and I’m not able to defend myself against any of them.”
“They say I have been seen speaking to known republicans, and that I visited a number of houses. What does that matter? It doesn’t mean I’ve done anything wrong. They have absolutely nothing on me, and that’s why they haven’t charged me.”
His partner, Lynda Magee, said that “He does not know what he has done and has been told nothing about why he is being held He has already served his time and he was willing to do it. But now he is being held for no reason.”
Martin Corey is a member of Republican Sinn Fein, a legal political party throughout Ireland. They are opposed to the Good Friday Agreement because they believe it perpetuates British rule in Northern Ireland. Republican Sinn Fein is almost universally believed to be affiliated with the Continuity IRA in the same way that Sinn Fein was traditionally affiliated with the IRA. This can be used to justify imprisoning Martin Corey because he is a “dissident republican” and a threat to the peace process.
But people on both sides of the Atlantic who have little or no sympathy with Martin Corey’s politics are demanding that he be released.
Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, met the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, in the Dáil (Irish parliament) and urged him to free Martin Corey. Adams stated that “Martin Corey was released by the courts… [He] should be released and I put it very strongly …that this should be done.”
At their last convention, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, the largest Irish-American organizationm passed a resolution “that the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America condemns Owen Patterson [the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland] for the continued imprisonment of Martin Corey and urge that be released immediately on unconditional bail. “
Like Martin Corey Marian Price was imprisoned without charge or trial on the basis of secret evidence until she was released in May after her heath was all but broken. They are the most recent targets of the ongoing policy of interning political prisoners.
Martin Corey is only one more victim of the permanent human rights emergency in Northern Ireland. Just in the last few months:
— Stephen Murney has been charged with “possession of materials of use to terrorists” for taking photographs of the Northern Ireland police in action.
— The police tried to intimidate a key witness in order to prevent Brendan McConville and John Paul Wooten from appealing their conviction.
— In May, John Downey was suddenly charged with a 1982 bombing when he went to London from his home in Donegal.
We will need to build campaigns for each of them. If Marian Price is at home today, it is only because there was a very public, very determined campaign to set her free both in Ireland and throughout the world.
As essential as campaigns for individual prisoners are, it’s no longer enough to campaign for one or another of the political prisoners. Both in Ireland and the US we need to try to broaden our campaign to include as many prisoners as possible and challenge the whole attack on basic human rights. Otherwise there will be more political prisoners in the very near future.
As Northern Ireland civil rights leader Bernadette Devlin McAliskey put it “The Good Friday Agreement promised and end to this abuse of human rights and democracy. It is long past time it delivered on this promise. It is also time the international power players who created this deformity of democracy held it to account.”
Posted by Jim on July 1, 2013
by Anthony McIntyre (for the Pensive Quill)
Yesterday, 36 years after his original conviction, Pat Livingstone was acquitted of killing Samuel Llewellyn in West Belfast in 1975. Mr Llewellyn, a resident of the Shankill Road, was shot dead by the IRA after being kidnapped while carrying out emergency repairs to homes in the area in the wake of a loyalist bomb attack. It became known as the “Good Samaritan killing”.
Looking at a photograph of ‘Big Liv’ yesterday after his acquittal was soothing, seemingly far removed from the days when it was customary for a West Belfast man to merely turn up in a suit and as a result be labelled ‘the accused.’
Now the worm has turned and Liv stands vindicated, able to point the finger at those who conspired to unjustly secure a worthless conviction.
The accused in the case of Samuel Llewellyn are the British judiciary and the RUC.
It was clear to everybody remotely interested from the outset that the charge against Pat Livingstone was tenuous to say the least. Convicted on a concocted verbal statement he was fallaciously said to have made outside the jurisdiction of the RUC, it was easy after that for the legal process that disposed of unwanted members of the public to grind into action. Equipped with neither brake nor reverse gear, the conveyor belt trundled on relentlessly until justice had been pulverised.
Prejudice not evidence was sufficient to call it in a Diplock Court.
Other than immediate family few cared about an unsafe conviction.
Immediately after the Llewellyn killing Pat Livingstone had been the target of a smear campaign by members of the Provisional Movement making it clear to all and sundry that it was hanging him out to dry.
Livingstone was a former internee so it was all too easy to presume his culpability rather than prove it. Conferring on him the status of an unwanted member of the public made it all the easier to remove him from public view. Journalists were whispered to from Provisional offices and when the judge sentenced him to serve the rest of his natural life in prison, (illegally as well), there was a collective shrug of indifference. ‘Throw away the key’ was the cry from the British and unionist establishment, made sufficiently loud to drown out the sound of other concerns.
In prison Liv endured the ardours of the blanket protest and because of the sentence he received was unable to attend the funeral of his 14 year old sister Julie who was brutally killed by British state forces the same evening Frank Hughes died on hunger strike.
I never met him during the blanket. We were held throughout in separate blocks. Once it was over, we became close prison friends. Not of the temperament to be academically inclined – that type of discipline had little appeal to him – he was extremely intelligent. Armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge he sustained himself throughout his lengthy spell of imprisonment by reading every type of literature, an activity he combined with following the progress of Glasgow Celtic whom he adored. He was wickedly sarcastic and the two of us shared a wry perspective on jail matters, rarely showing the slightest inclination to take at face value anything from officialdom, whether Provisional or penal.
Once coming back from the visits in 1982 in a prison van he was being dropped off at his block before me. As he was about to get out he turned around and backed out, gesturing to Willie McGrath of Kincora infamy while commenting to me ‘don’t get out with your arse facing him.’
Whether the prisoners or the screws guarding us laughed most is still something I have yet to figure out. But that was Liv, quick and never one to miss an opportunity to make a witty remark.
On rare occasions in our lives we have written to each other, usually when the chips were down for one or the other. That affinity would never have stopped him ripping the back out of me. Typical Liv, just his way, as natural and as frequent as Irish rain.
There was no justification for the killing of Samuel Llewellyn. A non combatant, he happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. What his family thought they knew about his death has now been shattered by the combined efforts of the RUC and British judiciary in securing a verdict for which there was no justification. Its role often overlooked, the northern judiciary was complicit in crimes against society and it is unfortunate that no proper investigation has ever been conducted into its role. The judiciary was as cavalier about law and rights as Anglo Irish bankers were about the economy. And now the relentless determination of a former blanket man has, in the court of public opinion, moved judges from the bench to the dock.
Posted by Jim on June 28, 2013
June 27, 2013
Dear Senator,
As the National President of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in America Inc., the oldest and largest Irish American organization in the United States, I send you the sincere thanks on the Senate’s resounding passage of Senate Bill No. S. 744, Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013. On behalf of our many thousands of members and their families across the US and in our home state, New York,I offer the heartiest congratulations to you, your colleague Senator Schumer, the Gang of Eight, and all the Senators who supported the Bill, for championing our Nation’s need to realistically address immigration reform. Senator, both you and your staff have our gratitude for your dedication to ending the disparity that was created when Irish visa quotas were removed in the 1965 US Immigration and Nationality Act and in aiding our 50,000 Irish undocumented.
We feel that these contributions to the security and reform measures engendered in the current Bill lead us to confidently and respectfully urge House members to pass this legislation.
Yours truly,
Brendan Moore
Posted by Jim on June 27, 2013
This summer, I am proud to host another great line up of concerts and invite music lovers and neighbors to be a part of these great evenings of music. It’s time to grab a beach chair, or a blanket, and head to our local parks on most Tuesday and W
ednesday evenings.