● Loughinisland fatalities: (Clockwise) Daniel McCreanor (59), Adrian Rogan (34), Malcolm Jenkinson (52), Eamon Byrne (39), Patrick O’Hare (35) and Barney Greene (87)
» Michael McMonagle
AN INVESTIGATION by the Police Ombudsman into the murder of six men by the unionist Ulster Volunteer Force in Loughinisland in 1994 has confirmed there was collusion between British agents, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and loyalist death squads in the massacre.
Six men were killed and five more wounded in the UVF gun attack on The Heights Bar in Loughinisland, County Down, on 18 June 1994 while watching an Ireland World Cup soccer match.
The six men cut down by the UVF as they watched the football were Daniel McCreanor (59), Adrian Rogan (34), Malcolm Jenkinson (52), Eamon Byrne (39), Patrick O’Hare (35) and Barney Greene (87).
● Scene of the UVF massacre that was organised, carried out or aided by British Government agents
The report published today by Police Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire states:
“When viewed collectively, I have no hesitation in unambiguously determining that collusion is a significant feature of the Loughinisland murders.”
The catalogue of collusion contained in the report includes:-
The involvement of agents in the importation of weapons used in the murders;
The role of agents directly involved in the attack;
The active participation of British state agents in the killings;
Collusion between the RUC and UVF resulting in suspects being tipped off that they were to be arrested;
Failure to follow up information;
“Catastrophic failures” in the investigation of suspects.
The Police Ombudsman also found that there had been “fundamental failings” in the investigation into the Loughinisland murders.
“I can only conclude that the desire to protect informants may have influenced policing activity and undermined the police investigation into those who ordered and carried out the attack,” the Ombudsman said.
“When combined with a flawed investigation of the Loughinisland murders this had undermined the investigation into those responsible for the crimes and ultimately justice for the victims and survivors.”
The Ombudsman’s report states that the RUC Special Branch had information that the assault rifles imported from South Africa by British agents which were used in the attack on the Heights Bar had been stored at a farm in Glenanne used by the notorious ‘Glenanne Gang’, which was made up of loyalists, state agents and serving soldiers and police officers in the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment and the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
The farm at Glenanne was also used as a base for the Dublin and Monaghan bomb attacks in 1974.
The families of those killed in the UVF attack have welcomed today’s report.
◼︎ South Down Sinn Féin MLA Chris Hazzard, who has worked closely with the families, said:
“This report from the Police Ombudsman into the Loughinisland massacre reveals the undeniable and shocking scale of collusion between British agents, the RUC and the UVF gang who carried out the attack.
“No one can now deny that the British Government and its forces actively colluded with loyalist death squads to murder Irish citizens and then went to great lengths to protect those responsible.”
Dismay over flag intimidation and provocative march plans
Sinn Fein has blamed the PSNI for “reneging on promises” after loyalist
flags were erected in a mixed area of south Belfast.
Unionist and loyalist flags were placed on lampposts this week along the
Upper Ormeau Road ahead of the Protestant marching season.
Almost 57 per cent of people in the area are Catholic while 27 per cent
are Protestant, according to the recent census.
Two years ago, the PSNI said that in future the flying of loyalist flags
in the mixed community would be treated as a “breach of the peace”, but
backed down last year in the face of loyalist threats.
On Tuesday, Sinn Fein’s new finance minister Mairtin O Muilleoir
criticised the PSNI over the flags once again being erected in the area
and said it “represents reneging by the PSNI on promises to the
community”.
Claire Hanna, SDLP assembly member for South Belfast, also expressed
concern over the new flags.
“It is frustrating that once again shared areas like the Ormeau Road and
Lisburn Road have been covered in flags six weeks before the Twelfth of
July,” she said.
“This continues to be a source of frustration for residents who are
forced to live under the shadow of these unwelcome flags on main
thoroughfares for so long.”
Responding to the controversy, the PSN said removing flags isn’t their
responsibility.
PSNI Chief Superintendent Chris Noble said police will only remove flags
where there are “substantial risks to public safety”.
Meanwhile, the Orange Order is planning to hold contentious parades in
nationalist areas in another action likely to provoke. The nationalist
town of Ballycastle in County Antrim has been selected as a venue for
one of 18 main parades to mark the Twelfth of July celebrations.
Located in the heart of the Glens of Antrim, the picturesque seaside
town has been the centre of a parades dispute in the past.
The order has also revealed plans to host a massive parade through
Portadown in County Armagh. Both it and a similar march in Kilkeel in
County Down have been given `flagship’ status and are expected to be
among the biggest Orange parades held across the north.
Tensions in Portadown have been high in the past after nationalists
opposed Orange Order parades passing along the nationalist Garvaghy
Road. Nationalist residents on the Garvaghy Road have described Orange
Order proposals to complete a banned parade through the area as
“absurd”.
In a statement the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition said insistence on
finishing the 1998 parade “demonstrates complete disregard for the views
of those who would be most directly affected – residents of the area and
their families”.
The spokesman said a generation of young nationalists know nothing of
the dispute.
“Since 1998, and particularly from the start of this millennium, the
rerouting of contentious marches away from the Garvaghy Road by the
Parades Commission has meant that our community – and the wider
community – has enjoyed successive peaceful summers,” the statement
said.
“An entire generation of young people has grown up and reached adulthood
without having to experience the humiliation and fear, tension and
violence, or the physical sieges that accompanied those unwanted
sectarian marches of the mid- and late 1990’s through this community.
“Residents in our neighbourhoods now enjoy family and community life in
relative peace and tranquillity. Our community has moved on, Portadown
District needs to do likewise.”
The statement said demands to complete the 1998 parade lack sensitivity.
“Demanding to complete the 1998 parade is not only completely absurd, it
is also highly insensitive and demonstrates a continued refusal by the
Orange Order to assume any responsibility for the violent events
associated with Drumcree in the 1990’s,” it said.
“The Orange Order’s parade of July 1998 is in the past. It is over. That
parade along Garvaghy Road was found to be totally unjustifiable
eighteen years ago. Such a parade has not been justifiable in any of the
intervening years since.”
It is poignantly fitting that the truth about Loughinisland has emerged
at this precise time. Tonight, in towns and villages across Northern
Ireland, people will gather in their local pubs for the start of Euro
2016.
The television screens are bigger and brighter than they were for the
1994 World Cup, but the atmosphere will be the same. The sense of
excitement, anticipation and pride will be just as strong as it was on
that fateful night in the Heights Bar in the Co Down village.
We can see the men so clearly, their eyes glued to the tiny television,
praying that Ireland would hold its 1-0 lead over Italy.
They never stood a chance when the two gunmen in balaclavas and boiler
suits burst into the bar. The UVF assassins fled laughing as the bodies
of their victims lay piled on top of each other on the bloodstained
floor.
We know that the men who pulled the trigger were evil personified and
filled with sectarian hatred.
One shouted “Fenian b******s!” as he opened up indiscriminately.
The perpetrators were liars too, claiming that a republican meeting had
been taking place in the pub. But we expect no more from paramilitaries
whose hands are stained with the blood of innocents.
It is the State, in this case, that stands shamed and condemned. The
words of the Police Ombudsman, Dr Michael Maguire, were unequivocal. “I
have no hesitation in saying collusion was a significant feature of the
Loughinisland murders,” he said.
In Dr Maguire, we have an Ombudsman as forthright and fearless as Nuala
O’Loan.
He detailed the “catastrophic failings” of the police investigation.
How the names of suspects were known within 24 hours, but arrests were
delayed.
How one of the suspects was an informer. How the murder inquiry was
riddled with errors and omissions.
At the time, those who alleged police collusion in paramilitary attacks
were criticised and isolated. Their claims were dismissed as propaganda.
We now sadly know that the “conspiracy theorists” too often were right.
An appalling vista of State collusion – in loyalist and republican
murders – is unfolding before our eyes.
This is not a matter on which we should divide along sectarian lines. As
many Protestant as Catholic lives were lost as a result of collusion. As
many IRA, as UDA and UVF, godfathers were protected species.
Pictures of the Loughinisland families’ huge Press conference yesterday,
where they sat holding photos of their loved ones, were heartbreaking.
They may have recognition now, but for so long these families’ struggle
for the truth was a lonely one.
The legacy of the conflict is not just a matter confined to the older
generation. The powerful words of Emma Rogan, who was just eight when
her father, Adrian, was shot dead in the Heights, is testimony to that.
John Major, who was Prime Minister at the time of the massacre, was in
town yesterday campaigning against Brexit.
Rather than lecturing us on the rights or wrongs of leaving the EU, he
would have been far better apologising to the families for the State’s
failures, as their solicitor Niall Murphy suggested.
When I think of Loughinisland, first and foremost I see Barney Green
with his pipe and hat. Aged 87, he was the oldest victim of the
Troubles.
To mark the sense of occasion, he had put on his best suit to watch the
match that night. Little did he think he would die in it.
We owe Barney and Adrian Rogan, Daniel McCreanor, Eamon Byrne, Patrick
O’Hare and Malcolm Jenkinson justice.
Pressure for Britain to face war crimes tribunal over collusion
There are fresh calls in the north of Ireland for a much stronger
approach to the issue of state collusion following confirmation that it
played a significant role in the 1994 Loughinisland massacre.
After decades of cover-up, one complete whitewash and years of deep
hostility from public officials in Belfast and London, a Police
Ombudsman’s report on Thursday found that state agents were indeed
involved in the random killing of six Catholic civilians, which was then
covered up.
The murders took place in the Heights Bar in the County Down village
when a death-squad opened fire on people watching the Ireland soccer
team play Italy during the 1994 World Cup in America. Gunmen in
balaclavas burst into the bar and shouted about “Fenians” before firing
indiscriminate.
The attack took place amid negotiations between the Provisional IRA and
the British government to being about a ceasefire, which was announced
ten weeks later.
The new Ombudsman’s report, the second by that office on Loughinisland,
was described the Guardian newspaper as “a devastating report that is
likely to challenge previous official narratives of the nature of the
conflict”.
It detailed a catalogue of collusion before and after the massacre,
which included the importation of the weapons used in the murders and
scores of others by British agents; the direct involvement of police
agents in the planning of the killings; and ‘catastrophic failures’ in
the investigation of suspects and the destruction of evidence.
In an unusually strong statement, Ombudsman Michael Maguire said he had
“no hesitation in unambiguously determining that collusion is a
significant feature of the Loughinisland murders”.
He found that there was a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” by
the security forces to the use of informers.
The report comes more than four years after Mr Maguire dramatically
scrapped his predecessor Al Hutchinson’s investigation into the murders
and ordered a new inquiry into the killings. The original investigation
had been branded a whitewash by the victims’ families when it was
published in 2011.
Former Republican MP Bernadette McAliskey, a survivor of another such
attack, said the findings support a potential action at the
International Criminal Court in The Hague.
“When we look at Bloody Sunday, Balllymurphy, Stakeknife and what is
beginning to emerge in the loyalist community as well, there is case for
war crimes,” she said.
“The British Government used its military to perpetuate a 40 year war
here. It used its undercover secrecy to keep it going and lied with
impunity about its own actions.
“When you go back and look at what was happening during the peace
process, it was ambiguity. It was fudge and they hoped they’d get away
with it. We have never had truth, never mind justice.”
Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams called on the 26 County government to put
pressure on Downing Street to “open its books” on collusion following
the report.
He also urged Dublin to demand the British government hold the long
promised inquiry into the murder of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane.
“A step change in the Irish government’s response to collusion is
urgently needed. As a co-equal guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement,
the Irish government must use all of the resources… including the
United Nations, to exert pressure on the British government.”
The UVF has been accused of intimidation after it visited the homes of Catholics and ethnic minorities in east Belfast before loyalist flags were erected outside houses
Councillor Graham Craig
The UVF has been accused of intimidation after it visited the homes of Catholics and ethnic minorities in east Belfast before loyalist flags were erected outside houses.
Residents said they were told that the flags would be the new Somme flag created by the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC).
The LCC created the banner to commemorate the centenary of the World War One battle.
Its launch last month was supported by the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando.
But in the end, the flags put up along the street alternated between Union flags and others bearing a UVF logo.
It has the UVF motto “For God and Ulster” and has the words “East Belfast Regiment” printed on a crest with the date 1914.
The Somme was not until two years later, and the date appears to commemorate the Larne gun-running — the historic gun smuggling operation by the UVF to oppose Home Rule.
While it had been hoped that the new LCC flag would be adopted widely by loyalists, there was dissent from within the ranks when the plan was announced.
Some hardline loyalists said that they would defy their bosses by flying paramilitary flags from lamp posts during the summer instead.
Sources in the east Belfast UVF were reported as saying it would be “business as usual”. One said in May: “We are not paying a blind bit of attention to the LCC. UVF flags will be going up for the Twelfth as normal.”
A source told the Belfast Telegraph last night: “On Monday night, the UVF knocked doors in the area and invited people to have the flag erected outside their homes.
“It was put as a request — but one that wasn’t to be refused. People didn’t feel that there was anything voluntary about what was being asked.
“They were told that there would be no charge for the flag and, if they didn’t have flag-poles, brackets could be put up for them.”
The source said that loyalists also called at the homes of Catholics and ethnic minorities who did not want the flag to be displayed.
The area was once solidly unionist but demographic changes in recent years mean that there are now ethnic minorities — mainly eastern Europeans — living in rented accommodation.
An increasing number of Catholic first-time buyers have also purchased properties in the lower Ravenhill Road area because they are relatively cheap and the location is so convenient to the city centre.
The source said: “These people don’t want loyalist flags outside their homes, but they have basically been left with no choice.
“Some residents have no problem with the flag, but those who do now feel very uncomfortable. The UVF seems to have ordered thousands of these flags and is determined to put them up.
“It wants roads in the Ravenhill area lined with the flag for the parade to mark the Somme’s 100th anniversary on July 1.”
Local Ulster Unionist councillor Graham Craig said: “Were I a Catholic or member of an ethnic minority community, I would be very frightened if the UVF came to the door and asked if I wanted a flag displayed that is so closely associated with paramilitaries.
“This is people’s private property and that must be respected.”
