A damning Police Ombudsman’s report into the targeting and murder of Catholics in South Belfast in the 1990s has found "collusive behaviour" between the police service at the time, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), and loyalist murder gangs.
Families of those who were murdered and injured in the shootings – including the Sean Graham bookies’ massacre in February 1992 when five men and boys were shot dead by the UFF – said the Police Ombudsman’s findings vindicate their claims that the police colluded with loyalists in the murder of their loved ones.
Speaking after the families met with the Police Ombudsman, Sean Graham Bookmakers survivor Mark Sykes said: “This is a long report, which will take families days to process and come to terms with. Immediately families are shocked to read in the report that eight British state agents were involved in 27 murders and attempted murders.
"These agents were clearly identified as being involved in multiple murders at the earliest stages of police murder investigations. They were clearly a protected species as information about their involvement in killings was not shared with investigating officers and information regarding their involvement was routinely destroyed."
The Police Ombudsman’s report looked into the Sean Graham bookies’ murders; the attempted murder of Samuel Caskey October 1990; the murder of Harry Conlon October 1991; the murder of Aidan Wallace December 1991; the murder of Michael Gilbride November 1992; the murder of Martin Moran October 1993; the murder of Theresa Clinton April 1994; and the murder of Larry Brennan January 1998.
Among the shocking details, the report found:
- Routine destruction of evidence
- Routine destruction of documentation
- Routine failures to share information on murder suspects by RUC Special Branch
- Routine failures in murder investigations by CID
- Failures to investigate the known persons involved in importing and distributing weaponry from South Africa.
- Some of those involved in this importation and distribution were police informants
- 8 UDA members linked by intelligence to murders and attempted murders of 27 people. All were police informants
- Threats to the lives of Harry Conlon and Jim Clinton were not passed on
- 2 x SA80 rifles + 2 x 9mm browning pistols were “stolen” from Malone UDR Barracks and used in multiple attacks
- A .357 Magnum Ruger RUC revolver was “stolen” and used in 7 shootings including 3 murders
- Special Branch gave “deactivated” weapons to UDA members whom they knew could reactivate the same weapons
- RUC Special Branch routinely gave active weapons to the UDA
- Routine use of informers who RUC Special Branch knew were involved in serious criminal activity up to and including murder
- Police failed to test alibis of murder suspects
- Police failed to conduct forensic investigations linking murders and murder suspects
- Appalling failures in identification processes re murder suspects and placing eye witnesses at risk, reading out eye witness names and addresses in front of suspects, and ID parades with no screen between eye witnesses and known suspects.
Paul Conlon, son of Harry Conlon, said the report contains “devastating details regarding the killing of our father”.
“My elderly mother sat and listened to the Police Ombudsman describe how a suspect in the murder of my father but incredibly never arrested, we believe to be a RUC agent, was wearing a coat which contained gun residue and blood which was examined in relation to the killing of Aidan Wallace, but was not examined against the blood of my father. This is just one startling and devastating finding.”
Siobhán Clinton, daughter of Theresa Clinton said: “It is clear in reading this report that there were systemic and deliberate practices of collusion in the killing of my mother. There were multiple threats to my father and our family home which were not passed on to my father. My mother was murdered with an RUC weapon, a weapon used in other murders.
"The RUC officers who were involved in “investigating” my mother’s murder refused to cooperate with the Police Ombudsman. The Police Ombudsman said a senior RUC officer decided not to warn my father and that had he been warned she finds that my mother’s murder could have been prevented.”
Solicitor Niall Murphy, who represents the families, said the report by Marie Anderson is a prime example of why the British Government’s legacy proposals can never be allowed to happen.
“They don’t want any more 348 page reports which condemn their police officers for colluding with multiple murderers.
“That is why they want to close this office and that is why these proposals can never be allowed to happen. This can never be allowed to become law.
“The British Government should be ashamed of itself today when one reads this report and one considers what their published proposals are to do. They don’t want any more operation XYZ reports.
“We have 400 other complainants awaiting reports like this. That is why they want to cauterize their liability and shut up the shop of the Police Ombudsman. That cannot be allowed to happen.”
One of those whose murder is covered in the report is that of 22-year-old Aidan Wallace, who was shot dead by UFF gunmen who burst into the Devenish Arms pub in the Finaghy area on 22 December 1991. An eight-year-old child sustained eye injuries in the attack.
In an all too familiar story from the time, a British Army Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) checkpoint just yards from the entrance to the pub was removed minutes before the killers struck.
In their first interview since the murder 31 years ago, his family are still looking for answers.
“We have never spoken to the press since it happened and we felt that today, after all of the families met with the Police Ombudsman, that somebody had to be here to represent Aidan,” said his sister Nuala Campbell.
“We have always known that there was collusion and I think the other families would agree with that. I suppose now that it is in the news, everyone else will know that it has been confirmed that there was collusion in my brother's killing. Some accountability has taken place but there are still more questions to be asked and to be answered.
“We would like to think that those questions will be answered fully. It has taken us 30 years to get this far and hopefully it won’t take another 30.
“One of our main issues is that the UDR checkpoint had been removed from Finaghy bridge just before Aidan’s murder. It had been there for over two years, every Sunday.
“There had been a shooting the night before and the police should have been on high alert. One of our biggest questions is, why was this removed?”
Aidan’s father, Colin Wallace added: “I haven’t had a chance to digest everything which is in the report, not only for our family but for the other people within the Ombudsman’s investigation. It appears to be all part of the same story.”
The families’ support group Relatives for Justice said the report cannot, and must not, be viewed in isolation.
"There are clear thematic links which point to how RUC Special Branch operated in all of the collusion reports released by the Police Ombudsman to date. They all detail destruction of key evidence and all record the routine destruction of intelligence records. They all record how persons were not warned of imminent threats to life."
Looking on at the political fall-out from the report, Raymond McCord, whose 22-year-old son, a Protestant, was murdered by the loyalist UVF in 1997, hit out at the Unionist response to the report.
"In 2007 the Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan exposed collusion in the murder of my son Raymond Jr and others,” he said. “I'm still waiting on our unionist parties to call a debate in Westminster.
"Imagine in London if the police were found to be working hand in glove with terrorists and 27 murders were committed in one part of London and at least 20 in another part of London, would politicians ignore it or call for an inquiry?”
"Would the Chief Constable be sacked? Would the Home Secretary be sacked? But remember this is Northern Ireland and life is cheap to some political parties and means nothing even if proven to bigots, idiots, politicians and the security agencies.
"As a member of the Unionist community, I fully support the Sean Graham's bookies massacre victims' families and it is way past the time when unionist politicians did the same. They disgrace us."
