Collusion claims vindicated
Statement by Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, President, Republican Sinn Féin
The police Ombudsman’s report deals almost entirely with post-Provo and loyalist ceasefire killings in one small area of north Belfast . What of the previous 25 years and the rest of the Six Counties?
This report bears out what Republican Sinn Féin has been saying for decades. It is only in the recent past that Leinster House politicians through the Joint-Oireachtas Committee have investigated such collusion and have agreed with the Republican accounts of British forces collusion with loyalist death squads.
The O’Loan Report admits that the collusion went right to the top of the RUC/PSNI. Three Assistant Chief Constables and a number of Chief Superintendents have been involved.
It is also admitted that Special Branch officers who ran British government licensed assassins are still in the PSNI/RUC. Yet the British supremo, Peter Hain, has dismissed such murder and mayhem as “in the past”.
With regard to the future, it has been officially stated that the MI5 will be responsible for intelligence gathering on Republicans and will, presumably, be employing informers.
The MI5 will not, we have been told, be subject to investigation by the Ombudsman’s office. Accordingly, the way is open for a recurrence of collusion, murder and related crimes.
In addition it must be remembered that this office is a British government created institution and therefore under British control, which was no restraint in the past.
Raymond McCord is to be congratulated on his persistence in seeking the publication of the facts of his son’s murder.
But what of the deaths in a similar fashion of over 1,000 innocent and uninvolved nationalists and several hundred unionist civilian non-combatants at the hands of such death squads? There is still a dark, murky past to be revealed.
ENDS
