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24 October 2013

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Ex-RUC cover-up in Police Ombudsman probes of killings during conflict

‘Will politicians who claim to be supporters of the rule of law speak out and condemn what is clearly an attempt to frustrate the work of the Police Ombudsman by former members of the RUC?’

IN AN ANNOUNCEMENT that would spark international headlines were it to have been issued anywhere else in the world, the association for police officers retired from the Royal Ulster Constabulary has told the Justice Minister it will no longer encourage members to co-operate with Police Ombudsman investigations into killings during the conflict.

The Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers’ Association statement is in response to cases involving possible breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

These cases include the deaths in 1988 of three neighbours in a flats complex in Derry who were killed in an IRA bomb aimed at British soldiers searching the area.

In July, the Police Ombudsman published a report confirming that RUC officers held back from alerting people in the area about their fears of a bomb. The Police Ombudsman said that although responsibility for the deaths rested with the IRA, the police had failed to protect the people who were killed.

Sinn Féin spokesperson on Policing Gerry Kelly MLA said:

“Many will feel that the timing of this statement is clearly designed to attract attention away from the media coverage of the activities of the ‘Glenanne Gang’ and in wider political terms to influence the on going Haass Talks into dealing with the past.

“In any other society, an announcement by former serving police officers that they will not co-operate with a state agency investigating murder would be seen an as outrage. But given the reality that the RUC Special Branch in particular was involved in the control and direction of loyalist gangs for years and in the cover-up of their activities this move will not come as a surprise.

“The culture of concealment and cover-up which is being revealed very publicly in this statement is the very same culture and practice which gave rise to collusion, the torture of detainees, the extraction of forced confessions and the framing of innocent people by the RUC over many years.

“It is precisely why policing in the North had to be transformed. It is why the malign influence of the RUC Special Branch had to be broken for a new beginning to policing here to be achieved.

“Victims’ families will now watch closely the reaction of unionist politicians to this statement. Will politicians who claim to be supporters of the rule of law speak out and condemn what is clearly an attempt to frustrate the work of the Police Ombudsman by former members of the RUC?” 

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