Remembering 1981 – RUC desecrate Patsy O’Hara’s body

WHEN the RUC hijacked the corpse of Hunger Striker Patsy O’Hara and it was eventually recovered from the RUC in Derry last Friday morning, 22 May, eight hours after his death in Long Kesh prison camp, his family noticed gashes and marks on his face, as if it had been scratched and beaten.

This desecration was the climax of distress to and harassment of the O’Hara family which had, like the smear campaign against the McCreesh family, particularly intensified in the last days of their son’s life.

After Patsy O’Hara died, Long Kesh Prison Governor Stanley Hilditch told Mr James O’Hara that his son’s body would be brought to Omagh and he would have to phone the RUC to find out where it could be collected.

However, at 4:40am, Friday 22 May, the O’Haras received a phone call from friends in Derry to the house they were staying at in Belfast.

Patsy’s brother, Seán Séamus, explains:

“The RUC had phoned Derry with a message for us, ‘If you want to collect this thing, you had better collect it before daylight, otherwise it is going to get dropped at O’Haras’ front doorstep.’

“They said they were not allowing any daylight processions and if we attempted that then what they would do was take the body and drop it by helicopter to Derry.

“They were very, very abusive the whole time.

“The undertakers collected the body from Omagh at about six o’clock in the morning and I took the body from the undertakers to the house.

“When the coffin was opened, the first thing I noticed was that Patsy had a lot of marks around his nose – very deep cuts which he should not have had. He had bruising on his eyes and apparently there were a lot of marks on his body which appeared to be cigarette burns. I noticed it and I said: ‘Look, that was not there.’

“It was said to me that maybe in the heat of the moment I did not notice it. But the minute my mother walked in, the minute my father walked in, the minute Jim Daly walked in, the minute my sister walked in, everyone of them said, ‘What happened to Patsy? There were no marks on the body.’

“So what I think may have happened was that they threw him head-first into a Land Rover or into a helicopter (we don’t know which transported the body to Omagh). That would allow for the nose to be broken. But I do not know how he got the other bruises.”