Formal Complaint About The RUC Investigation Into Claudy And The Role Of Sate Agents.

Statement made after a delegation made a formal complaint, to the PSNI, about  the failure of both the RUC and PSNI  to properly investigate the facts surrounding the Claudy Bombings.  They also called for the investigation into the use of state agents connected with it and other terrorist incidents.

“We are here today to demand that the Police Service of Northern Ireland properly investigate the the Claudy Bombings and those involved. The previous investigations, have been mere cover ups of the true facts surrounding the murders on that day, and the failure of the police to act against hose responsible led to the murder of a large number of other innocent victims in North Antrim and County Londonderry. These include the murder of policemen, UDR members and civilians at the hands of those responsible for Claudy. Those responsible include a number of state agents who were allowed to carry on with their terror campaign while having confessed to murder. They would less than a year later bomb Coleraine, this is why we have come here to make an official complaint.”

Concillor William Blair, David Nicholl – Ulster News – and Adrian Eakin stated that nothing short of the establishment of an independent inquiry, could help establish the truth about what happened that day – 31st July 1972 and the subsequent cover-ups.

Adrian Eakin ended by stating:

 “We want a public inquiry the same as the Bloody Sunday people got. At the end of the day, they lost relatives. They’ve got most of the answers.”

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GIVE US BARABBAS

This ARTICLE was FIRST posted in the the pensive quill blog.   it deals with the question that we all will need to answer: should PROSECUTIONs be for gone in the search for TRUTH?  This is What the real issues are  that need to be confronted by each and everyone of us, if it can, the TRUTH, be UNCOVERED  at all. It is time to OPEN the debate on what should be the future of  the  victims’ SEARCH for TRUTH and the role of those who played a part in PARAMILITARY activity.  

Should a Truth Commission be offered or would this compound the hurt?  For some it will help bring a form of closure, for others it will bring them suffering afresh but this is the minefield of Ulster’s past.  

‘No more inquests and no more prosecutions with  respect to Troubles-related deaths.’ John Larkin 

The North’s Attorney General has plunged into the turbulent waters of the area’s conflict strewn past where dangerous currents, their sensors activated by the sound of a fresh idea punctuating stale environs, still threaten to pull a career under. In acting as he did John Larkin has shown more fortitude than most, in particular the political class which has been dipping its toe into the muck for the best part of 15 years, and pulling it back out even faster. The political sentinels have demonstrated with unremitting consistency how not to turn at every turning point, in those memorable words, never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

In arguing that a line should be drawn under the past Larkin now finds himself somewhat isolated, discursively at least whatever else may be going on in the undergrowth. The political parties see some advantage in collectively distancing themselves from his comments, while the victims’ lobby, for whom any embracive outcome of substance is not within the gift of society, feels as unfulfilled as ever. For those left to grieve, loss is a vacuum that simply cannot be filled.

The victims’ lobby has emotive reason to find the proposal anathema, but the political class should desist from the displays of mock horror it has acted out for constituency consumption. It has long known that the system does not work yet, in a rare show of unity, has clamoured to ensure it stays in place while paying lip service to the need for change.  Barra McGrory, albeit less bluntly than Larkin, previously tried to steer the debate in a similar direction so there is no room for the vacuous claim that it came out of left field. As Director of Public Prosecutions he is not an insignificant figure. Upton Sinclair’s biting quip easily sums up the politicians: ‘it is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.’

Larkin has simply proposed placing a STOP signal in front of a vehicle already stalled, calling for ‘a halt to all probes into offences carried out before the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998’ on the largely functional grounds that they are subject to the law of diminishing returns.

No imprimatur from a Harvard law professor is needed in order for this conclusion to pass muster. The countless victims still demanding redress illustrate the current deficiency better than anything else.

John Larkin has made the right call in terms of prosecutions. Not because his proposal approaches any notion of perfect justice: far from it. He proposes not the ideal outcome but the optimum one in terms of what is achievable within the constrained range of possibilities presently available in the North. There is no shortage of irony in a lawyer having to remind politicians of Otto Von Bismark’s timeless pearl that often ‘politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best.’

Although I have a dog in the fight due to the Boston College affair, which alone is sufficient to make me thoroughly indisposed towards prosecutions, my views on a prosecutorial role in respect of the past were formed prior to the Boston archive becoming a hotly fought over issue. Reflecting on the Saville Inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday I commentedthat:

Although there are enough who think for genuine reasons that prosecutions should result from the Saville findings I am not convinced there is any point in journeying down that path. A crucially damning verdict would be a simple, concise, unequivocal declaration from the British government that the act was mass murder, that the Widgery Report was a whitewash and that the British government behaviour after the event made it, at the very least, an accomplice after the fact, responsible for covering up and perverting the course of justice. That would be much more beneficial than some woolly verdict of unlawful killing or manslaughter which is probably the only outcome from court proceedings.

Nothing since has emerged that would lead to a change of heart. Prosecutions have been a one way process, a weapon of legitimation employed by the British state against non state combatants designed to absolve it, implicate its opponents and distance itself from ‘lethal allies.’

The continued insistence on prosecutions from whatever quarter is made in the sure knowledge of the seriously limiting effect it will impose on wider truth recovery. It raises suspicions that much of it is deliberately designed to inhibit the emergence of anything other than a controlled circumscribed truth; to so refine and rarify truth through legalese that its value to society will be severely diminished. Politicians wielding the stick of retribution are prone to poke the eye of revelation, so that society in general and victims in particular, will see less rather than more.

John Larkin has outlined a method that if stringent in both its application and oversight procedure, has the potential to unlock more truth than is likely to see the light of day under any other set of proposals. As a rule uncomfortable truth will generally come out in spite of us rather than because of us. Larkin in opting to spite us, has charted a potential course towards that moment best described by psychiatrist, Dr Philip McGarry, ‘when the denials, the half-truths and the lies will no longer, in essence, cut the mustard.’

Still they shout ‘No, not him! Give us Barabbas.’

New Demands For Claudy Cover-up To Be Investigated

This is a statement that has bee released by a Ballymoney TUV councillor, William Blair, calling for a public inquiry.  We hope this is the first of many and that all politicians will join the fight for justice for the victims.

We in the Ulster News, welcome the statement from William Blair TUV in relation to the demand for a full independent inquiry into the Claudy Bombing, in conjunction with the many statements made by relatives and other political parties over many years, the latest admission made by Ivan Cooper discloses sufficient new evidence on its own to merit a reinvestigation of the facts by the PSNI and The HET.

It is a disgrace that HMG continues to block with others in authority these demands for a full independent investigation into this atrocity. We demand in the interests of fairness and natural justice that those who so long have covered up these events will now rethink their positions on the matter and now grant a rigorous and full investigation into these events whilst the perpetrators are themselves still available to be questioned and prosecuted. David Nicholl

               William Blair

Press Release on Claudy Revelations

 

Forty one years ago, republican terrorists planted three bombs in the village of Claudy.  Nine people would be murdered with those devices, including women and children from all sections of the community. No one ever admitted this terrible atrocity which has left scars and hurt, that have transcended generations.  The failure of the Police to properly investigate these murders has brought about a generational victimhood in some families who have been unable to find closure.

 

There have been a number of investigations into what happened at Claudy and subsequent events surrounding it, most notably the most recent of these have uncovered that elements in the Roman Catholic Church, the RUC and the Northern Ireland Office conspired and colluded in the cover up of the involvement of a priest in these murders. The active role played by these powerful bodies in scuttling an investigation still has not been fully scrutinised. This coupled by the PSNI’s refusal to fully investigate the crimes carried out and the collusion that followed has left serious questions unanswered – this taints any localised investigation. 

 

In the aftermath of the Claudy massacre, Ivan Cooper, who was the local MP at the time, stated that:

 

This incident can only be equated with what happened on Bloody Sunday.  I cannot express words strong enough to condemn the people responsible for this terrible outrage. 

 

Those words now ring with shame, after Mr Cooper’s own revelations that a short time after the bombings, one of the perpetrators confessed to him.  In 2002, Mr Cooper stated that a mysterious figure had appeared outside his office and told him that a priest had been involved.  This was a fictitious account and, in fact, one of the bombers, who he states was a school teacher, gave him a full confession of his actions.  Mr Cooper then states that he took the murderer to meet with a senior police officer.  No charges were ever brought against this man; he was free to continue his life of terrorism.  Mr Cooper and Frank Lagan both committed and an awful act against the victims by being part of a cover-up.  I believe this was a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and that is why I will be making a formal complaint on the matter to the Police Service of Northern Ireland.  

 

Unlike Ivan Cooper, I believe his words of August 1972, Claudy should be paralleled alongside Bloody Sunday and demand that it should be investigated in the same rigorous and exhaustive manner   That is why I and some of those affected by the disgraceful actions demand that  a full and independent public inquiry into the cover-up that surrounds Claudy and those who perpetrated it. takes place.   Only then, free from interference of those who are hiding the truth can the victims find closure.

 

Councillor William Blair. 

“Victims? Don’t be melodramatic.” Claudy Cover-up Unravelling

          The Cooper Confession

“Victims? Don’t be melodramatic.”

“Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, Old Man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, Old Man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.” 

Harry Lime, The Third Man

My first recollection of the Claudy Bombings was as a young boy looking at hunting scenes in a book.  Black and white photographs of a village decimated by bombs.  It was one of those times in life when you know something has changed you but you are not quite sure what.  I never knew that I would write about or meet some of those whose lives were as decimated as Claudy by the bombs that day.  It has been a life changing experience for me.

I have heard of grief and suffering that cannot be put into words, yet somehow the story has to be told.  It is not a story with any redeeming factors, there are no heroes that come to the rescue, there is no silver lining to Claudy’s cloud , there is no happy ever after, there is no waking form the nightmare of the Claudy story.  In fact, the more you dig, the more corruption and hatred spills out before you.  The story of Claudy is not a simple one, it is and intricate web that leads to the highest political offices in Stormont and Westminster.   It is one that shows that the police were willing to allow the bombers to go free for their own ends and that politicians and church leaders were willing to cover up the murder of children.  The most disturbing thing is that those behind Claudy were free to kill again and again.

The story of Claudy does not begin there and it does not end there.  It does not involve just one priest; it does not involve one village; it involves the systematic cover-up of a large number of murders which could have been prevented.  There have now been at least four investigations into Claudy, not one of them yielding any truth on the matter, yet every detail of what happened that day is known.

For just four months, Ulster News has been investigating the truth behind what happened on the 31^st July 1972, we have meet with relatives, locals, former security force members, ex republicans and investigators. What has been uncovered is earth shattering and exposes the cover-up and collusion on a vast scale.

During one of our meeting with former Claudy residents Ulster News brought a dossier on the facts about the bombing and those involved.  The document lists the involvement of around fifteen people: the drivers, the bomb makers and those who offered logistical support. These include both men and women.  It is interesting reading. With the dossier and the knowledge of the locals, as well as the relatives, a detailed picture of all that took place is being constructed for the first time.   Five or six of the number have stood in elections for Sinn Fein and at least five have served life sentences for other murders, one nicknamed “nail bomb” has become one of the wealthiest men in Ireland – every detail of those responsible is known, yet no convictions.  It is also known that one of the drivers started to work for RUC Special Branch just after Claudy and would one day lead the PIRA in South Derry.

The most perturbing aspect of the investigation was uncovering that the Chesney gang  was under constant security force surveillance for at least a seven month period prior to the attacks.  In December 1971, Chesney had ordered a bombing in Magherafelt, three young men would die as they tried to deliver the bomb.  The priest and his parochial house were put under watch.  Despite that, he and his murderous missions continued.  The house had become an arms dump, come headquarters but no action was forthcoming.   On five occasions, permission was sought to raid the house and arrest the occupants, each time this was refused. This has led to speculation that the priest was working for some intelligence agency. Ulster News has not come across any evidence of this.  But the uses of an SB block on the house suggests that something was going on that warranted their protection.

The area from where the three young men who died in the 1971 blast came from is important, the cars used to bomb Claudy were taken there.  More importantly, the cars used in the priest’s response to his move over the border, the copycat of Claudy, one year later, Coleraine, were taken in the area too.  Coleraine was chosen because there were those there who did not want Claudy to die. This was the priest’s warning.  Chesney despite his move continued to have an active role in murder as did the other Claudy killers, some helping to form the INLA.

During one discussion about the disappearance of the files into Claudy, one individual with an insight to such matters, who was not at the meeting and was, speaking off the record, said:

“the original file is well gone, a digitised copy will exist somewhere safe in North Down, but no one will ever see it.”

These were the issues that were discussed in the presents of a community worker and a unionist politician. Coming to the close of the meeting I asked had they ever contacted Ivan Cooper.  What was said was not complimentary.  Those present told us that Cooper knew exactly who was involved in the bombing and every detail of what they had did,  they went on to say that Cooper had evidence that could convicted those guilty of mass murder.  I left perplex, if that was the case, why had he not made a public statement or personally went to the police ombudsman?

I have learned never to assume anything in the search for the truth.  I have also learnt that for some reason Claudy frightens people, they don’t want to talk about the events of that Monday morning forty one years ago.  Most have the opinion that sleeping dogs should be left to their slumber but for some of those who have suffered because of it, this simply is not an option.  Two weeks ago the former PIRA publicity spokesman confirmed that they carried out the attack.  On Sunday Ivan Cooper, after forty years of silence, admitted one of the bombers, a former school teacher, confessed to him and that he took him to meet a senior RUC officer.  In the coming weeks we will continue to look at those who had license to kill in Claudy.  Grouse beating season has  begun.