collusion – Slugger O'Toole

Police Ombudsman finds “collusive behaviour” by police in 11 loyalist murders…

Brian O'Neill on February 8, 2022, 10:51 am

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The Police Ombudsman has released her reporting into collusion between the RUC and loyalist paramilitaries. From the report overview: Mrs Anderson found that concerns about police actions expressed by bereaved families and survivors were “legitimate and justified”, and said her investigation had identified a range of collusive behaviours by police, which included: Intelligence and surveillance failings which led to loyalist paramilitaries obtaining military grade weaponry in a 1987 arms importation; A failure to warn two men of threats to their …

Spotlight on The Troubles: A Secret History (episode 5): a dirty war with unionist political support for loyalist insurrection, security service and government support for collusion (BBC One NI and BBC Four at 9pm)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on October 8, 2019, 7:16 pm

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Watching a preview of tonight’s fifth episode of Spotlight on The Troubles: A Secret History left me feeling sick in the pit of my stomach. Not out of surprise, or at the scale of atrocities featured, but out of disillusionment at the actions and powerful words of so-called leaders of the community. Condemning republican violence out of one side of their mouths, while encouraging sedition out of the other. Unionists may well have felt under siege, with UDR, RUC and …

Crucial court ruling today on Loughinisland report will have a major impact on dealing with the past

Brian Walker on January 12, 2018, 11:02 am

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Mr Justice McCloskey is due to rule today on whether the police ombudsman’s findings of police collusion in the Loughinisland murders should be quashed. His earlier ruling that the findings were “ careless, thoughtless and inattentive . . . in . . . language and structuring” and “quite unacceptable by any standard” was greeted with satisfaction by the retired police officers’ association which had brought the action, but dismay among human rights activists and not least, the Loughinisland relatives. Belief …

The reception for the Loughinisland documentary No Stone Unturned shows that legacy issues will stay marginalised

Brian Walker on November 16, 2017, 10:59 am

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The low key reception given to the documentary No Stone Unturned, the film documentary on the UVF murders of six randomly selected Catholics in their local Loughinisland pub in 1994 which is currently being given a brief screening at the Queen’s Film Theatre, is the latest example of how presumed familiarity with the underlying problems of Northern Ireland has produced if not quite contempt, at least widespread deadening indifference. Warm congratulations nevertheless go to The Detail team especially their reporter …

Moving the IRA to peace: limitations of the agents of influence theory…

Mick Fealty on September 22, 2016, 1:44 pm

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There’s a fine line to be walked in judging the influence of largely unaccountable state actors and historic corollaries. Both Mark Devenport and Jen O’Leary today ask the question of whether state agents of influence were critical factors in moving the IRA to peace. The question is easier to ask than to answer. Devenport cites two conflicting academic sources which take opposite views on the matter. He quotes Bew and Frampton and Gurruchaga saying “the role of state actors, intelligence agencies, …

“as head of British intelligence, you would be derelict in your duty if you did not do everything in your power to assist that process…”

Pete Baker on April 4, 2016, 2:09 pm

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Via the Pensive Quill. In this transcript of a discussion on Radio Free Éireann in New York, with John McDonagh (JM) and Martin Galvin (MG), veteran journalist Ed Moloney (EM) has some “stupid” questions for the leadership of Sinn Féin, British Intelligence Services, and the local media. From the transcript EM: There’s a whole untold story of the peace process in the latter years of the IRA’s existence in relation to the influence of British intelligence – to what extent that was …

Nigel Dodds Calls For The Truth Over Shankill Bombing

Kris Nixon (Belfast Barman) on January 28, 2016, 11:30 am

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In a statement regarding Allison Morris’s Irish News story of prior police knowledge and inaction of the Shankill bombing, Nigel Dodds MP, DUP deputy leader, said: “The mass sectarian murder of the Shankill Bomb was one of the most heinous acts perpetrated by the Provisional IRA. It was a premeditated slaughter of innocents, an event that stands out amongst the PIRA’s more than 1800 bloody murders. Recent newspaper claims have refocused attention on this horrific act. Some of what has …

After RTE’s Prime Time on collusion, will the Irish government dare to put pressure on the British?

Brian Walker on June 16, 2015, 1:05 pm

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One of the frustrations of the TV market in these multichannel days is that we’re a long way from “open skies” broadcasting for viewing on demand. This applies to BBCi Player if you live in the Republic and the RTE Player if you live as I do in Britain. This means I don’t get to see the RTE Prime Time documentary on Collusion. People in the Republic are much more likely to access the two BBC documentaries on Britain’s Secret …

Stakeknife is in the Police Ombudsman’s frame, but has he the tools to do the job?

Brian Walker on June 2, 2015, 11:39 am

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One of the casualties of the failure to implement the Stormont House Agreement is I presume, the extra £150 million due to have been allocated over five years for dealing with the past. Although I know of no details of how the funding was to be shared out, some of it would have been apportioned to the Police Ombudsman, an office whose reputation has been revived by the redoubtable Dr Michael Maguire. He issued a warning last year of the consequences of budget …

O’Loan calls Stormont House Agreement ” an insult” as Labour promises a Pat Finucane inquiry

Brian Walker on February 25, 2015, 11:32 am

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Amnesty International are not alone in finding the resources allocated in the Stormont house Agreement inadequate for dealing with the past. At a meeting of RightsWatch in Westminster last night, the first Police Ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’Loan was scathing, describing the allocation of £150 million over 5 years to deal with all the issues of the past, as “a joke and an insult to the people of Northern Ireland.” The Historical Investigations Unit was “totally inadequate”. She also said Attorney …

Martina Anderson: The days of the British State granting impunity to its own are coming to an end

Soapbox on November 10, 2014, 5:00 pm

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Following on from a conference organised by the University of Ulster on victims and dealing with the past, Sinn Fein’s MEP, Martina Anderson writes for Slugger arguing for a new focus on the British states involvement in the Troubles and how it deals with victims. On the 27th and 28th Feb 2014 I invited a delegation of victims of state violence to Brussels to discuss with MEPs the impact of state collusion under the heading ‘Britain’s Dirty War in Ireland’. The deep …

NI Police Ombudsman: “It’s very easy to raise allegations – I think the important thing is whether there is any evidence behind it”

Pete Baker on June 19, 2014, 4:52 pm

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Having investigated a complaint from the Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams – following newspapers reports in 2006 which alleged that members of the RUC knew of a 1984 UDA gun attack on Adams in advance, or were themselves involved – the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman, Michael Maguire, has published his conclusions. Dr Maguire has said he has found no evidence that police knew of, or were involved in away way, in the attack on Mr Adams: “We have talked to all the people involved in the events …

Smithwick debate: “it calls into question Sinn Féin’s professed commitment to open and transparent truth-telling”

Mick Fealty on January 22, 2014, 4:20 pm

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A minor detail from yesterday’s debate on the Smithwick Tribunal worth rescuing from the NI’s political press spike. It’s the SDLP’s Patsy McGlone speaking in favour of his party’s amendment (defeated BTW) : Sinn Féin is alone in its denial of the findings of the Smithwick tribunal, but that denial echoes the denials of those who have rejected findings of collusion in the North by elements of the RUC, the UDR, and the British Army and its agencies. There are many victims of collusion, …

Judge Smithwick finds there was indirect evidence of collusion between Garda(i) and the IRA

Mick Fealty on December 3, 2013, 8:08 pm

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So, Judge Smithwick resisted any political pressures to wind up his inquiry early. The BBC provide a summary of his conclusions: Collusion: Peter Smithwick said that while there had been no “smoking gun” he was “satisfied” that there had been collusion by one or more Garda officers in the murders Former garda sergeant Owen Corrigan: “I also find that what may have started out as a professional relationship with subversives for the legitimate purpose of intelligence-gathering ultimately developed into a …

A touch of state collusion with the Provisionals for the greater good?

Mick Fealty on November 26, 2013, 10:38 pm

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Useful insight from Ed Moloney who discloses one of no doubt many secrets of the clandestine peace process. This one concerns the late Father Alec Reid, on the day the two corporals were murdered at Casement Park, and an interesting take on the collusion of the state in the ‘interests of the peace process’: Knowing that the police would want to question him and that he if told the truth and identified the soldiers’ assailants his usefulness as an intermediary …

#Panorama to show absence of very good tools to critique the state

John Ó Néill on November 21, 2013, 4:55 pm

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Tonight’s BBC Panorama programme will detail allegations about the operation of the Military Reaction Force, or MRF, and how it killed unarmed civilians as part of its work up until 1973. The programme has identified ten unarmed civilians it believes were shot by MRF members operating undercover. It also will include a claim that a Ministry of Defence review concluded that the MRF had “no provision for detailed command and control”. As with so much reportage about ‘the past’, they aren’t particularly new …

#Lethal Allies: this is not collusion.

John Ó Néill on November 1, 2013, 4:18 pm

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This is much worse. The publication of Ann Cadwalladers Lethal Allies last month by Mercier Press was always going to have a relatively predictable reception. In many ways, nationalists and republicans have largely accepted that there was participation by members of the security forces in providing intelligence, weapons and targeting information to loyalist/unionist paramilitary groups from the late-1960s onwards. In some cases, it was even clear that either officially or unofficially, security force members and agents being run by the security services directly …

Westminster not Stormont has the power to answer the collusion charges and should use it

Brian Walker on October 28, 2013, 12:47 pm

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When Alastair Campbell issues a warning people should sit up and take notice, even today. You do get this sense across the spectrum that it is not a priority. They have got to be careful about that. “[John] Major made it a priority, Blair made it an absolute priority. He was like a dog with a bone. I do get a sense that it is not on the current government’s radar. British policy on Northern Ireland is to stay as …

The Glenanne story proves the time for frank admissions is overdue: further prevarication over collusion implies Briitsh government cover-up

Brian Walker on October 24, 2013, 11:40 am

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Like most of the atrocities of the Troubles the story of the Glenanne gang isn’t unfamiliar Suzanne Breen for one gave a detailed account of the 1976 Kingmills and Reavey brothers massacres in January 2011 based it would seem on “ imminent” HET reports. Of the Reavey murders she stated as a matter of established fact: The attack was carried out by the UVF’s infamous Glenanne gang, which operated in a murder triangle between south Armagh and mid-Ulster. Made up of …

Collusion: Whitey Bulger and the FBI’s international trade off for domestic information

Mick Fealty on February 25, 2013, 10:42 am

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Fascinating piece by Ed Moloney on Whitey Bulger, an Irish Boston gangster who was ‘turned’ by the FBI relatively early in his long career of domestic crime, was later allowed a little international sideline: In 1975, Bulger agreed to become an FBI informer and was largely left alone by the authorities, who were mostly interested in what he knew about rival Mafia gangs. In 1994, his FBI handler tipped him off about an impending indictment and he fled Boston. For …