Smithwick

#Smithwick: are we back full circle to an untested allegation of ‘collusion’?

| Readers 95

So, have the Buchanan and Breen families got any closer to the truth about how their loved ones died on 20th March 1989? After lengthy hearings in front of Judge Peter Smithwick, the substantial report yesterday included a full account of the IRA operation in which they died, supplied by the IRA itself (see pages 398-411). This included that they knew from surveillance that the car driven by the two RUC men was used by senior officers liaising with Dundalk, …

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Last week at Smithwick: nothing to see here

| Readers 69

The revelations last week from the Smithwick Enquiry that Martin McGuinness allegedly authorised the murders of Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan as well as the use of human proxy bombs have made few enough political waves. In most western democratic societies the claim in a judicial setting that the Deputy First Minister was involved in such heinous crimes would be a scandal: here it was little more than a ripple. There are a number of possible reasons …

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Contradictory claims from former British handler?

| Readers 100

An Sionnach Fionn has a lengthy article on the ‘Ingram’ document, with some interesting detail, not least because he’s spotted some contradictions between detail between claims made about the penetration levels within the document and those made by Hurst/Ingram six years ago in the Sunday Tribune: “It’s time ordinary republicans stopped being led like sheep and started asking questions. At grassroots level, around one in 20 members are British agents. Higher up, it’s one in three.” The claim in the …

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The hyperlocal probing into the past: 9.12.11 round-up

| Readers 10

On Friday, the probing of the past trundled onwards: at the Smithwick Tribunal into the deaths of Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan, who were shot dead by the IRA in 1989; and, at the inquest into the death of Daniel Hegarty, who was shot dead by a British solider during Operation Motorman in July 1972. There is an interesting contrast in the reporting of the Smithwick Tribunal proceedings on the BBC and in the Irish Times, with the BBC reporting on Jeffrey …

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