Policy papers // Imperialism - Ireland and Britain

Decision time for Orde as Shoot-to-Kill inquests prepare to commence

18/10/07

The man in charge of British policing in the Six Counties is facing decision time after a coroner formally requested that hehand over the Stalker and Sampson reports into the state killings of six county Armagh men in three separate incidents at the end of 1982.

Hugh Order has been asked to hand over the information in order to permit the inquests to proceed.

All the killings were the work of an RUC gang, known as the Headquarters Mobile Support Unit.

 The legal and political repercussions of the three incidents in the winter of 1982 continue to reverberate today.

 The killings include those of unarmed IRA volunteers Eugene Toman (21), Gervaise McKerr (31) and Sean Burns (21) who were shot dead by members of the RUC unit on the outskirts of Lurgan on November 11, 1982.  In all, 109 bullets were fired into their car.

Three RUC men charged with murdering Eugene Toman, who had been shot in the back, were later acquitted of all charges.  Trial judge, Justice Gibson held that the RUC men had acted in "self-defence" and had used reasonable force in attempting to effect an arrest..

In a final insult, Gibson commended the RUC men for their "courage and determination in bringing the three deceased men to justice; in this case, to the final court of justice."

On November 24, 1982, 17-year-old Michael Tighe was shot dead by the RUC at a hayshed on Ballynery Road North, just outside Lurgan.  It is believed that MI5 were in charge of a surveillance operation on the property, which led to the killing of the young civilian.

On December 12, 1982 two unarmed INLA volunteers, Seamus Grew (30) and Roddy Carroll (21), were shot dead in Mullacreevie Park in Armagh city.
Both men were unarmed, with Roddy Carroll being shot from a distance of six feet. Seamus Grew was shot from a distance of two feet by the same RUC officer.  A British court later acquitted the RUC man responsible.

The killings of the six men 25 years ago are at the centre of allegations that British state forces in the Six Counties operated a shoot-to-kill policy..

The North's senior coroner, John Leckey last week ( October 9) announced that he intends to hold inquests into the deaths and he willset aside several weeks, commencing next February, for that purpose.

The coroner told a preliminary hearing that he was asking the legal representatives of the RUC-PSNI "to confirm that I, my team and Mr Stalker and his team will be provided with access to the Stalker Report and that I, my team and Sir Colin Sampson will be provided with access to the Sampson Report".

Referring to a recent High Court ruling on another "shoot to kill" death, Mr Leckey said: "I see no reason why I should not now be provided with access to both reports."

A lawyer representing the RUC-PSNI said Hugh Orde had yet to form an opinion on whether the reports could in fact be handed over.  The lawyer said "an investigation of the repercussions of disclosure" was being undertaken.  "The chief constable has not yet made a decision about the need for disclosure," he said, adding he would be in a position by the start of December to advise Mr Leckey of the decision.
 The controversy that followed the six execution-style killings led to the appointment of the-then deputy chief constable of Manchester, John Stalker, to investigate the incidents.  Stalker later publicly claimed his inquiries were hampered at the highest levels and he was removed from the investigation shortly before it was due to report in 1986 - taken off the case at the moment he believed he was about to obtain an MI5 tape of one of the shootings.

Stalker’s departure also came just before he was due to formally interview the Chief Constable, the Deputy Chief Constable and at least one Assistant Chief Constable of the RUC because he had grounds to believe that one or more of them had committed criminal offences in relation to the shoot-to-kill deaths.

The British government has always denied its forces had a shoot-to-kill policy, and has resisted repeated calls from families to tell the truth about what happened in north Armagh in 1982.  

Several years ago, the British House of Lords blocked an attempt to order a fresh investigation.  But pressure to look into the matter has come from the Council of Europe, which has requested that Britain rectify previous investigative failures.  Any new investigation could focus on whether there was an explicit shoot-to-kill policy, and whether there was any attempt to tamper with evidence before Mr Stalker mounted his inquiry.

Stalker said "the killings had a common feature: each left a strong suspicion that a type of pre-planned police ambush had occurred, and that someone had led these men to their deaths."  Quoted in Justice Under Fire: The Abuse of Civil Liberties in Northern Ireland (Pluto Press, 1988), Stalker said he believed that: "The circumstances of those shootings pointed to a police inclination, if not a policy, to shoot suspects dead without warning rather than to arrest them.  Coming as these incidents did, so close together, the suspicion of deliberate assassination was not unreasonable... There was no written instruction, nothing pinned upon a notice board.  But there was a clear understanding on the part of the men whose job it was to pull the trigger that was what was expected of them."

Stalker is also believed to have uncovered evidence that an informant was paid £2,000 after the execution of McKerr, Toman and Burns and was also involved in the Tighe killing.  The RUC prevented Stalker from interviewing the informant.

Stalker's investigation was completed by Colin Sampson, then chief constable of Yorkshire Police; his report has never been published.  In 1988, Sir Patrick Mayhew, the British attorney general, informed the British House of Commons that there was evidence that members of the RUC had conspired to pervert the course of justice, but it would not be in the ‘national interest’ to prosecute.

Now, 25 years later, RUC-PSNI chief Hugh Orde and his political controllers in London must decide if they will accede to the request made at the hearing by Coroner Leckey, and hand over the full reports of the Stalker and Sampson investigations.

However, the indicators do not auger well.

 Firstly, previous attempts to re-open the inquests all failed, the last time being in 1994. Members of the Greater Manchester Police Inquiry team stated then that they could not properly give evidence without re-examining the Stalker reports or their own working papers from the time – all of which were in the hands of the RUC.. The potential police witnesses were refused access to both their own working papers and the Stalker report by the RUC.

In addition, Coroner Leckey had served writs on the Chief Constable of the RUC to produce the Stalker report.  The RUC refused to comply and sought a judicial review of the Coroner's demand.  On July 11, 1994, Justice Nicholson ruled that the RUC did not have to comply with the writs.

This left the Coroner's hands totally tied.  He had reopened an inquest on the basis of exploring possible valuable new evidence contained in the report.  Leckey abandoned the inquest stating, " In the light of the judgment of Mr Justice Nicholson, I have decided not to resume the Inquests but instead to proceed to register the deaths… my aim in deciding to hold Inquests for the reasons I expressed when I opened the inquests into the deaths of Toman, Burns and McKerr is no longer achievable" (September 8, 1994). By that time, Leckey had been the fifth coroner involved in this long-running inquest.

Secondly, in an interview with The Guardian newspaper on September 4, the man in charge of British policing in Ireland conceded that he was actively taking advice about asking British Secretary of State for the Six Counties, Shaun Woodward, to issue Public Interest Immunity Certificates - a powerful gag often used by the RUC - allowing him to keep the names of agents and informers secret from the inquiries set up into four high profile murders. Rosemary Nelson, fellow solicitor Pat Finucane, Portadown man Robert Hamill and pro-British death squad leader Billy Wright are the subjects of the inquiries.

Pat Finucane had represented the McKerr family and spearheaded their legal campaign for seven years.  He was murdered by unionists in 1989.  If Hugh Orde is actively seeking to have Public Interest Immunity Certificates issued in relation to those public inquiries, then he is equally likely to actively seek the same in relation to these inquests. 

Also in September, the inquiry into the death of Wright was informed that secret intelligence material relating to the killing may be suppressed or withheld.  The inquiry heard that the British Ministry of Defence is seeking an official ministerial gagging order to suppress other sensitive information.   There is no reason to believe that MI5 will not seek to have secret intelligence material, which would be of value to the inquests into the 1982 shootings, also suppressed or withheld.

Finally, given the central roles of agents, informers and MI5 in the shoot-to kill policy, the sanctioning of that policy at the highest levels, and the defence of that policy by successive British governments; the likelihood of Hugh Orde or the British establishment permitting the dark secrets of Britain's counter-insurgency war in the North to be finally exposed is extremely slim.