Author: TonyGosling
Posted: Sat Jan 30, 2016 2:55 pm (GMT 0)
'Jarked': Shankill Road bomb: IRA double-agent 'deliberately set device to explode prematurely'
Former IRA comrades claim man 'jarked' bomb to cause more civilian casualties and weaken those opposed to ceasefire
Mick Browne Monday 25 January 20162 comments
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shankill-road-bomb-ira-double-agent-deliberately-set-device-to-explode-prematurely-a6833581.html
The ex-IRA man reported to have been a security force double-agent who tipped off his handlers about the October 1993 Shankill Road bombing is suspected by a number of former Belfast IRA comrades of having deliberately “jarked” the device so it exploded prematurely, to cause maximum civilian casualties and so weaken the “hawk” wing within the Provos opposed to an IRA ceasefire.
This means the Shankill bombing joins a list of Troubles incidents that are being investigated over alleged security force or service complicity by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), or judicial reviews and inquests. These include the Omagh bombing in 1998, when the Real IRA slaughtered 29 people and two unborn twins and maimed hundreds, the loyalist “UVF” 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombings which killed 34 and injured hundreds, Bloody Sunday, Bloody Friday, and claims about an IRA double-agent codenamed “Stakenife”, who is said to have murdered scores of people while working for the security forces.
Republicans in Belfast say the alleged informer almost fled last year only to be persuaded by a leading Sinn Fein politician to bluff his way against the allegations surfacing against him because Sinn Fein was desperate to avoid negative publicity about the extent of the IRA being penetrated by the security forces, ahead of last year’s general election.
READ MORE
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Although the man oversaw a number of “successful” IRA operations to kill top loyalists, and on occasion security force members, questions have been asked about to what extent IRA members were set up for capture or worse.
IRA men Thomas “Bootsy” Begley and Sean Kelly walked into Frizzel’s packed fish mongers on the Shankill Road in October 1993 with orders to clear it of customers and then detonate an explosive device, aimed at loyalist paramilitaries believed to be meeting upstairs.
6-shankill-bomb-PacemakerBelfast.jpg
The Frizell’s fish shop attack killed 9 innocent people and one bomber (PACEMAKER BELFAST)
The device was reportedly a “directional” device, intended to explode upwards, bringing down the ceiling. But it reportedly exploded virtually as soon as Begley carried it to the counter, killing him and eight others and injuring Kelly as well as dozens of passersby. That “botched” bombing generated a series of loyalist revenge attacks in which 14 people were murdered and scores more injured.
The alleged informer “mastermind” – known by his security force code of “AA” – was reportedly unmasked by the IRA as early as perhaps 2002, shortly after the IRA raided the RUC base at Castlereagh in 2001 and stole and deciphered encrypted Special Branch files on IRA agents.
The informant came to hold a high-ranking position with the Provos, despite overseeing a series of IRA blunders leading up to the Shankill atrocity.
READ MORE
Father-of-two becomes latest to die from the NI Troubles – 20 years on
For instance, ex-IRA men have identified “AA” as having been directly involved in the murder of innocent father-of-three Henry Babington, a laboratory analyst, in north Belfast in October 1989. This still-unsolved murder caused the IRA huge embarrassment after it quickly emerged the two gunmen who shot the Catholic sailing enthusiast dead as he walked to work one morning had mistaken him for a “renegade Catholic” working for the security forces and led loyalist terrorists to target IRA members.
This case is believed to be one of nearly 60 being investigated by the Police Ombudsman over allegations, similar to the latest Shankill claims, that branches of the security forces or service were informed by agents of impending attacks but allowed some to go ahead. As with the later Shankill bombing, there was an internal IRA investigation but in neither case was “AA’s” alleged role uncovered by the IRA’s Internal Security department.
Dark past, bright future: The legacy of Bloody Sunday
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But “AA” is said to have confessed recently that he had had possession of the bomb used in the Shankill Road in October 1993 before it was handed over to Begley and Kelly.
Ex-IRA prisoners say they strongly believe “AA” was given the go-ahead by his handlers to “jark” the device. Asked how this could have been done, one former prisoner said: “It would have been easily booby-trapped. Those carrying it would not have known the timer could have been altered. They would have been given 45 seconds to clear the premises and then detonate the device, giving them time to also get out, but not those upstairs who were the target. But, if it was a time-lag switch, it could have been secretly adjusted, without a doubt.”
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Another ex-prisoner said, “Not all IRA men supported the peace process, a great many hated it. This could have been allowed to go off, it is speculated, just like Omagh, to undermine those hostile to peace. And the slaughter on the road would have led a lot of men and women volunteers to personally reconsider their own roles. It was a disaster for the ‘army’.”
One of the most surprising elements of the story is why the IRA allowed “AA” to continue living within his community even after discovering in 2002 that he was an informant. There are suggestions that it wanted to keep his treachery secret to avoid the embarrassing revelation of how fully the organisation had been infiltrated by the security services.
Reports over the years suggested that the IRA had been unable to decipher the Special Branch documents, but it can now be revealed that – after recruiting a former prisoner turned top academic, who in turn recruited a small team of helpers – the IRA did indeed establish the extent to which it had been penetrated by the British state.
One ex-Belfast prisoner said: “This will be totally devastating for the IRA’s credibility. It raises massive questions for the state, as to what extent it allowed its own citizens to die, who made those decisions and can they ever be made amenable.
“But for the IRA the questions will now start to re-emerge as to what extent volunteers and supporters were sacrificed by agents in the ranks, and what has the IRA done to rectify this, if anything?”
Mark Gobell wrote:
Repeat post, somewhat modified, from this thread:
The murder of Raymond McCord Junior and his father's campaign . . .
Quote:
Justice for Raymond (Paperback)
Synopsis
On 9 November 1997, the body of 22-year-old former RAF radar operator Raymond McCord was found dumped at Ballyduff quarry, Newtownabbey, just a few miles outside of Belfast. He had been killed with a concrete breeze block. His face had been so badly disfigured from the rain of blows that his coffin had to remain closed during his funeral. The outlawed UVF, the oldest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland, had killed him on the jailhouse orders of Mark Haddock, the head of a drug-dealing unit in the north Belfast suburb of Mount Vernon. Haddock feared that Raymond McCord Jnr was about to reveal his activities to the leadership of the UVF. The murder sparked an unstinting ten-year campaign by his father Raymond Snr to find his son's murderers and attempt to bring them to justice. Through a relentless campaign of death threats from the UVF, Raymond Snr's quest for truth and justice was rewarded in January 2007, when the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Nuala O'Loan, published her report into his son's murder.
Codenamed Operation Ballast, Mrs O'Loan's inquiry discovered that, at the time of the McCord murder, Mark Haddock was an RUC Special Branch informant who had been paid IR Punt 80,000 from the public purse. Moreover, she discovered that Haddock had been directly involved in at least ten murders, several attempted murders, drug dealing, extortion and punishment beatings for which he was never brought to book. This is the story of how one man, Raymond McCord, finally proved that the RUC Special Branch were colluding with loyalist paramilitaries in murders and other serious crimes.
Quote:
How Britain created Ulster's murder gangs
by Neil Mackay
Sunday Herald
(new url)
http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1152814.0.how_britain_created_ulsters_murder_gangs.php
Since the Sunday Herald was founded in 1999, it has led the way in exposing the “dirty war” in Northern Ireland. Today, we report on the most shocking revelations to date. Our investigations show that far from merely “turning” terrorists to work for the state, British military intelligency actually created loyalist murder gangs to operate as proxy assassins. They even cleared areas in which the gangs were operating of police and army, to allow them to carry out their hits and escape.
ON MONDAY, [22 January 2007] the world was stunned by the release of a report by Nuala O'Loan, the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, which stated that Special Branch officers in Belfast had "colluded" with loyalist terrorists working for the British state as informers. According to O'Loan, police failed to stop these paramilitary gangs, part of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) from killing an estimated 15 people in the 1990s. While this was seized upon by republicans as proof that security forces had aided a loyalist campaign of sectarian assassination, in reality O'Loan's findings barely scratched the surface of a 30-year history of criminality and murder orchestrated by the British army and the Ulster police.
HE INSISTS on being named only as "JB", a sick, ageing man, who fears that ill-health or a bullet from an assassin wishing to silence him will claim his life before he has the chance to tell the true story of his life and crimes. On Wednesday, JB passed a bundle of papers to the Sunday Herald, making up the bulk of his unpublished memoirs, which paint British military intelligence as a callous, murderous, criminal cabal. JB claims that he - and dozens of other members of the terrorist organisation, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) - were trained and armed by military intelligence.
He also claims select UVF officers were ordered by military intelligence to carry out assassinations against both IRA figures and ordinary Catholics. Such soft targets as innocent men and women were pinpointed by military intelligence in order to psychologically undermine the nationalist population of Northern Ireland and cut the support base from beneath the Provisional IRA.
Martin Ingram, the false cover name for a former member of the covert British military intelligence outfit the Force Research Unit (FRU), has supported the claims made by JB. Ingram eventually turned whistleblower, disgusted at the deaths the FRU had caused by colluding with terrorists in Ulster. He later went on to write a book about the double agent Stakeknife - IRA operative Freddie Scappaticci - who had been "handled" by Ingram's FRU team and exposed by Sunday Herald investigators. Ingram says he is aware of JB's history, and believes his claims are "completely credible". Loyalist sources have also confirmed JB's credibility.
JB, who was convicted twice of terrorist offences, once in the 1970s and again in the early 1990s, says he carried out some 50 UVF operations sanctioned by his handlers in the Military Reconnaissance Force (MRF), the army team which gathered intelligence and ran agents in Ulster. He says he became a "killer, bomber, arsonist and robber". Of the 50 state-sanctioned operations he took part in, "not all were successful".Some, he says, "were aborted". So far he has refused to go into details of the actual murders he took part in on behalf of British military intelligence. Beyond admitting that killings took place, he will only talk about how the British army trained him as a terrorist proxy.
In JB's words, "military intelligence trained, armed and moulded squads of loyalists to put pressure on the IRA to abandon their campaign of bloodshed and carnage". JB was a young UVF member in the early 1970s when first approached by an MRF handler. JB says the military intelligence officer, whom he will name only as "Mike", told him that the then prime minister Edward Heath had sanctioned the "training of loyalists".Mike later added that "nobody, except at the very highest level of the British government and senior officers of the military" knew about the covert counter-insurgency operations.
Mike told JB that "London has ordered the war be taken to the IRA obviously this can't be done openly and must be done covertly. That's why we are looking for people like you ... We are enlisting men from all over the province to co-ordinate attacks, to convince the Catholic people that support for the Provos will only bring death and destruction to their own community."
As well as being trained in firearms at army barracks and firing ranges around Northern Ireland - primarily at Palace Barracks near Holywood in County Down - men like JB were also provided with intelligence on potential targets and given details about which targets to hit. JB knows of at least 30 loyalists who received similar training to him, but believes more than 120 could have been trained as proxy assassins. At times, he was given a British army uniform to provide him with cover while with his handlers. He even drank, on occasions, with his handlers in the Naafi - armed forces bars on military bases.
When proxies like JB were dispatched on a murder operation, military intelligence would impose an Out Of Bounds (OOB) order on the area in which the attack was to take place. In military terms, an OOB means an intelligence operation is under way and army and police are forbidden from entering the area. This gave loyalist murder gangs freedom to operate with impunity during such state-sanctioned attacks. At one stage, claims JB, Mike told him: "Mr Heath and the top brass have given the green light for this."
JB was trained by military intelligence, he says, in how to use a variety of hand-guns, machine guns and rifles, as well as bomb-making techniques. The UVF men working for military intelligence were also given consignments of guns and ammunition by handlers, sent on gruelling fitness courses and schooled in the arts of surveillance, counter-surveillance and intelligence gathering. Other classes included lectures on forensic science, how to avoid leaving incriminating evidence at the scene of crimes and how to steal cars for use in assassination operations.
JB also claims military intelligence instructed loyalists to plant explosives in a Catholic bar to make it look as if the IRA had accidentally set off the bomb. It was hoped such acts would drain Catholic support for republicans.
The bomb was planted in McGurk's Bar in Belfast on December 4, 1971. It killed 15 men, women and children. The immediate blame was indeed placed on the IRA. However, seven years after the bomb, a UVF man received 15 life sentences for the atrocity. JB says he was told about the planned bombing two weeks before the attack and was with his handler at the time it happened. He also claims he saw his handler take pot-shots at republican youths on the streets of Belfast around this time.
A captain in military intelligence spelt out the reasons for the army creating these secret counter-insurgency cells during one discussion with JB. He said: "This type of war can't be won by conventional means. The only solution is to implement a counter-operation, to counteract the violence of the enemy by heaping more violence on them That's why we've chosen men like you to instil trepidation and pandemonium among the Provos and their support base, the Catholic community We will match whatever they do, and outdo them."
In the weeks leading up to the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry, on January 30, 1972, in which the Paratroop Regiment killed 13 people taking part in a civil rights demonstration, JB was informed by his handlers that the British army had been ordered by the Cabinet "to use whatever force and tactics necessary to put these troublemakers down". JB "concludes there were plans for mass murder to be committed that day The Bloody Sunday massacre was sanctioned by the government and top military chiefs." JB is sure that there was a preconceived plan to open fire on the civil rights demonstrators, with the full knowledge this would cause civilian deaths. He believes military intelligence thought this would shake the IRA. Instead, the massacre was a huge boost to IRA support and recruitment.
The day before Bloody Sunday, JB was taken for a training session at Palace Barracks, where he was given a pep-talk by a major who praised him for "having the courage and loyalty to participate in covert actions against the common enemy". The major told JB: "We are hoping to provoke a confrontation with the IRA in Derry, and give them an example of what to expect in future attacks." JB was then offered the chance, he claims, to accompany his military handler, Mike, to Derry to watch the operation to contain the demonstration. Military intelligence sources today say events such as this would help forge a bond, or esprit de corps, between agent and handler.
JB was provided with a British army uniform, a gas mask, camouflage face-paint and a rifle as cover for the time he would spend in Derry with his handler. During the events, JB watched from a military intelligence observation post as soldiers opened fire on civilians. He also claims to have seen members of military intelligence shooting at, and hitting, unarmed civilians from the gun nest in the observation post.
Another killing carried out by loyalists and facilitated by military intelligence by the imposition of an OOB order took place in February 1972 when a bomb exploded in a pub killing, one Catholic man and injuring five others.
Trained proxies such as JB were often taken on "dummy run" assassination operations by handlers to ensure the OOB system wasworking. An OOB order would be given on a specific area of Belfast and JB and his team would enter the area, locate the home of a target, recce it and then leave. If they met with no security force patrols, they knew the OOB system was effective.
Mike at one time told JB: "We don't expect every time an ASU active service unit of the UVF goes out, they will kill somebody. The mere fact an attempt has been made and shots fired, even if they wound or miss altogether, is all part of the terror tactics." The policy was meant to "scare the *" out of Catholics. Mike also instructed JB on how to "extract information" from Catholics or republicans they kidnapped. The techniques were "gruesome", JB said. Mike made clear that torture should be used, and referred to the victims as "Taigs", a derogatory term for Catholics. Mike also advised on the best shot to use to dispatch a victim of a backstreet execution.
WHILE refusing to give a statement about the actual operations in which he took part, JB said he knew about a number of high-profile loyalist atrocities, sponsored by the MRF. These included the shooting of three members of the Miami Showband, a popular Irish group, in July 1975. The band's bus was flagged down by members of the UVF dressed in army uniforms at a fake military checkpoint. Another MRF-sponsored atrocity, says JB, was the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 17, 1974, which killed 33 people and injured 250.
JB lists a series of killings by loyalists which were facilitated by military intelligence putting out OOB orders on the location where the target lived, including the murder of a taxi driver, an eight-year-old girl, various men walking alone in Catholic areas and a Catholic woman in a bomb blast at public toilets in Lurgan. Referring to the last killing, JB says: "As long as it was a Catholic killed, fear would be creeping into Catholic minds - who would be next?'"
When UVF proxies were targeting republicans or IRA men, nearly all the intelligence used in planning hits came from the British army's intelligence wing.
Perhaps the most horrible of all hits facilitated by military intelligence, says JB, was one that involved the infamous Shankill Butchers murder gang. An OOB was put in place, allowing the UVF to put up an illegal roadblock at which they abducted a Catholic man and took him to the head of the Shankill Butchers - a UVF psychopath called Lenny Murphy. The gang tortured their victims for hours with knives before finally executing them. Sometimes the torture sessions took place in front of baying crowds in loyalist drinking dens. At least 19 people died at the hands of the gang. JB states: "I verify and confirm what I have written is a true and very accurate account of events."
Quote:
This Statement is published in accordance with Section 62 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 1998 and is a report on the Police Ombudsman’s investigation into matters surrounding the death of Raymond McCord Junior. The report is based on the findings of an extensive investigation by the Police Ombudsman, including interviews with former and serving police officers and the assessment of intelligence reports and many thousands of other documents held within the policing system, only some of which will be referred to in this Statement.
Nuala O’Loan (Mrs)
Police Ombudsman For Northern Ireland
22nd January 2007
Table of Contents from the [now former] Northern Ireland (sic), Police Ombudsman report:
Quote:
CONTENTS
SECTION ONE: A MAJOR INVESTIGATION
The role of the Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
Executive Summary
1. Introduction
2. Human Rights Issues
3. Initial concerns – Matters brought to the attention of the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Office
4. Matters brought to the attention of the Chief Constable
5. Matters brought to the attention of the Surveillance Commissioner
6. The initiation and scope of the investigation
7. The review of the investigation
8. Difficulties encountered during the investigation SECTION TWO: THE MURDER OF RAYMOND McCORD JUNIOR.
9. The murder of Raymond McCord Junior and the subsequent investigation by the Police
SECTION THREE: INTELLIGENCE LINKING INFORMANT 1 AND OTHERS TO MURDER AND ATTEMPTED MURDER
10. The murder of Mr Peter McTasney, 1991
11. The attempted murders of Intended Victim One, Intended Victim Two, Intended Victim Three and Intended Victim Four, 1989-1991
12. The attempted murder of Intended Victim Five, 1992
13. The murder of Ms Sharon McKenna, 1993
14. The murder of Mr Sean McParland, 1994
15. The murders of Mr Gary Convie and Mr Eamon Fox, 1994
16. The murder of Mr Gerald Brady and associated incidents, 1994
17. The murder of Mr Thomas Sheppard, 1996
18. The murder of Mr John Harbinson, 1997
19. The murder of Mr Thomas English, 2000
20. The attempted murders of Intended Victims Six and Seven, in 1992 and 1997
21. The attempted murders of Intended Victim Eight
22. The attempted murder of Intended Victims Nine and Ten
SECTION FOUR: INTELLIGENCE LINKING INFORMANT 1 AND OTHERS TO OTHER CRIMES
23. CID searches blocked by Special Branch, 1997
24. Planned attack and attack in the Republic of Ireland, 1996 and 1997
25. Targeting of a Republican, 1994
26. Arson attack and other crimes, 1997
27. Drug Dealing in North Belfast and Larne
28. “Punishment” shootings and attacks
29. Possession of Information Likely to be of Use to Terrorists
SECTION FIVE
30. Financial arrangements and Informant 1
SECTION SIX
31. Informant Handling, Supervision and Management
SECTION SEVEN
32. Collusion
SECTION EIGHT
33. Conclusions
34. Recommendations
APPENDIX A
Changes to PSNI Working Practices Since 2003
You don't have to be an executive, or a member of the executive, to read the Northern Ireland, Police Ombudsman's Report, Executive Summary:
Quote:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. In May 2002 Mr Raymond McCord Senior made a complaint to the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland about police conduct in relation to the murder of his son, Mr Raymond McCord Junior. His complaint alleged that police over a number of years, acted in such a way as to protect informants from being fully accountable to the law.
2. Preliminary enquiries following receipt of Mr McCord’s complaint showed that there were sufficient issues of concern to warrant a wide-ranging investigation not only into matters relating to the investigation of Mr McCord’s son’s murder, but also into the police handling and management of identified informants from the early 1990s onwards.
3. In the course of the investigation the Police Ombudsman sought the cooperation of a number of retired RUC/PSNI senior officers. Officers who were being treated as witnesses were asked to provide an explanation of Special Branch and CID internal practices during this period. Investigators offered to meet retired officers at venues with which they would be comfortable and at times which would suit them. They were advised of the areas of questioning and provided with significant disclosure of information, at their request. The majority of them failed even to reply. This was despite the fact that witness details would be anonomised in any public statement. Amongst those who refused were two retired Assistant Chief Constable’s, seven Detective Chief Superintendent’s and two Detective Superintendent’s.
4. Some retired officers did assist the investigation, and were helpful. Officers varied a great deal in the manner in which they responded to questions. Some, including some retired officers dealt with challenging questions in a professional manner.
5. Others, including some serving officers, gave evasive, contradictory, and on occasion farcical answers to questions. On occasion those answers indicated either a significant failure to understand the law, or contempt for the law. On other occasions the investigation demonstrated conclusively that what an officer had told the Police Ombudsman’s investigators was completely untrue.
6. The Police Ombudsman’s initial concerns about PSNI informant management processes caused her to alert the Chief Constable to those concerns in March 2003. She subsequently made him aware on 8 September 2003 of her very detailed concerns about these matters. She also alerted the Surveillance Commissioner on 15 September 2003. He carried out an inspection of the Special Branch handling of Informant 1. That inspection found serious failings by Special Branch to comply with the requirements of the law in relation to the handling of informants.
7. The wider investigation was focused on seven main lines of enquiry, which had emerged during preliminary enquiries and in respect of which serious concerns had arisen. They were, in chronological order of event:
• two attempted murders in 1991.
• the murder of Sharon McKenna on 17 January 1993.
• the attempted bombing of the Sinn Fein office in Monaghan on 3 March 1997.
• the blocking by Special Branch of searches during a pre-planned CID operation intended to disrupt the activities of the UVF.
• the murder of John Harbinson on 18 May 1997.
• the murder of Raymond McCord Junior on 9 November 1997.
• Informant 1’s alleged involvement in drug-dealing between 1994 and 2003.
8. Other issues emerged during the course of the investigation and were considered as part of the investigation.
9. Intelligence reports and other documents within the RUC and the PSNI, most of which were rated as ‘reliable and probably true’, linked informants, and in particular one man who was a police informant (referred to in this report as Informant 1) to the following ten murders:
• Mr Peter McTasney who died on 24 February 1991;
• Ms Sharon McKenna who died on 17 January 1993;
• Mr Sean McParland who was attacked on 17 February 1994, and died on 25 February 1994;
• Mr Gary Convie who died on 17 May 1994;
• Mr Eamon Fox who died on 17 May 1994, in the same attack as Mr Gary Convie;
• Mr Gerald Brady who died on 17 June 1994;
• Mr Thomas Sheppard who died on 21 March 1996;
• Mr John Harbinson who died on 18 May 1997;
• Mr Raymond McCord Junior who died on 09 November 1997
• Mr Thomas English who died on 31 October 2000.
The Police Ombudsman’s investigators also identified less significant police intelligence implicating Informant 1 in 5 other murders. For some of these murders, there is generally only one piece of intelligence, which police have not rated as reliable.
Intelligence was also found linking police informants, and in particular Informant 1, to ten attempted murders between 1989 and 2002.
Intelligence was also found which implicated police informants, and in particular, Informant 1, in a significant number of crimes in respect of which no action or insufficient action was taken:
• Armed robbery;
• Assault and Grievous Bodily Harm;
• Punishment shootings and attacks;
• Possession of munitions;
• Criminal Damage;
• Drug dealing;
• Extortion;
• Hijacking;
• Intimidation;
• Conspiracy to murder;
• Threats to kill.
10. Conclusions of the Police Ombudsman about the allegations made by Mr Raymond McCord about the death of his son
Allegation 1: that a senior UVF figure had ordered the murder of his son, and that this individual was a police informant.
Finding: The Police Ombudsman can confirm that a police informant is a suspect in the murder of Mr McCord’s son. She cannot confirm or deny who that individual is.
Allegation 2: that police had failed to carry out a thorough investigation of his son’s murder, and had failed to keep him updated about their investigation.
Findings: The Police Ombudsman has identified failures in the investigation of Mr McCord’s son’s murder. These failures may have significantly reduced the possibility of anyone being prosecuted for the murder.
There is some material which indicates some contact between specific police officers and Mr McCord, particularly during the days immediately following the murder. There has been a failure by those supervising the conduct of the police investigation to consider the benefit of identifying at the very least a single point of contact for Mr McCord. Such provision may have allowed the investigation to progress more effectively.
This allegation is therefore substantiated.
Allegation 3: that no-one had been arrested or charged with the murder of his son. Mr McCord alleged that this was because the man who ordered the murder was a police informant, and that this individual, and those working for him, had been protected from arrest and prosecution for a number of years.
Findings: A number of people were arrested for Raymond McCord Junior’s murder. No one has been charged with the murder. There is no evidence that anyone has been protected from arrest for the murder of Raymond McCord Junior.
With reference to Mr McCord’s allegation that a police informant had ordered his son’s murder, and that this individual and those working for him had been protected from arrest and prosecution for years the Police Ombudsman conducted an extensive investigation which is detailed in this Report. It is clear that much intelligence was disregarded by police and that they continued to use Informant 1 despite his criminal record and the extensive intelligence they held in respect of alleged serious criminality, because he had value to them as an informant. This was wrong.
This allegation is therefore substantiated with the exception, firstly, of that part of it which refers to police failure to arrest anyone for Raymond McCord Junior’s murder, and secondly, of the fact that, whilst the Police Ombudsman can confirm that an informer is a suspect in the murder of Mr McCord’s son, she cannot confirm or deny who that individual is.
Allegation 4: that unidentified police knew something was going to happen to Raymond McCord Junior, but that they did not warn him or his family about this danger to protect the police informant who was responsible for the murder.
Finding: The Police Ombudsman has found no evidence or intelligence to support this allegation. It is not substantiated.
11. There are grave concerns about the practices of some police officers.
The activities which were identified included:
• Failure to arrest informants for crimes to which those informants had allegedly confessed, or to treat such persons as suspects for crime;
• The concealment of intelligence indicating that on a number of occasions up to three informants had been involved in a murder and other serious crime;
• Arresting informants suspected of murder, then subjecting them to lengthy sham interviews at which they were not challenged about their alleged crime, and releasing them without charge;
• Creating interview notes which were deliberately misleading; failing to record and maintain original interview notes and failing to record notes of meetings with informants;
• Not recording in any investigation papers the fact that an informant was suspected of a crime despite the fact that he had been arrested and interviewed for that crime;
• Not informing the Director of Public Prosecutions that an informant was a suspect in a crime in respect of which an investigation file was submitted to the Director;
• Withholding from police colleagues intelligence, including the names of alleged suspects, which could have been used to prevent or detect crime;
• An instance of blocking searches of a police informant’s home and of other locations including an alleged UVF arms dump;
• Providing at least four misleading and inaccurate documents for possible consideration by the Court in relation to four separate incidents and the cases resulting from them, where those documents had the effect of protecting an informant;
• Finding munitions at an informant’s home and doing nothing about that matter;
• Withholding information about the location to which a group of murder suspects had allegedly fled after a murder;
• Giving instructions to junior officers that records should not be completed, and that there should be no record of the incident concerned;
• Ensuring the absence of any official record linking a UVF informant to possession of explosives which may, and were thought according to a Special Branch officer’s private records, to have been used in a particular crime;
• Cancelling the “wanted” status of murder suspects “because of lack of resources” and doing nothing further about those suspects;
• Destroying or losing forensic exhibits such as metal bars;
• Continuing to employ as informants people suspected of involvement in the most serious crime, without assessing the attendant risks or their suitability as informants;
• Not adopting or complying with the United Kingdom Home Office Guidelines on matters relating to informant handling, and by not complying with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act when it came into force in 2000.
12. The cumulative effect of these activities, as described by police officers and as demonstrated in documentation recovered, was to protect Informant 1 and other informants from investigation. In the absence of explanation as to why these events occurred, the Police Ombudsman has concluded that this was collusion by certain police officers with identified UVF informants.
13. It is accepted by the Police Ombudsman that intelligence, in itself, is not evidence. However it may be possible to derive investigative opportunities from intelligence. There were mechanisms which were used by other police forces within the United Kingdom to prevent the failings of informant and intelligence handling identified in this Report. Those mechanisms should have involved clear and effective policies for informant handling, combined with regular training and effective intrusive management.
14. Although such systems were used, to some extent, by RUC CID, they were not used by Special Branch. In 1997 the RUC introduced new rules for informant handling and management. A decision was made by Chief Officers that those rules should not apply to Special Branch. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in 2000 imposed statutory rules about the review, management, assessment and cancellation of informants. The Surveillance Commissioner found, following the referral of the matter by the Police Ombudsman, that those rules had not been complied with in the case of Informant 1, and that there had been a failure to meet National Minimum Standards and to take into account intelligence about Informant 1’s own criminal conduct.
15. In the course of the investigation the Police Ombudsman has estimated that payments of at least £79,840 were made to Informant 1.
16. The Police Ombudsman has made 20 recommendations and the PSNI response to these recommendations is included in the Report. PSNI have accepted all the recommendations made to them.
17. Prior to 2003 some RUC/PSNI Special Branch officers facilitated the situation in which informants were able to continue to engage in paramilitary activity, some of them holding senior positions in the UVF, despite the availability of extensive information as to their alleged involvement in crime. Those informants must have known that they were not being dealt with for crime. Some RUC/PSNI officers were complicit in the failure to deal appropriately with Informant 1, and other informants, both by way of criminal investigation and by ceasing to use them as informants.
18. Since 2003 the PSNI has made significant changes and introduced new policies and working practices in relation to its strategic management of its new Crime Operations Department, which includes Intelligence Branch (formerly Special Branch) under a single Assistant Chief Constable.
19. It is hoped that the further necessary changes, consequential upon this Report will combine with the change already made, to ensure that never again, within the PSNI will there be the circumstances which prevailed for so long in relation to the informant handling and intelligence managements processes which are discussed in this Report.
It is also essential that, in the arrangements for the future strategic management of National Security issues in Northern Ireland, there will be accountability mechanisms which are effective, and which are capable of ensuring that what has happened here does not recur.
The, then, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, the erstwhile convicted, criminal conspirator, former cricket pitch terrorist and young communist, who stood firmly against sectarianism and apartheid, whom, of late, has become the rather contrite and lamentable, censured, Mr Peter Hain, had this to say in response to the above:
The Right Honourable, Peter Hain, who has done nothing wrong at all, to justify his House of Commons apology wrote:
It was Raymond McCord Snr’s campaign for truth and justice that was the genesis of this report and I hope that it will hasten the day when the killers of his son and the other victims will face the courts.
I have heard calls for the setting up of a public inquiry to look into these terrible events.
There is nothing at all to suggest that such an inquiry will uncover any new or additional evidence that has not already been unearthed by the Police Ombudsman during the painstaking investigation conducted over the past three years.
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