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http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/exsoldiersrsquo-bid-for-nelson-probe-anonymity-fails-14183652.html
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Twelve former soldiers yesterday lost their challenge to a ruling that they should be named at the inquiry into the murder of solicitor Rosemary Nelson.
The Court of Appeal backed a judgment dismissing their fight to remain anonymous by a two-to-one majority.
The ex-Royal Irish Regiment soldiers wanted their identities shielded, amid fears they could be targeted by dissident republicans.
All of them served in Lurgan, Co Armagh, when Mrs Nelson (40), was killed in a loyalist car bomb attack outside her home in March 1999.
They have provided statements to the tribunal examining allegations of security force collusion surrounding the murder, but were refused anonymity.
A High Court judge endorsed the inquiry’s position last July by declaring public interest in its transparency outweighed any risks to the former soldiers from giving evidence.
After hearing an appeal against the dismissed judicial review application, Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr held that it was the correct outcome.
He pointed out that the risk to the ex-soldiers — whose names will appear in the book evidence and on the inquiry website, although they are not to be called to testify — was regarded in the lower moderate range.
Sir Brian said: “I consider that the panel was correct to have regard to the fact that the evidence which they have supplied is uncontroversial and is unlikely to excite the interest of malevolent forces.”
He also noted that if the soldiers were not identified, many other witnesses could make the same claim to have their identities protected.
“Quite apart from this, I consider that the impact on the authority of the inquiry and the general view as to its openess will be considerable if an entire category of witnesses, whose evidence is not remotely of a sensitive nature, remains unidentified,” Sir Brian added.
He suggested that a final decision on anonymity could be deferred, although he stressed it was a matter for the tribunal’s own discretion.
Lord Justice Higgins backed his reasons for dismissing the appeal, adding that the inquiry would have the advantage of its conclusions if it delayed identifying the soldiers until it planned to publish its report.
But Lord Justice Girvan said he would have allowed the appeal, finding it was premature to withhold continued anonymity at this stage.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/amnesty-campaign-calls-for-full-finucane-inquiry-14183657.html
Thursday, 12 February 2009
An internet campaign was launched today to pressure the Government for a fully independent inquiry into the murder of Northern Ireland solicitor Pat Finucane.
Today marks the 20th anniversary of what remains one of the most controversial killings of the Troubles, with security forces found to have colluded in the lawyer’s murder.
The 39-year-old father-of-three was shot dead by loyalists in front of his family at their north Belfast home on February 12, 1989.
Amnesty International has launched a campaign to push for a fully independent probe after the Government offered a public inquiry into the case, but insisted it take place under new legislation which critics claim gives ministers undue influence.
“Twenty years on, the truth about his killing is still kept from them and from the public,” said Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen.
“With each day that passes, the chances of an inquiry uncovering that truth get smaller.
“Already at least two potentially crucial witnesses have died.”
Amnesty has now launched an appeal on its UK and international websites urging people to write both to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward demanding a full, independent inquiry.
http://www.irishnews.com/articles/540/606/2009/2/10/609800_371856039001Kidspoiso.html
By Susan McKay
10/02/2009
Daryl Proctor and his friends represent something very scary. Young, violent, sectarian and with no capacity for pity or remorse, he was jailed last week for a gang attack two and a half years ago that left Paul McCauley in a coma that is likely to end only with his premature death.
At the age of 15, Proctor and his mates could think of no better use for a lovely summer Saturday evening than to plan a vicious attack on a group of friends who were having a barbecue in a back garden in Derry’s Waterside.
Their motive was sectarian – the gathering was perceived to be Catholic.
In reality, it included Catholics, Protestants and atheists from Northern Ireland as well as a couple of Poles and Romanians.
It was a send-off for one of the circle of friends who was about to go off to Azerbaijan to teach English.
Proctor, from the Fountain estate just across the River Foyle, was one of a gang of around 10 or 12 boys.
They gathered at the back of the loyalist Irish Street estate behind the house before the attack and they were “chillingly calm” as they surged out of the dark and began kicking and stamping on the three young men who were tidying up after their party.
The gang set out to cause the maximum harm – concentrating on the heads and upper bodies of their victims.
One of the men they attacked had muscular dystrophy. This was no deterrent.
He was left with a broken jaw and bootprints on his face and back.
Paul McCauley suffered catastrophic head injuries.
Proctor is scary, not just because of what he did but because, even after knowing the devastating consequences for Paul McCauley, he was incapable of feeling any regret. The McCauley family have been dignified and heartbroken.
Paul has a little daughter. Proctor doesn’t care. In fact, a report prepared before he was sentenced indicated that he posed a high risk of reoffending.
None of the other members of the gang has, as yet, been prosecuted.
What is wrong with boys like this?
They didn’t grow up during the Troubles – they were only seven or eight when the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998.
As it happens, that year, while writing my book about northern Protestants, I spent some time in the Fountain estate listening to 12 to 14-year-olds.
Many were full of a sense of grievance. They said they felt trapped, the last Protestants on the city side of Derry, constantly under siege from Catholics.
“My brother is eight and he throws bricks,” one child told me. “He has to defend himself.”
Others, however, suggested that their hostility to Catholics was not about their own experience but was passed on to them from their parents.
They took part in cross-community school residentials and they’d seen a video about a Protestant and a Catholic falling in love.
When I asked if they’d go out with a Catholic, the same boy said: “My ma would beat the life out of me.”
A girl said some Catholics were nice but she didn’t mix with them because of fear of what her own people would do.
“See, if you talk to Catholics, you get a beating.”
Loyalist paramilitaries had a significant presence in the Protestant estates of Derry during the conflict and they continued to recruit children to their youth wings long after their ceasefires as well as selling them drugs and peddling a distorted view of both history and masculinity.
It appears that the UDA played a part in the attack that ruined Paul McCauley’s life.
Last week, the secretary of state gave these self-styled defenders of the Protestant people yet more time to decommission their weapons when he extended amnesty legislation for a further year.
No guns were used in the attack carried out by Proctor and his teenage mates. But by allowing loyalist paramilitaries to hold on to their weapons for all these years, the government has effectively condoned their continued power and influence over another generation of young boys.
The Eames/Bradley commission recognised that, if there was ever to be reconciliation here, the ongoing extent and impact of sectarianism had to be faced up to and challenged.
The case of Daryl Proctor and his fellow gang members proves the urgency of this task.
Sectarianism has survived the conflict, the peace process and the establishment of the assembly.
Children poisoned by hatred to the point of losing their humanity are still being raised in the north.