State Violence (28 page)

Any attempt by our solicitor, Paddy McGrory, to probe into the surveillance operation was made impossible with the issuing of a Public Interest Immunity Certificate by the British government. Nevertheless, this aspect of the official story was exposed when the head of Gibraltar's Special Branch, Detective Chief Inspector Joseph Ullger, gave evidence. He admitted that the authorities had deliberately allowed the three to enter Gibraltar in order to gather evidence for a subsequent trial. It also became apparent that on 6 March a member of the Gibraltar police was present on the Spanish side of passport control with the aliases and passport numbers of the three. So when Seán Savage crossed the border using the known pseudonym in the name of Coyne he was immediately identifiable.

The British gave no real evidence to back-up their claim that the notional bomb in the white Renault would be detonated by remote control. The only fact presented by Mr O, a senior British intelligence officer, was that an alleged IRA arms cache had been uncovered in Belgium and it had contained a remote control device. This had supposedly led the authorities to believe that the Gibraltar bomb would also be detonated in such a way. This has since been shown to have been a lie, because what made the Belgian police believe they had discovered an IRA cache was the fact that the devices for detonating the semtex were not of a remote control variety. The remote control detonating theory totally contradicted what ‘official sources' told the BBC on the evening of Sunday 6 March 1988, which referred to a bomb that was ‘timed' to kill British army bandsmen on the Tuesday. The following day the Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Mr Ian Stewart, repeated this point on the BBC's
Today
programme.

The other argument put forward by Mr O to explain the flawed remote control theory was that the IRA by employing this device wanted to ensure that there was not a repeat of the Enniskillen bombing in which many civilians were killed. This argument contradicts the view instilled into the SAS soldiers who carried out the killings. They told the inquest that the three at all costs had to be prevented from using the remote control detonator. If the IRA did not want to incur civilian casualties why would they detonate this notional bomb in the Renault 5 car on a Sunday afternoon when only civilians would be injured? Besides, it was scientifically proven at the inquest that the three could never have detonated any bomb supposedly in the Renault from where they were killed. If the authorities were so certain that there was a bomb in the car, why then did it take them several hours to make the area ‘safe'? The probable answer to this question is that they simply did not think there was a bomb at all. Soldier G at the inquest testified that he thought there was a bomb in the car. Further information supplied by the British press since the inquest suggests he was accompanied on that day by two better qualified personnel who disagreed with his opinion. Their presence was concealed from the inquest. This suggestion has never been discounted by the authorities.

Nevertheless, according to the four killers, these three people, who were unarmed and did not have a bomb or possess any detonating devices, made threatening movements when they were approached by armed men. Why should they do such a foolish thing? The true answer to this question is that they didn't make any threatening movements. This was revealed to Roger Boulton, the editor of the Thames television programme
Death on the Rock,
by a senior Conservative politician who said: ‘Of course there was a Shoot-to-Kill policy in Gibraltar just as we had in the Far East and in Aden'.
[7]

In the days immediately following the killings, as we waited for the remains of our loved ones to be brought home, the families had to endure considerable harassment and intimidation from the RUC. For example, on 8 March I was spotted by the police leaving my parents' home by car with my sister's boyfriend. For no reason other than to insult us the RUC stopped my car and began to make obscene sexual remarks about Mairéad. All the other families were to experience similar harassment throughout this period and, in fact, the McCann family continue to this day to be harassed.

The McCanns own a butcher's shop on Belfast's Falls Road and British soldiers regularly shout obscene remarks in at the parents. Dan's brother almost on a daily basis is stopped and abused by British soldiers while escorting his child to school.

But in the days leading up to the funeral the families were visited by an RUC officer who threatened us with dire consequences if we fulfilled the wishes of our loved ones to be buried as members of the IRA.

The remains of Mairéad, Seán and Dan were flown from Gibraltar to Dublin and from there they were to be brought by road to Belfast. From the moment we crossed the border into Northern Ireland the remains were literally kidnapped by the RUC. As we followed behind the RUC jeeps, it was noticeable how they deliberately slowed down when we passed hostile crowds making us easy targets for missiles. When we reached the M1, some ten miles from Belfast, an RUC road-block prevented the relatives from following the cortège. The remains of the three were not brought to their homes until much later.

After approximately 30 minutes, the relatives who were in three cars were allowed to proceed onto the motorway, while the other mourners were made to take another route. On the motorway, we were stopped by the RUC again and held for at least two hours. Many of the relatives were subjected to considerable abuse. Two aunts had accompanied me to meet the remains in Dublin and they stated afterwards that this period, stuck on the M1 surrounded by hundreds of RUC men, was without doubt the most frightening experience of the aftermath, including the gun and grenade attack on the actual funeral. The actions of the RUC throughout this whole period underlined time and again how sectarian a force it is. It exposed the nonsense of the Dublin government who considered it a breakthrough when they got the assurance of the British authorities that RUC men would accompany the Ulster Defence Regiment, another sectarian body, when on patrol.

Once the remains arrived home only the McCann's household was subject to intense harassment. Their home was literally surrounded back, front and side by British army saracens. Only on the morning of the funeral, 16 March, did they withdraw.

Quite unusual for the funeral of IRA members there was no British army or RUC presence, despite the fact that the families had been threatened with a repeat of what happened at Lawrence Marley's funeral when the RUC saturated the area and had refused to allow the remains to leave the Marley home until the Irish tricolour was removed from the coffin.

Many believe that the absence of the police and the attack carried out by a grenade-wielding gunman in the cemetery was no coincidence. In this attack three mourners were murdered. The killer made his retreat towards the motorway, which runs beside the cemetery. Parked on the motorway was a Ford transit van, and it seemed as though this was the killer's accomplices waiting to help make good his escape. When the killer was overpowered near the motorway, the van quickly left the scene. It was claimed later that this was an undercover RUC van. A number of questions arise: why didn't they intervene to halt the slaughter of mourners and how did the sectarian killer know that there would not be the usual police presence? Many believe that there was direct collusion between the so-called security forces and this murderer.

Five independent civil liberty organisations, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, Inquest, the National Council for Civil Liberties (London), the International League for Human Rights (New York) and Amnesty International – all of which had observers at the inquest – have criticised many aspects of the proceedings and have called for further inquiries into the killings in Gibraltar.

The Amnesty International report stated that the inquest failed to answer ‘the fundamental issue ... whether the fatal shootings were caused by what happened in the street, or whether the authorities planned in advance for the three to be shot dead'.
[8]

The inquiry by its very nature was not equipped to determine the truth. The British authorities, which might have had an interest in concealing aspects of the truth, had access prior to the inquest and during it to identities of witnesses, their statements or possible statements and were to some extent able, on grounds of availability, to dictate the order of calling some witnesses.

In contrast, our legal advisers had virtually no information except one ballistics' report and a pathologist's report.

Amnesty International in its report expressed its concern ‘that the legal representatives of the deceased's families were significantly and unfairly disadvantaged in comparison with the representatives for the other interested parties. The system is inherently weighted against the deceased's families in preparing for cross-examination'. Our lawyer, Mr Paddy McGrory, received the other forensic reports after the inquest began. He did not receive any of the witnesses' statements in advance, and even during the inquest he did not receive the statements made by security force personnel shortly after the incident. Without access to these statements in advance he was not able to cross-examine witnesses on the basis of what other witnesses, who testified at a later stage, said about the same incident. Thus, for example, he was not able to question the soldiers, who testified in the second week of the inquest, about information which was presented in later weeks by police officers and civilian eye-witnesses. He also did not have witnesses' earlier statements to compare with their court testimony.
[9]

Our lawyer faced numerous obstacles including for example the price of the court's daily transcripts being increased from 50p to £5 per page. Because the price was so prohibitive our lawyer could not avail of them – not so the British Ministry of Defence.

The use by the British government of Public Immunity Certificates prevented Mr McGrory, our lawyer, inquiring into many matters such as the planning of the operation, including the role of the ‘accessories before the fact'.

Finally there was the coroner's summing up of the evidence to the jury, in which he told them to avoid an open verdict. By doing this he unduly influenced these eleven men. This is especially true as after six hours of discussion the jury was deadlocked, divided 7 to 4 in favour of a ‘lawful killing' verdict. In normal circumstances an open verdict would have been a likely compromise, but this had been ruled out. The coroner then recalled the jury and gave them what seemed like an ultimatum to return a verdict. Two hours later they returned stating that they found, by 9 to 2 – the smallest majority allowed – the killings lawful.

Despite all the disadvantages faced by our solicitor, Paddy McGrory, a man with lifelong experience as a lawyer, he firmly believed that the verdict went against the weight of the evidence, that it was a ‘perverse verdict'.

The United Kingdom government insisted that the Gibraltar Inquest, despite its fundamental flaws, was the final word on these controversial killings. It consistently thwarted through the use of Public Interest Immunity Certificates any attempt by our families to have our case examined in the Northern Ireland courts.

Eventually we brought our case first to the European Commission of Human Rights and then in February 1995 to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. On 27 September 1995 – seven years and six months after the actual killings – the court found the British government guilty of having unlawfully killed our loved ones. It was a landmark decision, it being the first time that a signatory to the European Convention of Human Rights was found guilty of breaching Article 2 of the Convention, the Right to Life.

The British government said it would ‘ignore' the verdict. The deputy Prime Minister went as far as to say that the government would do the same again. Almost exactly a year after the verdict a young Irishman, Diarmuid O'Neill, was shot dead in very similar circumstances in a house in London.

The stance of the British government must be viewed as quite unacceptable. If Britain continues to refuse to operate within the constraints of law, both national and international, if it continues to refuse to meet its specific obligations with regard to the ‘right to life' under the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, then it must be ostracised and no longer treated as being part of the democratic family of nations.

The phone call shattered the silence of my bedroom. Pieces of sound seemed to shower down around me. To get a call in the night when you are on priestly duty always brings a sense of foreboding of tragedy. Almost in one action I pulled the light-string and lifted the phone. The quiet voice, so quiet, contrasted with the clamour of the phone. ‘This is the police. There has been a shooting. A priest is needed. Go out the Moy Road until you come to Trainors' pub. Turn right and go on a mile until you come to a school. There is a road to the right opposite it. Turn down the road and go on until you come to a two-storey white house. There will be police there with a red light. Then you will be brought to the scene of the shooting'. I said I would go immediately.

I looked at the clock. It was a quarter to three. I dressed hurriedly and took the holy oils and blessed sacrament with me.

As I drove out the Moy Road, the silence of the night pressed against me. There was no traffic. Only the heavy stillness of night. I had asked no questions. I thought to myself: Is somebody wounded? Is somebody dead? Who could it be? Then a sudden thought, quickly dismissed, ‘Is this a trap? Was it really the police who phoned?'

I followed the directions. I met no car or person. Then as I turned right at the school, a red car halted at the junction coming from the other direction. A man in civilian clothes, but obviously a policeman, called out to me that I was on the right road. The white house soon showed up in the dark and then the waving blood-red light. I was directed by gestures to park my car. A group of uniformed police stood in the shadows. Nobody spoke. There was white tape, familiar sign of an incident, across a lane leading down by another house. A policeman came forward from the other side of the tape and introduced himself to me as an inspector. He was polite and friendly, so different from the sullen phalanx of uniforms I had just passed through. He guided me to the scene, past a farmhouse to an open yard. He told me two men were dead and that one of them was Desmond Grew. There was an open empty mushroom shed, of the old arc-shaped type. It had no frontage. A light was shining inside and there was a white car in it. In front of the shed was an apron yard of concrete. In the half-light I looked down at the black forms of two bodies lying on the ground. The inspector then directed his flash lamp on to them. The two men were lying within a few yards of one another, sprawled out. Beyond their heads, lying on the ground, were two Kalashnikov rifles. I said the Act of Contrition, gave them conditional absolution and anointed them. I recognised Dessie Grew. He was very badly shot in the head. The blood from the heads of the two men was thick and clotted and the dark intestinal-looking brain matter shone slightly red in the poor light. They were dressed in casual denim-like clothes, unmasked. The butt of a pistol protruded from a trouser pocket of Martin McCaughey. All was silence. I prayed at length. The bodies looked so small and thin and even vulnerable in death. We seemed to stand towering over them like giants. Such an impression I have experienced before at scenes of fatal accidents. Perhaps it is psychological, the power of life lording it over death.