BELFAST, Northern Ireland - A special team of detectives is traveling back to the start of Northern Ireland's conflict 37 years ago to investigate more than 3,200 unresolved killings in this long-disputed British territory.
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The team will work chronologically through long-closed cases from 1969 to 1998, the year of Northern Ireland's peace accord, in hopes of finding the truth for relatives of victims — but not to put killers behind bars.
Dave Cox, commander of the new 84-member Historical Enquiries Team, said his detectives would reopen files Monday on the first 100 unresolved killings dating back to April 1969.
Cox, a 52-year-old former senior officer in London's Metropolitan Police, refused to specify any cases.
However, public records show that only one person suffered fatal injuries in April 1969: Sam Devenney, a 42-year-old Catholic who was clubbed by police in his home. He died that July, two days after another Catholic man, 67-year-old Francis McCloskey, suffered fatal head wounds when baton-wielding police charged into a stone-throwing Catholic mob.
The British and Irish governments and most Northern Ireland parties welcomed the effort to investigate the old cases as providing an essential support for the Good Friday peace accord.
However, that landmark deal granted a prison amnesty for all convicted members of truce-observing groups. This means that anybody caught by the new probe could face a trial and conviction but would be paroled immediately.
Cox said Friday that the key aim was to seek the truth for the relatives of 3,268 people killed in political and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Of those cases, he said, more than 2,000 are completely unsolved, while the rest involve suspects who were not arrested or charged.
Other cases facing re-examination stem from the first key event of the conflict: Protestant-Catholic riots in Belfast and Londonderry on Aug. 14-15, 1969, that forced Britain to deploy troops as peacekeepers, a move that sparked the rise of the modern Irish Republican Army. Eight people were killed on those nights, most by police gunfire.
For decades, Catholic politicians and human rights activists have demanded that former police officers involved be identified and charged in all those cases.
However, most cases to be reinvestigated involve the IRA, a Catholic-based group that killed nearly 1,800 people from 1970 to 1997, when the outlawed group ceased fire without achieving its aim of abolishing Northern Ireland.
The project, announced in March and expected to take at least six years, has a $55 million budget and its own headquarters southwest of Belfast.
Police and crime experts said some investigations could depend on using modern forensic-science techniques on old pieces of evidence.
Forensics specialists with the probe last year combed through files in police stations across Northern Ireland in hopes of finding items to analyze for suspects' DNA.
"DNA may uncover new evidence, and witnesses may feel more secure about coming forward," said Irwin Montgomery, chairman of the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, which represents more than 7,000 serving officers and supports the families of more than 300 officers killed, most by the IRA.
"I hope that those who think that they have got away with past atrocities will now start to look over their shoulders and realize that justice may catch up with them after all."
Cox has assembled a team of current and retired detectives from throughout the United Kingdom: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Detectives exclusively from outside Northern Ireland will lead probes into about 50 killings committed by the province's police, largely from the early years of the conflict.
Members of the team will discuss their findings with each victim's family — to see whether they want suspects, if identified, to be charged with murder or other crimes.
"I do not for a moment underestimate the complexity of this challenge or the potential emotional stress for relatives associated with revisiting these tragic events," Cox said.
Some relatives of victims criticized the effort as pointless, because nobody would end up in prison as a result. But others said nailing down the truth and identifying the killers was important to them.
"If they were named on the TV and in the paper, that would bring one sense of justice for me," said Lorna Kelly, whose 21-year-old son Roger was killed in 1991 in an IRA ambush on a British army vehicle.
"All we want is just the truth, then the family would come to terms with what happened to Martin," said Pearse McShane, whose older brother was killed by a British soldier while playing with a toy gun at night in 1971.
Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, applauded the effort, saying the identification of those behind the killings would allow relatives of victims "to reach some understanding and closure on the past."
But An Fhirinne, a pressure group that accuses British security forces of having colluded with Protestant extremists to kill hundreds of Catholics, said it did not have faith in any effort led by British police.
"Those accused of murder are being asked to reinvestigate themselves," group spokesman Robert McClenaghan said. "Only an independent, international inquiry will have the authority and confidence of victims' families to get to the truth about collusion and state murder."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_re_eu/nireland_cold_cases
I thought it was a war. I would consider it a war, there was violence on all sides, posed to do something for their own goals. Why would it be considered murder?
Now after the Good Friday peacedeals, any killings might be considered murder, but I see that timeperiod in Britain's and Northern Ireland's history as war. Plan and simple!
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The team will work chronologically through long-closed cases from 1969 to 1998, the year of Northern Ireland's peace accord, in hopes of finding the truth for relatives of victims — but not to put killers behind bars.
Dave Cox, commander of the new 84-member Historical Enquiries Team, said his detectives would reopen files Monday on the first 100 unresolved killings dating back to April 1969.
Cox, a 52-year-old former senior officer in London's Metropolitan Police, refused to specify any cases.
However, public records show that only one person suffered fatal injuries in April 1969: Sam Devenney, a 42-year-old Catholic who was clubbed by police in his home. He died that July, two days after another Catholic man, 67-year-old Francis McCloskey, suffered fatal head wounds when baton-wielding police charged into a stone-throwing Catholic mob.
The British and Irish governments and most Northern Ireland parties welcomed the effort to investigate the old cases as providing an essential support for the Good Friday peace accord.
However, that landmark deal granted a prison amnesty for all convicted members of truce-observing groups. This means that anybody caught by the new probe could face a trial and conviction but would be paroled immediately.
Cox said Friday that the key aim was to seek the truth for the relatives of 3,268 people killed in political and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Of those cases, he said, more than 2,000 are completely unsolved, while the rest involve suspects who were not arrested or charged.
Other cases facing re-examination stem from the first key event of the conflict: Protestant-Catholic riots in Belfast and Londonderry on Aug. 14-15, 1969, that forced Britain to deploy troops as peacekeepers, a move that sparked the rise of the modern Irish Republican Army. Eight people were killed on those nights, most by police gunfire.
For decades, Catholic politicians and human rights activists have demanded that former police officers involved be identified and charged in all those cases.
However, most cases to be reinvestigated involve the IRA, a Catholic-based group that killed nearly 1,800 people from 1970 to 1997, when the outlawed group ceased fire without achieving its aim of abolishing Northern Ireland.
The project, announced in March and expected to take at least six years, has a $55 million budget and its own headquarters southwest of Belfast.
Police and crime experts said some investigations could depend on using modern forensic-science techniques on old pieces of evidence.
Forensics specialists with the probe last year combed through files in police stations across Northern Ireland in hopes of finding items to analyze for suspects' DNA.
"DNA may uncover new evidence, and witnesses may feel more secure about coming forward," said Irwin Montgomery, chairman of the Police Federation of Northern Ireland, which represents more than 7,000 serving officers and supports the families of more than 300 officers killed, most by the IRA.
"I hope that those who think that they have got away with past atrocities will now start to look over their shoulders and realize that justice may catch up with them after all."
Cox has assembled a team of current and retired detectives from throughout the United Kingdom: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
Detectives exclusively from outside Northern Ireland will lead probes into about 50 killings committed by the province's police, largely from the early years of the conflict.
Members of the team will discuss their findings with each victim's family — to see whether they want suspects, if identified, to be charged with murder or other crimes.
"I do not for a moment underestimate the complexity of this challenge or the potential emotional stress for relatives associated with revisiting these tragic events," Cox said.
Some relatives of victims criticized the effort as pointless, because nobody would end up in prison as a result. But others said nailing down the truth and identifying the killers was important to them.
"If they were named on the TV and in the paper, that would bring one sense of justice for me," said Lorna Kelly, whose 21-year-old son Roger was killed in 1991 in an IRA ambush on a British army vehicle.
"All we want is just the truth, then the family would come to terms with what happened to Martin," said Pearse McShane, whose older brother was killed by a British soldier while playing with a toy gun at night in 1971.
Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, applauded the effort, saying the identification of those behind the killings would allow relatives of victims "to reach some understanding and closure on the past."
But An Fhirinne, a pressure group that accuses British security forces of having colluded with Protestant extremists to kill hundreds of Catholics, said it did not have faith in any effort led by British police.
"Those accused of murder are being asked to reinvestigate themselves," group spokesman Robert McClenaghan said. "Only an independent, international inquiry will have the authority and confidence of victims' families to get to the truth about collusion and state murder."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_re_eu/nireland_cold_cases
I thought it was a war. I would consider it a war, there was violence on all sides, posed to do something for their own goals. Why would it be considered murder?
Now after the Good Friday peacedeals, any killings might be considered murder, but I see that timeperiod in Britain's and Northern Ireland's history as war. Plan and simple!