We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
THE POLICE SERVICE of Northern Ireland has apologised profusely after it was discovered that a number of “legacy” documents relating to killings in the 1990s weren’t given to Northern Ireland’s police ombudsman.
The cases relate to attacks which all involve Loyalist paramilitaries, including the betting shop killings where five people were killed.
On 5 February 1992, a mass shooting took place at the Sean Graham bookmakers on the Lower Ormeau Road in Belfast. Five civilians were killed: three men and two teenage boys, all of whom were Catholic. The UDA claimed responsibility for the attack.
Deputy Chief Constable Stephen Martin commented: “On behalf of the Police Service, I want to say to the families who have been affected by these disclosure failings; we are deeply and sincerely sorry.”
He said that the PSNI “never sought to deliberately withhold this information” from Office of the Police Ombudsman of Northern Ireland (PONI).
Human error is being cited as one of the reasons for the failure to furnish the Police Ombudsman with all available information.
Martin explained how the documents were omitted, saying that “a different researcher working elsewhere in the PSNI found the material while preparing for disclosure in response to civil litigation”.
The fact that one part of the organisation was able to find the information while the other did not is a result of a number of issues including the differing levels of experience and knowledge of our researchers, the sheer volume of the material involved and the limitations of the archaic IT systems.
The PSNI is estimated to hold over 44 million pages of paper and microform (microfiche and microfilm) related to cases.
The material isn’t stored in one place, and is held on different technologies, some of which cannot transfer information to one another; there is no central reference or inventory for every piece of information.
The Police Ombudsman Dr Michael Maguire told BBC News: “My staff became aware that police were preparing to disclose a range of material as part of impending civil proceedings.
“Following a request from this office, police released this material to us, which helped identify significant evidence relevant to a number of our investigations.
“Following on from this, police have now also identified a computer system, which they say had not been properly searched when responding to previous requests for information. In that instance, it would seem information which police told us did not exist has now been found,” Maguire said.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, the ombudsman said:
As a statement of intent, I welcome the PSNI’s undertaking to address the issues which gave rise to the failure to disclose all relevant information to my Office. However, we need to explore with them how that will work in practice.
We need to discuss with police issues such as resourcing, personnel, and knowledge of legacy police storage systems to determine a new set of working practices which will ensure that in future my investigators are able to access all the information they require.
Martin said that: “We entirely agree with the Police Ombudsman, that the effective disclosure of information is central to any system for dealing with the past.
The PSNI has decided that “the best interim solution for public confidence in policing would be to give appropriately vetted PONI staff full and unfettered access to our legacy systems”. Legal advice is being sought on how this would be carried out.
Martin added that the police force “is committed to learning” from the incident, but it would need financial backing to implement any changes.
“PSNI have for a long time made clear that we are not adequately resourced to deal with the past and we have an outstanding business case with the Department for Justice for further substantial investment in our disclosure processes.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
And we brought one of them here to build up transparency and trust to our force.
@DavidOReilly: a disgraceful situation
How come we Irish tolerate one of that gang as head of our police.
@James Wallace: huh??
@Patricia Mcnamara: I know where you’re coming from Patricia but, look at the s(um that was in there before him. I agree he shouldn’t be there either but…..
@Patricia Mcnamara: If you have followed his actions without bias you’ll see he has brought about some real change. He is the perfect man for the job. He will be a useful tool for keeping open relations with NI in the coming years. Harris is also familiar with UK intelligence, which is something we have always outsourced to the Brits.
Appears that collusion continued even after the RUC were disbanded.
@Joe Johnson: probably because the RUC were never really disbanded.
@Joe Johnson: Changing a name is not disbanding an organization. Same shyte, different bucket!
Why am I not surprised?
Archaic IT sys and human error being blamed but they all relate to loyalist attacks. Some coincidence.
@Shelly Levine: I believe it. Human error was only deleting it to the recycle bin. Old IT system meant it didn’t automatically clear the recycle bin at intervals so was never fully deleted.
Likely story. I wonder if any files have been found on the murder of Pat Finucane? Absolutely rotten organisation.
@Bingobango: but was it not war..as Gerry says..and Mr Finucane was most definitely only on one side
@SF Ankle Tapper:
Eh….he wasn’t. He represented loyalist paramilitaries as well.
@SF Ankle Tapper: are you peddling that blatant lie as some form of justification for the killing of a solicitor by UDA/UFF, a gang which contained at least 2 paid agents of British/ RUC forces?????
@M Bowe: One of his brothers, John, a Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) member, was killed in a car crash in the Falls Road, Belfast, in 1972. Another brother, Dermot, successfully contested attempts to extradite him to Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland for his part in the killing of a prison officer; he was one of 38 IRA prisoners who escaped from HMP Maze in 1983. A third brother Seamus was the fiancé of Mairead Farrell, one of the IRA trio shot dead by the Special Air Service(SAS) in Gibraltar in March 1988.[17] Seamus was the leader of an IRA unit in west Belfast before his arrest in 1976 with Bobby Sands and seven other IRA men, during an attempt to destroy Balmoral’s furniture store in south Belfast. He was sentenced to 14 years’ imprisonment.[18]
@SF Ankle Tapper: so that justifies the police special branch and british government ministers colluding to get him murdered bu loyalist paramilitaries. Wise up.
@SF Ankle Tapper: and that justifies hus murder? My young brother in law was shot dead in the bookies o involement in anything are you going to try and justify that?
@SF Ankle Tapper: Showing you true colours now.. And none of what you posted justifies murder .. Shall I now poste and load of stuff about Loyalitsts ? No I wont, why , becasue there was a peace process and a line was drawn in the sand, but its idiots like you who want to bring back the one side of the past while completley ignoring the other side which was the root casue
@SF Ankle Tapper: I suggest you read the book Rebel Hearts by Kevin Tollis.. It documents the night when the Finucanne Family were burned out of their home at the start of the troubles. The family were boarded up into their house when the Loyalists came to evict them. The brothers were all huddled on the stairs crying and petrified listening to the Loyalists outside trying to get in.. The next morning the Loyalists came back and told their father if they weren’t out that day they were been burned with the house later that night.. Now that is why all the Finucame brothers choose the path they did.. Anyone would do the same
@David Garland: pfft
@SF Ankle Tapper: the bBritish government have coluded and orchestrated many deaths on this island over many many years, thierbtroops and police force have been shown to be guilty of many atrosities. Will you now say that justified the Republician armed force reaction to this?????
@SF Ankle Tapper: no he represented loyalists aswell
@SF Ankle Tapper: what did you expect them to sit back and watch loyalist mob’s burn them out. Be killed by the British interned with out a crime. Treated as second class no 3rd class citizens. If I was born in the north & had gone through what they did I would have been out trying to kill the British as well
This apology cannot be taken seriously everybody in the world knows that the RUC and PNSI have been withholding information for years and colluded with Loyalists on a lot of these murders .
@Donal Carey: just the same as the irish govt withhold info and docu ents from the northern govt. All the same shyte but different sides of the border. I am sure Gerry could tell a few tales as well.
“the cases relate to attacks which all involved loyalist paramilitaries”
Well what a shock that is! For them to even attempt to blame this on ‘human error and an archaic IT system’ just shows how they haven’t changed one iota.
Isn’t it the PSNI ..
And they.talk about the IRA
@Patricia Mcnamara: what documents have the IRA disclosed?
It was illegal to have documents relating to IRA activities so Republicans would need to have been mad to hold on to any. You see what happened with the Boston tapes. Of course, the RUC has said that they have millions of documents relating to IRA activities during the troubles and 25,000 Republicans did serve time in prison so I would imagine that they have documents relating to all those activities. That’s if they hav n’t lost them or passed them on to loyalist paramilitaries…..ahem.
@SF Ankle Tapper: The IRA disbanded, what loyalist paramilitaries disbanded ?
@SF Ankle Tapper: don’t try your blatant royalists faeces with me
@SF Ankle Tapper: what are you on about this is classic deflection. The state were supposed to protect its people not run agents to kill them then cover it up. People like you make me sick with your whataboutery all it does is let the state get away with it.
@Larry Doherty: yeah because the “republicans” were worried about doing something that was illegal. What a laugh.
@Mairtin Antaine O Conaill: this is state collusion in the murder of innocent people why do people always try to turn things to met their own agenda. My mother in law is an old woman of nearly 88 yrs of age and would like for the british state to do the decent thing and declare loud and clear that yes they colluded in these murders and yes they helped bring in the guns used in this massacre from south Africa and yes they gave one of the guns back to loyalist and explain why one of the firearms was on display in the british war museum.
Collusion between what’s termed the “security forces “ and there loyalist counter insurgency death squads has been an ongoing feature of life for nationalists / Republicans in the occupied six counties . One has only to read “Gangs and counter Gangs” by its architect General Sir Frank Edward Kitson to get a picture of what the British were up to . That the RUC / PSNI are still hiding the truth should come as a surprise to no one . Perhaps we should just ask Drew Harris as he is after all our new Garda Commissioner .
Not good enough!
Dont expect senior Gardaí to be lining up to become chief constable & clean out this corruption any day soon.
Funny they were all found shortly after drew Harris left the PSNI. He was involved in my parents murder case and the lack of disclosure at his behest was shocking.
Surely the new Garda commissioner will have a lot to answer over this?
He’s the former head of the psni/ruc, he obviously new about the collusion and his that information.
Will the Irish press go after him?
I highly doubt it.
Shame on that joke of a government for giving him the job in the first place, it’s an insult to all the Irish people that them animals killed up north while colluding with the police force and the British establishment!
Nothing new here, being policy for decades.
Surely the Garda commissioner will have a lot to answer over this?
He’s former head of the psni/ruc and it seems like he blatantly hid this information?
I really hope the Irish press are going to hound him out, but that’s highly unlikely as most of them are in Fine Gael pocket these days.
Another absolute embarrassment by the government and an insult to all the innocent Irish people them animals killed with the help of the police force and the british establishment!
Masons brotherhood PSNI all the same nothing to see here tàigs move along.Filthy to the core.Interesting to see what the blue shirts in power say about this!
They’re really taking the PSNI
Oh, FFS, it’s history. It can’t be changed. Move on.
@Smiley: no but we should learn from it or we are domed to repeat it’s horrors
@Smiley: if it was a member of your family could you move on?
have your say