Secretary of State's Rules of Engagement in Northern Ireland
Pat Finucane Centre | 24 October 2017
A memo from a private secretary to the Secretary of State in 1975 suggesting that the SoS would like to see '...some form of dispensation permitting the Forces to open fire in an emergency without fear of subsequent legal action.' The author speculates that compensation claims by the relatives of...
Families Challenge MoD and Prime Minister in London
Pat Finucane Centre | 26 October 2017
In November 2016 the families of Christopher Quinn and Kevin Heatley along with the Pat Finucane Centre utilised Advans in London to highlight the murders of their relatives and the appalling treatment they endured after the killings, in response to Theresa May's comments on those pushing for human...
PFC letter to Chief Constable following the arrest and detention of Derry republican Tony Taylor
PFC | 06 May 2016
The PFC has maintained on-going contact with the solicitor acting on behalf of Derry republican Tony Taylor and we share the widespread concerns at his continuing detention without trial. We have raised these concerns with the Chief Constable and at meetings with different Justice Ministers and...
Priest joins calls for release of Derry republican prisoner Tony Taylor
Seamus McKinney, The Irish News | 08 October 2016
A DERRY priest has joined a campaign for the release from prison of leading dissident republican Tony Taylor. Holy Family parish priest Fr Paddy O’Kane said he also prayed for Taylor’s case during Sunday Mass last week.
Steven McCaffery and Aeneas Bonner, Irish News | 16 October 2000
Relatives of the victims of a series of loyalist sectarian attacks in the 1970s have come together in a concerted campaign to prove their claim that the murders of their loved ones are linked by security force collusion.
Memo of meeting between Attorney General and British Army
Two pages of a memo (AG 1971 p2 and AG 1971 p3) concerning the visit of a J.M. Parkin, Head of C2 at HQNI (British Army HQ) in the North to the then Attorney General Basil Kelly, a Unionist MP. In reference to any potential prosecutions of soldiers for the murder of civilians Parkin notes,
A diary of the meeting between J.M Parkin, Head of C2 and HQNI and Attorney General Basil Kelly and additional confirmation that the Attorney General fully understood that HQNI was telling him that he should not prosecute soldiers. In effect the military tail was wagging the legal dog. This meeting took place less than two months before Bloody Sunday
Brief for the British Attorney General (AG) in preparation for the 'Irish state case' (the Hooded Men) from September 1972 from DS10 (the Defence Secretariat at the MoD in London). Of interest is the disinformation provided to the AG, the most senior law officer in Britain, by the Ministry of Defence. At para 4 it is claimed that Ballykelly only...
Orwellian legal advice on UDA roadblocks from 1972 Advice note from Ministry of Home Affairs dated 22 August 1972 (by this date the duties of this Ministry had been taken over by the Northern Ireland Office) which seeks to retrospectively justify UDA roadblocks which were frequent throughout Belfast and elsewhere in the summer of 1972. The advice note states that...