Truth Recovery

The PFC believes that bereaved families have a right to truth and justice. We advocate for an independent truth recovery process that is compliant with international human rights standards.

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The PFC believes that bereaved families have a right to as much truth and justice as it may now be possible to reach. Elderly people who lost sons or daughters have a right to an independent truth recovery process that is compliant with international human rights standards. Younger people have the same right to discover the truth about how and why their parents and grandparents were killed during the conflict.

Moreover, wider society needs to be afforded factual truths about what took place so we can move forward into an agreed future without the past continuing to seep a toxic poison into the body politic. These requirements underpin the PFC’s work with families, with statutory bodies and with political parties on truth recovery.

Latest Articles

  • Events to remember Eamon McDevitt

    18.08.21
    19 August 2021
    Statement from the family of Eamon McDevitt Today marks 50 years since my brother Eamon was shot and killed by the British army on this street. It also marks 50 years of injustice and 50 years of impunity by the British state.

  • ‘They tell us to move on, but they won’t let us….’

    Statement from Linda Duffy, daughter of Harry Duffy
    22 May 2021
    “I have been trying for weeks to write something about the 40th anniversary of my father’s death, but I can’t. My anger is so real that it stops me. May is a hard month for our family. It comes every year and I feel like I’m holding my breath until it’s over. My father Harry Duffy, known as Harry...

  • Paul Whitters- 40th Anniversary Reflections

    by Helen Whitters, Paul's mum
    27 April 2021
    Shared with the permission of Helen Whitters "It has been forty years since I lost my son. Paul, 15, left one evening to visit his girlfriend but was drawn into a small group of boys throwing stones at a bakery – tensions were high in the city as the Hunger Strikes continued. Without warning, a...

  • 'What If?' The story of one mother’s loss.

    03 October 2019
    Shankill Bomb Play to be performed in Derry The Shankill Road, Belfast 1993. On a sunny Saturday afternoon in October a bomb explodes in Frizzell’s fish shop, killing nine people and one of the bombers. 'Then it hit me - my Leanne was under all them bricks … A mother’s instinct is to protect her...

  • Dalton family response to DUP Westminster debate

    28 March 2019
    Our father, Sean Dalton, died as a result of an IRA bomb in August 1988 in Creggan, Derry, along with his neighbour, Sheila Lewis. Another neighbour, Gerard Curran, passed away some months later. It is known as the ‘Good Samaritan’ case as Sean, Sheila and Gerard had gone to check on a vulnerable...

Latest Cases

  • Billy Wright

    1997
    Maze Prison
    Truth Recovery

    Billy Wright was murdered on 27 December 1997 while an inmate of the Maze Prison. He was a member of a loyalist paramilitary organisation known as the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF).

  • Gordon Gallagher

    1973
    Creggan, Derry
    Truth Recovery

    9 year old Gordon Gallagher was killed in an IRA landmine attack in Creggan on February 25 1973. The landmine had been intended for the British Army. 

  • Bernadette Friel

    1975
    Carnhill, Derry
    Truth Recovery

    Bernadette Ann Friel was shot at 413 Carnhill, Derry, at 11am on Sunday, October 19, 1975 and subsequently died as a result of her injuries at Altnagelvin Hospital, Derry, at 9.45am on Tuesday, October 21, 1975. Bernadette was aged 22 years at the time of her death. She was born on October 18, 1953. Bernadette was a Catholic and had lived at 9 Donagh Place, Derry with her son Tony, aged four, her father, William Friel (now deceased) brothers Joe, Leo, John, Billy, Paul, and her two sisters Jean and Mary. Bernadette was a close friend of Thomas Ramsey's wife and occasionally stayed at her house. Also staying at the house over the weekend of October 17-20 was Hugh Stanley, the 16-year-old brother-in–law of Ramsay. The accounts given indicate that about 11 am on Sunday, October 19, 1975 Bernadette, Thomas Ramsay, Hugh Stanley, Ramsey's three children and three other young boys were downstairs. Bernadette went upstairs and Thomas Ramsay and Hugh Stanley followed her almost straight away, everyone else remained downstairs. Almost immediately a shot was heard upstairs in the small bedroom. Bernadette had sustained a single gunshot wound to the head. An ambulance was called to the house. Bernadette was found to be alive but unconscious, she was taken to Altnagelvin Hospital. At 9.45am on Tuesday, October 21, 1975, despite extensive surgery, Bernadette died from her injuries in the hospital.

  • The Claudy Bombings

    1972
    Claudy
    Truth Recovery

    Three car bombs exploded on 31st July 1972 on the Main Street of Claudy in County Derry. The attack killed nine civilians,

Declassified documents

  • Weapons and Shooting Statistics (added May 2018)

    Official memo on weapons seized on both sides of the border between 1969-1976 with a breakdown of types of weapons and a summary of key seizures. The information was supplied by the RUC Data Reference Centre which carried out intelligence analysis under the aegis of Special Branch. This February 1977 memo highlights the involvement of republican and loyalist organisations in...

  • Memo to Secretary of State on security options-Feb 1978 (added May 2018)

    1978 memo to SoS (author unknown) outlining security options and highlighting the 'danger signs' that the (British) army are deploying patrols for "suppression" and Intelligence" with no intention of arresting and charging suspects. The memo goes on to suggest that any 'drift' back to army methods and goals is the "road that leads to executive action against terrorists, rather than...

  • Diary entry from Attorney General

    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

  • 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,

  • UDA membership of the UDR

    The issue of UDA membership of the UDR, a locally recruited regiment of the British Army, was the subject of various memos and correspondence.