SAOIRSE32

Times Online

By Times Online and PA News
4 November 2005

Abigail Witchalls - click to view

A pregnant mother has left hospital six months after she was left paralysed after being stabbed in the neck in an apparently random attack.

Abigail Witchalls, 26, was pushing her toddler son Joseph in a buggy along a country lane in Little Bookham, Surrey, on April 20 when she was knifed in the neck.

At first doctors feared for her life. She has spent the last five months in the Spinal Cord Injury Centre at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore, north London.

Today the hospital said in a statement that she had made “good progress” in rehabilitation. It said: “Abigail is delighted to be returning home after so long.

“She is now able to breathe and speak freely, and has some movement in her right arm so that she is beginning to feed herself.

“Abigail has tetraplegia, which means she is severely disabled and will continue to need ongoing therapy and nursing care. It is expected that her initial stay at home will be temporary as she will soon need to be admitted to a maternity hospital as her pregnancy comes to term.”

The statement said Mrs Witchalls’ home has been specially adapted for her and the NHS will provide carers 24 hours a day to support her.

“While her family will all be close at hand to help, her husband Ben and her mother and father are each continuing with their careers,” it said.

She has not yet received any criminal injury compensation, the hospital said, and her family has set up a trust fund for additional long-term care expenses, to which donations were welcome.

Mrs Witchalls and her family gave their thanks to hospital staff. She said: “Thank you for your enthusiasm and care.

“Your expertise and competence have encouraged me and given me the confidence to continue to expect improvements.”

Mrs Witchalls, a Catholic, has told police she turned to see her attacker holding a knife to her son’s throat as she tried in vain to open a high gate in front of her. With the boy at risk, she walked towards her would-be killer before being stabbed in the neck and left with a 3-inch wound.

Neighbours who heard her screams came running from nearby houses to find her slumped in the mud with Joseph out of his buggy and next to his mother. Her injuries were so serious that the last rites were administered in hospital.

Surrey Police have passed a file containing details of their investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Richard Cazaly, 23, has been treated as a suspect in the case since his apparent suicide from an overdose in Scotland just days after the attack.

Cazaly, from Fleet, Hampshire, had been living in a house on Water Lane, Little Bookham, close to where the attack took place, and had similarities to the description given by the victim.

Although Mrs Witchalls failed to pick him out in a photo identity parade from her hospital bed, Surrey Police believe they have evidence linking Cazaly to the attack.

A hospital spokeswoman said she was discharged last night.

A spokeswoman for Surrey Police said: “Everyone at Surrey Police is delighted to hear that Abigail has now been able to return home.

“She has shown great courage and determination over the past seven months and we all wish her the very best for the future.”

Daily Ireland

Ciarán Barnes

The family of a loyalist murder victim have called on the head of the Public Prosecution Service to ‘examine his conscience’ and bring charges against the paramilitaries responsible for their loved one’s death.
Relatives of David McIlwaine made their impassioned plea after a BBC Crimewatch reconstruction of the killing of the teenager and his acquaintance Andrew Robb.
An Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang murdered the boys in the Co Armagh village on Tangradee in February 2000. It’s alleged that the RUC Special Branch knew of UVF plans to murder two LVF drug-dealers in Tangradee in retaliation for the LVF killing of Portadown UVF boss Richard Jamison in January 2000.
Unable to locate the LVF drug-dealers, the UVF murder gang singled out David McIlwaine and Andrew Robb instead.
According to the McIlwaine family the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) has a ‘huge body of evidence’ linking a number of Co Armagh loyalists to the murders.
They believe that no one has been brought to trial because the Special Branch wants to protect its UVF informant who warned detectives a double murder was being planned on the night the teenagers were killed.
The PSNI’s refusal to let the McIlwaine family have access to Special Branch files on the murder only adds to their suspicions.
Human rights organisation Relatives For Justice, which is probing the McIlwaine murder, stressed that the family’s co-operation with the PSNI on the Crimewatch programme was not an endorsement of the official investigation.
Spokesman Mark Thompson said: “The family has a responsiblity to do everything possible to unearth new evidence and bring witnesses forward. They are appealing to the conscious of the head of the PPS, Sir Alasdair Fraser, to charge those responsible for the murders.”
A spokeswoman for the PSNI said detectives received more than 20 calls in relation to the Crimewatch reconstruction.
“Key information was provided on a main suspect,” said the spokeswoman.

Daily Ireland

Connla Young

A man named as being a suspect in the Northern Bank robbery has spoken of his terrifying ordeal while in PSNI custody.
Peter Morgan hit out after spending almost 48 hours under PSNI interrogation in connection with last year’s £26.5 million (€39 million) robbery.
His comments came after a man was charged in connection with the heist last night.
The 23-year-old Co Down man will appear at Laganside Magistrates Court in Belfast this morning charged with the false imprisonment of Karen and Kevin McMullan, possession of a firearm or imitation firearm with intend to commit an indictable offence and the robbery of £26.5 million (€39 million) in December 2004.
Peter Morgan was arrested in the same series of raids in Kilcoo, Co Down, in the early hours of Wednesday as the man charged last night.
Speaking to Daily Ireland last night Mr Morgan said the entire experience has been shattering.
“I am devastated that my liberty has been taken from me for the past two days for something I had absolutely nothing to do with.
“I’m in shock that in this day and age I can be taken away from my life and work for absolutely nothing.
“I was terrified by the aggressive and heavy handedness shown by the PSNI during my arrest.
“There is not one bit of evidence against me from a legal point of view and there was no evidence produced during my arrest and detention.
“I’m just relieved to be out and going back home.”
Mr Morgan’s solicitor Niall Murphy, of Kevin Winters and Company, said he was concerned by the nature of his clients arrest.
“I would be greatly concerned about the fact that my client’s Article Two human rights were grossly infringed.
“I am also concerned that some media outlets named my client and the approach adopted by them. I am suspicious of the choreographed media coverage in this matter.
“I will be advising Mr Morgan of his rights with in relation to a civil prosecution regarding his unlawful detention.
“I will also be advising him in relation to his rights with regard to the Police Ombudsman and the Press Complaints Commission.”
The man due to appear in court this morning was one of five detained in the North this week.
Two were arrested in County Down, one in Belfast and two in County Tyrone when the PSNI raided homes in Dungannon and Coalisland on Thursday.
The Northern Bank heist made international headlines last year when the families of two bank officials, Kevin McMullan and Chris Ward, were held captive while the pair were forced to carry £26.5 million to a van parked close to the Northern Bank’s cash centre HQ at Donegall Square West in Belfast City Centre.

RTE

04 November 2005 16:56

A man accused of murdering Belfast father-of-two Robert McCartney outside a bar in the city has been remanded on bail.

Terence Davidson, 49, from Stanfield Place, in the Markets area, was ordered to appear again in Belfast Magistrates Court on 2 December.

He was joined in the dock by James McCormick, who is accused of the attempted murder of Mr McCartney’s friend, Brendan Devine, who was with him on the night he died.
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Mr McCormick, 36, originally from Belfast but with an address in Birmingham will also appear again on the same date.

In September, Mr Davidson was released on bail but ordered to have no contact with Mr McCartney’s family.

Mr McCartney, a 33-year-old forklift driver, was beaten and stabbed outside Magennis’s Bar on 30 January.

Since then his five sisters, and fiancée, Bridgeen Hagans, have been involved in a high profile campaign for justice which has taken them to Washington, Brussels, London and Dublin.

BBC

A number of business premises in Strabane town centre have been evacuated following telephoned bomb warnings.

The Rock Road and the Woodend Road have been closed. Motorists are advised to use the by-pass and avoid the town centre.

It is believed the warnings involve four stores and a hotel.

In Belfast, Women for the Restoration of Unionist Culture held protests on the Crumlin and the Springfield Roads.

Belfast Telegraph

By Lisa Smyth
04 November 2005

Police were last night investigating the possibility that dissident republican paramilitaries were responsible for a security alert at the Waterfront Hall.

Thousands of delegates were evacuated as a result of the security alert, which was later declared to be a hoax.

The British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) event was forced to relocate to nearby St George’s Market after a telephone warning was received at about 11.15am.

The three-day event was then moved to the Ulster Hall where Senator George Mitchell presented the final keynote address.

In an anonymous telephone call made to the Belfast Telegraph several hours after the original telephone warning, a caller claiming to represent the Continuity IRA said: “The Continuity IRA claims responsiblity for the evacuation of 2,000 delegates from the Waterfront Hall. The event has seen Belfast being sold as a normalised zone which is good for British investment. We remain of the belief that Britain has not control over Irish affairs and holding events of the BSCC in Belfast does not gloss up a failed agreement.”

An Phoblacht

BY LAURA FRIEL

State violence - Ombudsman report to highlight role of Special Branch

British state collusion in the murder of nationalists was never a case of a ‘few bad apples’ or the informal sharing of intelligence between locally recruited official and unofficial state forces. Nor was it a matter of turning a blind eye or hiding the truth after the event.

It was also never just a case of ‘taking the war to the IRA’. Once the mechanisms of state murder were up and running, no one was safe. IRA Volunteers were targeted and killed and so were family members, including children, of republicans. Political activists, elected representatives and election strategists and workers were also murdered.

Defence lawyers were targeted to shore up the government’s criminalisation policy. Civilians were murdered to obscure the strategy and cover agents’ tracks. British soldiers and RUC members were allowed to be killed as were unionist paramilitaries who knew too much. The British Government has yet to disclose, disavow and dismantle the mechanisms of collusion.

It is in light of all this that republicans have read news of the forthcoming police Ombudsman’s report into a unionist death squad commanded by Mark Haddock, who was also a Special Branch agent. The UVF unit under scrutiny is believed to have carried out at least 24 murders and the bombing of Sinn Féin offices in Monaghan Town in 1997.

It is believed that Haddock worked for Special Branch since he was 16-years-old in 1985. Reports say he began as a low-grade informer but in 1991 Special Branch took control of his activities and he joined the UVF.

The report is due to be released in December but it is already clear that it will corroborate an earlier human rights report which concluded that dozens of loyalist murders in the 1990s were carried out with the knowledge of RUC Special Branch.

A recent report by British-Irish Human Rights Watch concluded that a network of UVF figures were Special Branch agents and it is believed the Ombudsman’s report will corroborate this.

Media reports say it will raise questions for Special Branch in relation to virtually every unionist paramilitary murder in Belfast between 1990 and 1995.

The report was initially established to investigate allegations that the killers of a 22-year-old Protestant, Raymond McCord in November 1997, were Special Branch agents. According to the victim’s father, investigations into the murder were blocked because two UVF members involved were agents.

The investigation has been compelled to expand its line of inquiry beyond the initial remit to establish the extent of collusion.

The murder of a 27-year-old nationalist woman is one of a number of other killings currently being investigated. Sharon McKenna was shot dead by the UVF in North Belfast in 1993. Haddock was the gunman.

According to reports, Haddock discussed the killing with his Special Branch handlers afterwards and was given money for drink rather than being arrested. Haddock allegedly murdered McKenna, a taxi driver, to cover his tracks as an agent within the UVF.

Haddock is currently charged with the attempted murder of a nightclub worker Trevor Gowdy in December 2002. Haddock fled the North after the attack and was subsequently arrested in Wales. He has been imprisoned awaiting trial since August 2003 but is expected to be released following the hearing of a bail application this week.

Other murders being investigated by Nuala O’Loan’s office include those of Armagh builders Gary Convie and Eamon Fox, shot dead while working in North Belfast in May 1994.

Presbyterian Minister Rev David Templeton survived an earlier attack and identified Haddock as one of his attackers. He was shot dead six weeks later.

Haddock has also been implicated in the shooting of Tommy Sheppard, himself a member of the UVF and Special Branch agent, Billy Harbinson in 1997, Tommy English in 2000 and David Greer, also in 2000.

An interim file has already been sent by the Ombudsman to the Director of Public Prosecutions and its understood that a number of Special Branch and CID officers who served in the RUC in the 1990s have been questioned. According to the Newsletter senior Special Branch officers under investigation have refused to be interviewed. They have dismissed the Ombudsman’s probe as “politically motivated with an agenda to demonise Special Branch”.

Former senior RUC detective, Johnston Brown who worked in Belfast at that time has said that he has no doubt that the allegations are true. Special Branch agents were “allowed to get away with murder for years”, said Brown.

“I know for a fact that some of the names put forward in this investigation were informers who carried out murders during that time,” said Brown.

Brown, who retired in 2001, came into conflict with Special Branch after he was ordered to suppress evidence about the murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. He secretly taped a conversation with unionist gunman Ken Barrett during which Barrett confessed to the killing and revealed details that placed him at the scene of the shooting. Special Branch taped a second conversation with Barrett and substituted the confession tape. The switch was uncovered during the Stevens Inquiry into collusion.

The Ombudsmans report should shed more light on aspects of collusion but by its nature it will not deliver the kind of comprehensive exposure of collusion required. The Ombudsman can only investigate aspects of collusion involving the RUC, PSNI and Special Branch. It has no remit to investigate key British Army units such as the FRU, the role of MI5 or the British military chain of command within.

Meanwhile, an investigation into allegations of collusion in the 1993 killing of Gerard and Rory Cairns is to be published by the Ombudsman’s office in the New Year. The two young brothers from County Armagh were shot dead by the UVF in their home village of Bleary in October 1993.

Involved in the killings were two high level agents Robin ‘the Jackal’ Jackson and Billy ‘King Rat’ Wright. The guns used were part of a 1988 South African shipment of illegal weaponry used to re-arm unionist paramilitaries and organised by British agents, Brian Nelson and Charles Simpson.

Shortly before these killings the RUC set up roadblocks near their isolated home. As with other cases of collusion the killers were allowed to pass through. The case was brought to the attention of the Ombudsman by the victim support group Relatives for Justice and An Fhirinne, a group which campaigns around collusion.

The Ombudsman is also investigating the 1971 McGurk’s pub bombing. Carried out by unionist paramilitaries it was initially passed off as an IRA ‘own goal’. Fifteen people were killed including two children and many more were injured.

Relatives of those killed, who were contacted by the Ombudsman earlier this week, have said the attack has been linked to collusion between state forces and the perpetrators of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

Belfast Telegraph

Joy as brave Nicole speaks at last

By Brian Hutton
04 November 2005

The Belfast schoolgirl left fighting for her life by a hit-and-run driver has regained consciousness, her mother said today.

But talented dancer Nicole Grieve (14) still can’t walk unaided since she was struck by a van on the Stewartstown Road in the west of the city a month ago.

The St Genevieve’s High School pupil’s mother Sharon said today she is making progress but still had a fight ahead of her.

She added: “Nicole has only begun talking again. She was writing things down before that. That was her way of communicating.

“The physiotherapists are in with her every morning and trying to get her walking again. But she is still very wobbly.

“She is still having problems with her short-term memory, although her long-term memory is fine.

“She sat on the edge of the bed the other day and retraced all her dancing steps on the floor.

“She got back into bed and said, ‘Mummy, I remember all my steps’. Then she started naming them all. It’s a miracle.”

Nicole had been practising nightly for last week’s Ulster Dancing Championships before she was left struggling for survival in intensive care.

“Her teacher came in to hospital to give her the two medals her team won,” said Sharon.

“Nicole asked why she was getting them. Her teacher said the team were devastated and went into the competition very downhearted.

“But they went in doing it for Nicole and came out with three champions and two medals in the team events that she was supposed to be in.

“She said Nicole was with them throughout.”

The teenager has been moved from the intensive care unit of Royal Victoria Hospital to a normal ward.

The plight of the young dancer has drawn support from well-wishers across the globe on Irish dancing discussion forums on the internet.

A message on one website reads: “God bless you Nicole, Sharon and the whole family.

“Take some comfort from knowing the Irish dancing community throughout the whole of the world are thinking and praying for you after reading about this tragedy.”

The moderator of the website contacted the Belfast Telegraph desperate for an update on Nicole’s progress.

“Please would it be possible for you to pass on our prayers and let the family know that the world of Irish dancing - as far away as the USA and Australia are thinking about them, and if possible could we have an update on how she is doing,” she said.

Nicole’s father Michael said the family have been overwhelmed by the prayers and support.

Belfast Telegraph

39 bags of property taken away

By Jonathan McCambridge and Michael McHugh
04 November 2005

Police were last night still questioning a leading Tyrone republican - one of four suspects still in custody over the Northern Bank robbery.

Police raided the Dungannon home of Brian Arthurs (40), a Sinn Fein member, early yesterday morning. A 43-year-old suspect was also detained in Coalisland.

Brian Arthurs was previously named in court as a former commanding officer of the East Tyrone Brigade of the IRA. He was also an IRA commander in the Maze prison.

His brother Declan was shot dead by soldiers along with other seven other IRA men as they prepared to bomb Loughgall police station in 1987.

Officers seized a car and dozens of bags containing cash, cheque books, clothes and computer equipment from his house.

His wife Paula told the Belfast Telegraph: “They took 39 bags of stuff, documents and every scrap of paper in the house, including receipts as well as clothes, the computer and a car.

“I can’t understand why they can’t leave us alone. My children deserve a better life, it has to stop.

“Republicans have given everything and still we get this kind of abuse.”

Sinn Fein representatives immediately complained about “heavy-handed” and “political” policing over the latest arrests, mirroring a storm over raids yesterday in Kilcoo, Co Down.

MP Michelle Gildernew said: “They have been heavy-handed. This is not the behaviour of an accountable police force. It is disgraceful.”

After a 10-month probe into the Northern Bank robbery, police made made a series of arrests in a 36-hour operation.

Police believe up to 30 men planned the robbery just before Christmas, which involved taking two bank employees’ families hostage.

Cash seized in Co Cork last February was linked to the raid, but virtually all of the missing millions has not been recovered.

A month later the Northern was forced to replace all its £10, £20, £50 and £100 notes with new notes carrying a different logo.

Although the Provisionals have always denied carrying out the raid, detectives believe senior IRA men were involved.

Belfast Telegraph

By Lisa Smyth
04 November 2005

Trouble broke out for a second night in Kilcoo, scene of this week’s Northern Bank police raids.

For the past two nights, the village’s Dublin Road has been closed after reports that youths were stoning cars and last night, one vehicle was set alight.

South Down MLA Jim Wells said the trouble was caused by republican youths protesting against the arrests over the Northern Bank robbery.

“I thought we had seen the last of the republican no go areas but it is quite clear that they can still go in and take over an area with complete impunity,” he said.

“The police have the manpower to go in and return the area to normal but for the past two nights, this hasn’t happened.

“I have been contacted by a number of local residents who are intimidated by this trouble and they are also annoyed, particularly members of the Protestant community, that they can’t go about their ordinary business.”

Sinn Fein and the SDLP have said that the raids were heavy-handed and unpopular in the nationalist village.

BBC

A man has been remanded in custody charged over last December’s £26.5m Northern Bank robbery in Belfast.

Dominic McEvoy, 23, of Mullandra Park, Kilcoo, is accused of robbery, falsely imprisoning a bank worker and his wife and having a gun or imitation firearm.

Mr McEvoy read out a statement to the court in Belfast denying involvement in the robbery and also denying that he was a member of the Provisional IRA.

A detective said the case was based on circumstantial and forensic evidence.

Mr McEvoy, who was arrested in Kilcoo in County Down late on Tuesday, is the first person to be charged over the Northern robbery.

Detective Inspector Sean Wright said when Mr McEvoy was charged on Thursday he replied: “I had no involvement in the Northern Bank robbery or the kidnapping.”

The police officer told the court it was alleged Mr McEvoy’s DNA was found on a hat at bank official Kevin McMullan’s home in Loughinisland.

As the defendant was being taken down to the cells a large group of men in the public gallery started to applaud and shouted out encouragement.

Arrests

Three other men are still being questioned about the robbery in Belfast. A 25-year-old man was released without charge by police on Thursday.

He was also detained during searches in Kilcoo.

In County Tyrone on Thursday, a 40-year-old man was arrested in Dungannon and a 43-year-old man was arrested in Coalisland.

A 30-year-old man arrested in Belfast on Wednesday is also being questioned.

The robbery happened at the bank’s Northern Ireland headquarters at Donegall Square West in Belfast on Monday 20 December.

Some money seized in County Cork last February was linked to the robbery, but virtually all of the missing millions remain unrecovered.

BreakingNews.ie

04/11/2005 - 09:35:04

The family of Seamus Ludlow today demanded an apology from the Gardaí over the investigation into their brother’s death in 1976.

Justice Henry Barron found in his report that the Dundalk forestry worker was the victim of a random sectarian killing by loyalist extremists.

But his brother, Kevin Ludlow, said the family would be seeking an apology from the Gardaí, who gave them the impression that their brother had been killed by the IRA.

“We were treated as dirt by the guards. I know that the ordinary guards on the street had to take orders from higher up and only did what they were told but the first inquest was a shambles anyway.”

He said the family still wanted an independent public inquiry.

“There’s still a lot of questions to be answered. The big question is why was so much covered up? Why were we told lies for 30 years?”

Seamus Ludlow was abducted in Dundalk in May 1976 while returning home from a pub and was found later dumped in a ditch near his home with three gunshot wounds to the chest.

The Barron report, released under full parliamentary privilege, praised the Gardaí for carrying out a diligent and competent investigation in the face of unreliable intelligence information.

But Justice Barron asked why details of the four suspects, provided by the RUC in 1979, were never pursued.

He said the investigating officer, Det Supt Dan Murphy, may have abandoned plans to interview the suspects because they were outside the jurisdiction.

At the second inquest earlier this year into Mr Ludlow’s murder, senior gardaí gave evidence that they knew who the killers were but were stopped by Garda Headquarters from pursuing them.

Mr Ludlow told RTE radio that he believed the family would never get justice.

“They (the men responsible) could have been brought to justice 18 months after the murder and they’d have done their time and it’d be all over.”

He said the garda investigation had caused division in his family.

“The Gardaí did try to split up the family, and in a certain extent, they did do that. Thank God, everything is all right now. There’s no split in the family and we’re all coming together.”

The Barron report states that Mr Ludlow was picked up in a car in May 1976 by four men: James Fitzsimmons, Richard Long, Samuel Carroll and Paul Hosking.

It said: “Information obtained by the RUC from Hosking suggested that it was Carroll who shot Seamus Ludlow. The inquiry has not been in a position to test the veracity of this allegation.”

The Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, is currently examining the Barron report.

In a statement, he said the Gardaí acknowledged that there were issues in the original investigation carried out some 30 years ago.

“In recent years, An Garda Síochana has taken whatever actions were available to right the situation and in this regard co-operated fully with the Barron and other enquiries and will continue to do so.”

In his report, Judge Barron said it was most probable the decision not to pursue the suspects was made by then Deputy Commissioner Laurence Wren, after consulting other senior gardaí and possibly senior Justice Department officials.

But Mr Wren, who headed the force from 1983 to 1987, said he rejected this finding.

“I don’t accept it at all, and I have told him (Judge Barron) that in my memo.”

He said he had no recollection of ever being told the names of the four suspects when he was in charge of the counter-terrorism division, C3.

“The responsibility for the investigation was the officers in the division concerned, it wasn’t our responsibility in C3,” he told RTE radio.

In his memo to Judge Barron, Mr Wren said he would be compelled to take corrective action to clear his name in the matter.

BBC

The family of a County Louth man killed in 1976 have called for a independent, public inquiry into his murder.

Four loyalists suspected of killing Seamus Ludlow have been named in a Dublin judicial report.

The report’s author, Mr Justice Barron, criticised the Garda investigation into the murder near Dundalk in May 1976.

He said gardai failed to question four NI suspects named in the report because the RUC might have demanded reciprocal rights in the Irish Republic.

Seamus Ludlow’s family have claimed collusion on both sides of the border.

They have maintained there was a cover-up following the murder.

“It basically copperfastens what the family have been saying for years,” Mr Ludlow’s nephew Jimmy Sharkey said.

“The Garda knew all along who the killers of Seamus were and didn’t do anything about it.”

Mr Sharkey said gardai had started a sort of “smear campaign” against the family, claiming Seamus Ludlow had been an IRA informer and that the IRA had been involved in his murder.

“They actually went as far as telling Seamus’ brother Kevin that it was a member of the family who had him killed,” he said.

Mr Sharkey said the family now wanted an inquiry into the murder.

“The bottom line for us is an independent, public inquiry.”

Arrests

Last month, an inquest into the 47-year-old forestry worker’s killing was told that in 1998, the RUC arrested and questioned four men.

Two of them independently gave evidence of how and where the murder was committed.

However, the Director of Public Prosecutions in Northern Ireland decided not to press charges.

The inquest was also told that in 1979, Irish police had the names and addresses of the same four men but Garda Headquarters did not allow the investigating officers to proceed.

Mr Justice Barron, a retired judge, said it was important to view these matters in the context that the period between 1976-1980 was “one of huge turmoil”.

“Deep divisions and distrust existed, not only between the nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland, but also between the governments of the United Kingdom and this (Irish) state,” he said.

BBC

Lisa Dorrian’s body has never been found

A remembrance service is to be held later for Bangor woman Lisa Dorrian, believed murdered.

Lisa, 25, was last seen at a party on a County Down caravan site in February. Her body has never been found.

Police believe members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, which said on Sunday that it was standing down, may have been involved in her killing.

The service is to be held in the Church of the Holy Redeemer in Ballyholme, Bangor, on Friday evening.

On Wednesday, it was confirmed that a forensic scientist looking at the cases of the Disappeared will also be able to work on Lisa’s case.

The forensic scientist is being funded by the British and Irish governments to help locate the remains of five people abducted, murdered and secretly buried by the IRA during the Troubles.

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said the police would be able to use the scientist to undertake other work on an independent consultancy basis.

Relatives for Justice

Click to view - Seamus Ludlow

Seamus Ludlow was abducted and murdered by armed Loyalists and British soldiers outside the town of Dundalk on the night of 1st. and 2nd May 1976. He was last seen thumbing a lift home from the pub at around midnight before he disappeared.

Despite false claims that were encouraged by the Irish Gardai that Seamus Ludlow had been murdered by the IRA because he was an informer, it is now known that both the Gardai and the RUC in the North of Ireland were aware at least in 1979, if not even earlier, that the killers were in fact Loyalists. They knew that they included at least two locally recruited members of the British Army.

The killers all came from the Comber and Newtownbards areas of north Down. Information which would have identified these killers was suppressed for more than 20 years, allowing these men to remain free and at liberty to kill again.

Four Loyalists were arrested by the RUC in February 1998. They were all released without charge, pending an investigation report being sent to the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). On 15 October 1999, the DPP ruled that none of the suspects would be charged with any offence, even though two of them have signed incriminating statements while in RUC custody. The others are described as two former members of the illegal Red Hand Commando death squad as well as members of the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), one of whom was a captain in that discredited force, which is now known as the Royal Irish Regiment (RIR). The third man, known as Mambo, is also described as a Red Hand Commando figure who may also have been an agent for some branch of the British forces.

The Ludlow family has demanded public inquiries on both sides of the border to uncover exactly why Seamus Ludlow’s murder was never properly investigated. They want to know why Seamus Ludlow’s name was smeared by the authorities and why his killers were never brought to justice by the Gardai or by the RUC, who had identified them many years ago. They demand full truth and justice for an innocent victim who never received either from the authorities in the past.

The Ludlow family wants to know who gave the orders for the cover-up of the evidence and the smearing of the victim. Who was being protected, and why? Why was the Ludlow family excluded from their loved-one’s inquest on 19th August 1976. Will those individuals responsible for the abuses of authority in this case ever be brought to account for their actions?

The Ludlow family is supported in their demands by several distinguished human rights groups: British Irish Rights Watch (BIRW), the Irish Council for Civil Liberties and by the Pat Finucane Centre and a large number of local and national politicians on both sides of the border and in Britain. BIRW have compiled an independent Report on the murder of Seamus Ludlow, in which they support the Ludlow family’s demands for truth and justice. The BIRW report has been circulated to the Irish and British authorities. Jane Winter, Director, BIRW, launched her independent report at the Ludlow family’s press conference on 18 February 1999.

Michael Donegan - Nephew of Seamus Ludlow