Stone’s security records ‘destroyed’
By Chris Thornton
Published: Wednesday 27, December 2006 - 09:20
Killer Michael Stone’s prison security records are believed to be among 800 files mysteriously destroyed by the Prison Service.
Their destruction means Stone’s current guards are unlikely to have a complete record of his contacts and behaviour from when he was first jailed in 1988.
The loss of files is also believed to have hindered the return to prison of Seamus Mullan, an IRA police killer who had his licence revoked last week.
Prison officials insist privately that their computer records contain all the relevant information that they may need about Stone since he was returned to prison after he attacked Stormont in late November.
But the Billy Wright Inquiry team - who exposed the destruction of the security files - have shown that the paper files contained information which has been lost forever.
The inquiry’s hearings in November revealed that the Prison Service destroyed files containing secret security information on about 800 prisoners in 2002.
The files were described as the “principal repository of intelligence information on or about prisoners”.
The inquiry was told the files contained information on virtually every prisoner released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement - a category which includes Stone and Mullan.
Lawyers argued that the files should have been preserved in case any prisoners who were freed on licence were later returned to jail - just as Stone and Mullan have been over the past month.
A prison governor claimed the files were burned on the order of Martin Mogg, a former Maze prison governor who is now dead. But no record of the destruction was ever made.
The destruction of the files and the disappearance of other documents have thrown up significant obstacles to the inquiry into Wright’s murder, which happened nine years ago today.
Stone was released from six life sentences in July 2000, when the Maze Prison closed, but his freedom was revoked after he stormed Parliament Buildings on November 24.
The Prison Service has refused to confirm or deny the destruction of files about Stone and Mullan.
But officials have insisted that their computer system - known as SASHA - has material on any freed prisoners who might be returned to jail.
But the Billy Wright inquiry team found the computer system was ” deficient” when compared to paper records.
Derek Batchelor QC, the lead counsel for the inquiry, said that computer printouts on paramilitary prisoners returned to jail, like Stone, “did not record any information before 1998″.
In Stone’s case, that means the absence of any records for his first decade in prison. He was originally jailed after attacking an IRA funeral at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast in March 1988, earning him the moniker the Milltown Murderer.
Mullan, from Lisnascreaghog Road, Garvagh, was released the same year the computer system was introduced, meaning most of his information could be lost.
He was jailed for the 1985 murder of Constable Willis Agnew. Described as a disaffected republican, Secretary of State Peter Hain revoked his licence, indicating that he “remains a real danger to the public”.
In contrast to the computer records, the paper files were said to contain ” other relevant material such as papers, reports from other bodies, newspaper clippings, telephone transcripts and the like”.
Mr Batchelor recently cited an incident where information about Billy Wright’s killers that was not on the computer was found in the one of the few remaining paper files.
Stone is currently being held in Maghaberry Prison.
He recently applied for High Court bail, claiming the attack on Stormont was “performance art replicating a terrorist attack”.
The bail application was adjourned to see if forensic evidence would support Stone’s claim that the devices he carried were not capable of injuring anyone.
