SAOIRSE32

Irish News
**Via Newshound
28/10/08

THE lives of a dozen ex-soldiers would face increased risk if they are named at the inquiry into the murder of solicitor Rosemary Nelson, three judges were told yesterday.

The former members of the Royal Irish Regiment are appealing against a judgement in July dismissing their fight to remain anonymous.

They have claimed they would be targeted by dissident republicans if their identities become known.

Their lawyer Jonathan Swift told the Court of Appeal in Belfast that they had taken huge precautions to ensure that knowledge of their service in the RIR was confined to as few people as possible.

“The steps they have taken to date have been successful but each of them believes that the removal of anonymity would increase the risk to their life,” Mr Swift said.

The Rosemary Nelson inquiry was set up to probe allegations of security-force collusion in the loyalist assassination of the 40-year-old Catholic mother-of-three who was killed by a car bomb outside her home in Lurgan, Co Armagh, in 1999.

None of the ex-soldiers will be called to give evidence but will provide witness statements which means their names would appear in the book of evidence and on the inquiry website.

Mr Swift said the witness statements related to routine army patrols in the Lurgan area on the day Mrs Nelson was murdered.

A general risk assessment put the threat against the ex-soldiers as moderate but he submitted: “The tribunal was not entitled to take into consideration an assessment of the nature of the evidence in order to reach a conclusion that the risk to the appellants was reduced.”

James Eadie QC, for the inquiry, said it was a matter for the three-strong panel to work out the scale of risk to the ex-soldiers and their finding was that it was at the very low end.

“They were not under the same scale of risk as the Bloody Sunday soldiers,” he said.

“In that case, the decision to grant anonymity turned on the nature of the objective risk they faced.”

Arguing that public inquiries had to be conducted with a degree of openness to allay public concerns, Mr Eadie said a balance had to be struck between the level of objective risk and a desire to ensure that those contributing to the inquiry did so in public.

Judgement was reserved by the Lord Chief Justice Sir Brian Kerr and Lord Justices Girvan and Higgins.

Sir Brian said that as the inquiry was in session they would endeavour to deliver a prompt judgement.