So the British House of Commons defence select committee wants an amnesty for all actions by the RUC and British armed forces between 1969-1998. Writing in The Guardian, Henry McDonald says:
“The House of Commons defence select committee said a de facto amnesty granted to republican and loyalist paramilitaries under the 1998 Good Friday agreement should be extended to army and police veterans involved in killings and other incidents in the Troubles.”
Right. So the committee is saying that since republican and loyalist prisoners got off or out of prison, the British army and ex-RUC people should be given a similar …I was going to say ‘Get-out-of-jail’ card, but that wouldn’t make sense. Very, very few of the ‘security forces’ were imprisoned for their many lethal actions during the Troubles, while 25,000 paramilitary prisoners, overwhelmingly republican, were imprisoned.
So why is the British select committee keen to have an amnesty for British armed forces, wipe the slate clean of all actions. Maybe this statement by Amnesty’s Patrick Corrigan in 2015 will give us a clue:
“”Killing people targeted by the state, using intelligence provided by the state and shooting them with guns provided by the state – if all this is proven, we’re not talking about a security policy we’re talking about a murder policy.”
I think you’ll find that Corrigan’s concerns are given pretty conclusive evidence in Anne Cadwallader’s book Lethal Allies – and as she says, that’s only a small number of the overall cases of collusion.
What’s Amnesty saying about the House of Commons line of thinking today?
“The defence committee’s call today would in effect be the granting of a blanket amnesty for human rights abuses committed by former members of the security forces in Northern Ireland. It would be an utter betrayal of victims’ fundamental right to justice.”
The Commons defence committee wants a clean slate for ‘security’ forces’ actions because it knows that if charges are pressed, a huge number of acts of collusion, sanctioned officially, will surface.
The fact is, republican paramilitaries spent years in prison – in total around 100,000 years – while British forces spent next to zilch. Bloody Sunday, anyone? Ballymurphy, anyone? Pat Finucane, anyone” And now the British authorities want to make sure that none of their boys are put on trial for their actions. Why? Because they know where the bloody trail would lead. They pretend to be concerned for the ordinary soldier who was posted here. They’re really concerned for the amoral actions of those who pulled their strings.
“Overwhelmingly” paramilitaries and “overwhelmingly” the PIRA were responsible for most of the murders.
Joe
I agree but I think this amnesty is a bad idea.
Where there is evidence of wrongdoing that should be brought to court.
It could only be considered if the amnesty was to cover all criminal acts relating to the troubles.
That would be very hard on the families of victims and I am not advocating it.
As time goes on the chances of truth or justice will sadly recede for many and I suppose a line may be drawn at some point.
as do I.
“Overwhelmingly” paramilitaries and “overwhelmingly” the PIRA were responsible for most of the murders
At least JB , by this statement you acknowledge that the rest of the killings here , by the good old British army’s war machine were murder ….that’s a start !
Each instance would depend on the circumstance. Ambushing 8 PIRA men armed to the teeth who had just shot up an RUC station…to me, that isn’t murder.
What about shooting men with invisible bombs or young boys with paintbrushes that looked like guns? And then lying about it for 40 years? Is that murder?
Once again JB, don’t let a good old bile-filled rant glorifying British murder here get in way of the facts …..it was premeditated cold-blooded murder….planned days beforehand ….I suppose Ballymurphy , Bloody Sunday etc were all right also ?
Which was empty…
if the security forces were guilty of murder, or manslaughter then bring them to justice. If they are found innocent / carrying out their duty, then let them off. I have no problem shining the spotlight on the security services. Unlike some people and the PIRA, I don’t swear blind devotion to them and become apologists for their murders.
Jude
Not sure it was empty actually.
The RUC were evacuated but I think there were some soldiers inside.
You may be right, gio. It does need checking.
You may be right, gio. It does need checking.
It was only empty because the army knew it was about to be attacked.
The bomb was intended to kill and the van load of armed men were there to mop up the survivors.
It was a killing job Jude, not a demolition job of a empty building.
“overwhelmingly” paramilitaries where investigated, prosecuted and jailed.
As the British government won’t release the info it’s hard to tell how many murders the British security services were involved in here but evidence so far points to more murders than what is already attributed.
In many cases Joe, there was a big overlap between the “security” forces and loyalist paramilitaries. In some cases even with ‘Republican’ paramilitaries.
There has been no amnesty for republicans. Prisoners were released only ‘on license’. If new evidence emerges for events that no-one is doing time for Republicans will be charged and imprisoned regardless of when the ‘crime’ took place.
On the other hand if you are a British soldier and you break the Geneva convention and even admit that you have just committed a warcrime and ask your comrades not to say anything (perverting the course of justice) on film just after executing an unarmed and injured soldier you will get off.
Plan B. String it out until they are all dead. Imagine, the English will not release documents that refer to people and actions that happened almost 150 years ago in Ireland. I wonder who they are protecting? The point they are making is that the English army are superior. They won the war – or would have if their hands hadn’t been tied behind their back. According to them, they were the lawful security force in Ireland and therefore can do no wrong. They are a terrorist organisation and are still recruiting. Still controlled by shadowy godfathers in the background. I ask again. What right have they to be in other people’s countries?
Those really are some figures to chew over. 25,000 paramilitary prisoners, mostly republicans, imprisoned …spending some 100,000 years of their collective lives in gaol.Let out on licence as part of a final agreement. I’d imagine that by now the various readers of these pages ,who might be a little younger and may not have experienced the earlier years of civil unrest and horror ,which eventually produced those huge figures should at least have read “Lethal Allies” by now, just to get a taste of what really went on. They might then have some insight as to why there were so few soldiers imprisoned.For those who might prefer to call it war, there was little balance in the numbers involved.It’s as plain as a pikestaff that there was all the huge machinery and paraphanalia of a war machine in place here….all paid out of the public -purse and yet I believe that only a few soldiers(rotten apples, it is supposed) were imprisoned for a short time ,but quickly reinstated into their regiments soon after, rotten though they may have been.
The evidence of murderous collusion between the British Army, the UDR the RUC the UVF and a variety of Orange-tinted acolytes , even in the few sketches of the utter banality of some of these people ,in the hundreds of pages of “Lethal Allies” is , frankly overwhelming and can only scrape the surface by dint of the amount of information to write about. There was variously misuse of power and an acceptance that random murder was a perfectly fine thing to do on an evening and to celebrate with a few drinks afterwards. It would take a series of books stretching over a thirty-year period…a story so long that it is almost impossible to tell, such are the numerous incidents of criminality on behalf of the state, or possibly ,only on behalf of one section of the community living here who unashameadly supported it. There’s all the ballistic evidence of the same weapons and ammunition being interchanged like some unholy swap-shop. There’s all that kill -any- random “rebel” living in the wrong area ,too…especially if they are doing well and are educating themselves beyond their station.At bottom , though, given the length of the conflict it would be very unusual to put a pure lily-white army on the field of conflict for decades, so where and when are they going to admit that foul deeds had to have been done when there were so many witnesses to them ?
They really are in the process of stringing it out until a generation are all dead.We’re already twenty years down that road and almost fifty years since the last phase started. Many of the big names involved in collusion are gone too, as are the records which have been “lost” or destroyed already.
Britain is proposing a law to give their ex soldiers immunity from prosecution where they may have been involved in acts of murder.
That doesn’t strike me as the actions of a democracy though it is entirely in keeping with the attitude of this Tory government.
Soon, we are going to be facing a Tory government unhindered by the EU courts with no opposition to hold them to account.
That spells agony for the impoverished that will face years of conitinued public service cuts to finance tax cuts. The GFA agreement in my view will not outlive this incoming Tory government.
I see that marine who kicked and beat a wounded man before shooting him at point blank range, telling him to “Shuffle off this mortal coil, you c**t,” and then boasting to his pals “I just broke the Geneva Convention” has been allowed to walk free #helpforheroes
Ask Gerry McGeough
Ask him what,Mark?
And JB ,who do you propose will bring these untouchables in the British murder machine to justice /…that is the essence of Jude’s blog ?…the perversion of justice…..there shall be no prosecutions , we must make sure to validate and endorse the greatest oxymoron of them all..” British Justice ” .
Granting an amnesty to British terrorist soldiers and paramilitary police will remove another excuse the British state use to hide the truth. The irony is that those who campaign for an amnesty often claim they were the good guys and were simply upholding the law. That being the case why are the good guys fearful of that said law?
This from Wikipedia throws some light on the Loughgall police station and its emptiness or otherwise. It would appear there were SAS and ‘specialist’ RUC in it – as ‘bait’.
“On 7 May, the RUC base was secretly evacuated and about 36 SAS soldiers, as well as officers from the RUC’s Mobile Support Unit (MSU), were deployed.[3] The MSU was the RUC’s equivalent of the SAS. Most of the soldiers and officers were hidden around the base, with ‘specialist’ RUC officers inside to act as the ‘bait’ for the IRA unit, whilst others were hidden along the IRA’s anticipated route.The commander of the SAS unit was also inside the station.”
is this the same Wikipedia that can be updated by the public, regardless of their motives, unfettered by the administrators?
so according to wiki:
Patrick Kelly, ‘inexplicably’, according to Taylor, jumped down from the passenger seat and followed by others, immediately opened fire on the station either to encourage the rest of the unit, to resolve dispute about going ahead with the operation or possibly because this was the way previous attacks had begun. Within seconds however, the SAS opened fire, the majority of whom were hidden in a row of fir trees behind a fence, directly opposite the police station, with M16 and H&K G3 rifles and L7A2 general-purpose machine guns.[23]The bomb detonated, destroying the digger along with much of the building, and injuring three members of the security forces.
So we know, that you would have preferred the security forces to make a nice clean arrest (presumably the guys with the semtex and the guns would have come quietly), but that option was taken away from the security services when they were fired upon.
So according to your source, the security services had good reason to return fire.
Case closed. Medals all round.
Thanks for clearing that up Jude!
Yeah,medals all round for killing people in their own country. If they weren’t here nobody would take them on. Why don’t they just poss off home?
Isn’t it fecking wonderful what 848 years of Anglo-Saxon civilization has done to a country that was one of the most spiritually and socially advanced in Europe….brought us down to a base level of killing to survive….to just try and be ourselves…..thank you England…..we really appreciate your fecking interference ….gabh raibh míle maith agat !