FRFI 161 June / July 2001
The relatives of 14 Irish nationalists killed by the SAS and RUC between 1982 and 1992 have won a significant victory at the European Court of Human Rights after years of campaigning for justice. The Court ruled that, in the cases of 13 Republican activists and a civilian killed during British shoot-to-kill operations, the government had violated their right to life and failed to carry out proper investigations into their deaths.
All 14 were killed by British forces as part of an organised campaign of state assassination of IRA and INLA volunteers. The families are determined to fight on until the SAS and RUC officers responsible are charged with murder. Jonathan McKerr, son of IRA volunteer Gervaise McKerr who was murdered by the RUC’s elite E4A unit in 1982, said: ‘The RUC, from operational level, right through to the very top, are guilty of the murder of my father. The British government tried to drag out the process…But the time for lies is over. We demand truth and justice for our loved ones.’
The parents of IRA volunteer Pearse Jordan, shot dead by the RUC in 1992, have called for other victims of the state- directed murder policy to speak out:
‘There are many other families out there, over 300, who have had family members murdered by the security forces …There is no such thing as British justice and although we now know we can have our cases heard in Europe, there is still a long way to go.
‘I want to see justice for the people of Springhill, justice for all the families and for the people of the North of Ireland.’ Theresa Jordan added: ‘The British government has been pushed up against a brick wall here. The eyes of the world are on them.’
The British government and their loyalist allies responded with predictable outrage. Loyalist bigot Peter Robinson of the DUP claimed: ‘This ruling is insane and offensive. The government should ignore it’.
British imperialism has maintained its rule in Ireland by the use of overwhelming military force and terror. One of the state’s most effective weapons in Ireland has been the physical elimination of its opponents. The killings of 12 IRA volunteers, one Sinn Fein activist and a civilian took place at the time of an intense IRA military campaign against British rule. The British response was to step up its use of the shoot-to-kill policy, targeting Republican activists. In one planned operation at Loughgall in 1987, the SAS wiped out a whole IRA unit of eight volunteers along with Anthony Hughes who happened to drive into the SAS ‘killing ground’.
The 14 deaths took place in 4 separate incidents, but there is a striking pattern of similarities which confirms the true intent of the British murder machine in Ireland. In most cases, the IRA volunteers were under surveillance, sometimes for several weeks before the killings. In all cases, the authorities immediately put out false accounts of the killings, delayed inquests and withheld evidence to protect their own killers in uniform.
We have seen similar tactics in Britain after police murdered IRA volunteer Diarmuid O’Neill in 1996 and Roger Sylvester in 1999. The ambush of three unarmed IRA volunteers in Gibraltar in 1988 has also been condemned by the European Court. In many cases, there was a false claim that the police or the SAS felt their lives were in danger, just as in the Harry Stanley case when Hackney police claimed they thought the chair leg he was carrying was a gun.
However, as in the case of Harry Stanley, the relatives have won an important victory in the courts and are pledged to carry on until justice is achieved.
Jim O’Rourke
