Shoot to Kill Cases to Be Reopened

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Shoot to Kill Cases to Be Reopened

July 26, 2007

By Barry McCaffrey

POLICE Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan has re-opened one of the most controversial episodes of The Troubles when the British government was accused of operating a “shoot-to-kill” policy against unarmed Republicans.

Twenty five years on the “shoot-to-kill” saga continues to create controversy among all sides in Northern Ireland. In a five week period at the end of 1982 a specially trained unit of the RUC shot dead six unarmed Republicans.

However, an unexpected admission by a police constable in a murder trial that no one thought would happen started an extraordinary chain reaction that is still being felt today.

In November 1982 unarmed IRA men Gervaise McKerr, Sean Burns and Eugene Toman were shot dead in their car at Tullyglass East Road on the outskirts of Lurgan, Co. Armagh.

The RUC claimed that they fired 109 bullets at the IRA men’s car only after it had driven through a checkpoint.

McKerr and Burns died after being hit by a hail of bullets where they sat in the car, but forensic tests would later suggest that Toman had been shot through the heart while he was either getting out of the car or had left the stationary vehicle.

Two weeks later the same RUC unit shot dead 17-year-old teenager Michael Tighe at a hay shed near his home at Ballyneery near Craigavon. The teenager’s friend Martin McAuley was badly wounded in the same incident.

The two boys had gone to check on IRA explosives that had been hidden in the hayshed, although Tighe was not a member of any organization and had no criminal record.

A secret police recording of the shooting subsequently went missing. In 1995 the teenager’s family received a five figure sum in government compensation for his death.

Four weeks later INLA men Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll were shot dead by the same RUC unit at Mullacreavie in Co. Armagh.

It was claimed that the intended target was INLA leader Dominic McGlinchey.

It would later emerge that an undercover policeman had followed Grew and Carroll throughout the day of the shooting and had to have known that McGlinchey was not in the car when police opened fire.

In a highly unusual move the Director of Public Prosecutions brought charges against three RUC men involved in the McKerr, Toman and Burns killings.

During the trial RUC constable John Robinson claimed that he and other policemen had been ordered by their RUC superiors to lie under oath to cover up the true facts behind the killings.

However, despite the policeman’s admissions, trial judge Lord Justice Gibson acquitted the three RUC men and commended them for bringing the three unarmed IRA men to the “final court of justice.”

A huge public outcry after the acquittals forced then chief constable Jack Hermon to call Greater Manchester Deputy Chief Constable John Stalker in to investigate the killings. Stalker’s inquiry lasted two years.

In June 1986 just before he was due to deliver his final report Stalker was suspended on charges

of associating with a Manchester criminal. Two months later he was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Stalker would later describe the RUC inquiry into the murders of McKerr, Burns and Toman as “slipshod” and “woefully inadequate.”

In relation to the inquiries into the six “shoot-to-kill” deaths he wrote, “We had expected a particularly high level of inquiry in view of the nature of the deaths but this was shamefully absent.

“The files were little more than a collection of statements, apparently prepared for a coroner’s inquiry. They bore no resemblance to my idea of a murder prosecution file.

“Even on the most cursory of readings I could see clearly why the prosecutions had failed. I never did find evidence of a shoot-to-kill policy as such.

“There was no written instruction, nothing pinned up on a notice board. But there was a clear understanding on the part of the men whose job it was to pull the trigger that that was what was expected of them.”

The inquests into the six killings became the longest of their kind in British legal history, with delay after delay and the government issuing public immunity certificates stopping the families’ legal teams from gaining access to evidence in the case.

However, in 2001 the families won a significant legal battle when the European Court of Human Rights found the British government guilty of not having properly investigated the deaths.

The British government was ordered to reinvestigate the killings.

However, when no reinvestigation took place the families took further legal action against the government.

In 2004 Attorney General Lord Goldsmith claimed that an inquiry into the McKerr, Burns, Toman killings would be an unnecessary “burden” which the government could not fulfill.

However in a sign of its growing frustration European Union ministers last week demanded that the British government took all necessary steps to “achieve concrete and visible progress” in the cases.

Nearly 25 years after the six killings, O’Loan is now being asked to re-investigate the “shoot-to-kill” cases.

Toman’s brother Malachy said that the highest levels of government should be made accountable for their actions.

“We want closure to this,” he said. “There was a shoot-to-kill policy in this country and the police who went out there, the triggermen, were not the people who organized it.”

Toman called on the British government to admit that it had allowed a “shoot-to-kill” policy to operate.

“This went far higher than the people on the ground who did the killing — it was the people who sent them out.”

However, the decision to re-open the cases has been severely criticized by Unionists and former RUC men.

Democratic Unionist Party Assembly member and former Police Federation chairman Jimmy Spratt accused the ombudsman of carrying out a vendetta against the RUC.

“It is yet another witch hunt by Nuala O’Loan involving the former RUC Special Branch,” he said. “No police officer will cooperate with her. ‘’

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