February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Orde told a British newspaper at the weekend that he favored a truth commission, similar to that used in post-apartheid South Africa, when dealing with killings and attacks carried out during the Troubles.
Orde’s comments follow the damning assessment by Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan on the RUC investigation into the 1997 murder of prominent GAA man Sean Browne. O’Loan concluded that the investigation was compromised by systematic failures to follow protocol. Sources have said that O’Loan is poised to make similar findings in at least 10 other RUC investigations, including several murder probes.
Orde said that calls for reinvestigation of numerous atrocities had created potentially difficult tensions within the PSNI and that his job was not to police the past but the present.
This followed the comments of Rea last week, who made a similar case for a truth commission. He said that such an option might prove more effective into controversial killings than the sort of public inquiries recommended by retired Canadian Judge Peter Cory. The board’s vice-chairman, Denis Bradley, voiced support for Rea’s suggestion.
Cory’s reports on the killings of Catholic lawyers Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill and LVF leader Billy Wright are still to be published by the British government. The reports, which have been in the possession of Tony Blair’s government since last October, remain hidden from the public. Cory, frustrated by the delay in publication, has already informed the relatives of those killed that he has instructed Blair to carry out public inquiries into all four cases.
Orde and Rea’s suggestions have worried relatives of those killed. Eunan Magee, brother of Rosemary Nelson, who was killed in a Red Hand Commando car-bomb attack in 1999, attacked Rea’s comments as “misguided.” Speaking at the SDLP conference that took place over the weekend, Magee said the comments had caused his family great distress.
The SDLP has already proposed a process that would involve “truth mechanisms” not dissimilar to a truth commission. The party made the proposals in August.
The lawyer son of Pat Finucane has also been critical of Orde’s suggestions. Michael Finucane said: “A truth and reconciliation commission has no place in relation to the four cases that are being dealt with by Judge Cory.”
His comments were followed by a call by Geraldine Finucane for John Stevens to end his investigation into her husband’s murder. She made the appeal after meeting with Stevens on Monday. He is currently examining evidence of collusion between the British army, the RUC and the UDA in Finucane’s murder.
The Finucane family views Steven’s inquiry as a stalling device that enables the British government to put off a proper public inquiry.
Former Sinn Fein publicity director Danny Morrison has also criticized the idea of a commission. Writing in Belfast’s Andersonstown News, Morrison said it would fail to uncover the activities of shadowy British army groupings such as the Force Research Unit.
“Relatives robbed of their loved ones as a result of collusion between loyalists and British forces have fought long and hard to establish who exactly was responsible for their deaths,” Morrison said. “This proposed commission would rob them again because its purpose undoubtedly would be to produce a ‘truth’ that tells a lie.”
Meanwhile, the Democratic Unionists have also attacked the proposals. Former Ulster Unionist MLA Arlene Foster, who defected to the DUP earlier this year, said: “There are many in Northern Ireland for whom a truth commission would not bring closure but, rather, more pain as republicans would use it to glorify their own comrades and attack the British in Northern Ireland.”
She said that British Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy had reassured the DUP that the British government had no intention of instituting a truth commission. This is despite claims that Orde and Rea’s comments were choreographed by elements within the Northern Ireland office who favor a commission.