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As Northern Ireland works towards creating a new society for its many citizens, it is
also struggling with an important question.
How does it deal with what happened from the late 1960s through to the 1990s – the period
known as ‘The Troubles'?
During that period more than 3,500 people were killed. Some were killed by terrorist
groups, others by the army or the police.
Two organisations which belong to the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland are examining
many of these deaths.
The police have a Historical Enquiries Team, which is looking at most of the killings.
The law in Northern Ireland does not allow the police to investigate incidents in which
they have been involved. These are investigated by the Police Ombudsman’s Office, the organisation
which handles complaints about the conduct of PSNI officers. The Office has its own teams
of investigators, none of whom are members of the PSNI.
The Police Ombudsman's Office has a Historical Investigations Directorate, to which the PSNI
refer all deaths during ‘The Troubles’ where police are known, or suspected to have
been, involved in a killing, or where it is thought that police did not deal with a matter
properly.
The Directorate also investigates complaints from members of the public about incidents
during this period if those complaints are of a grave or exceptional nature. Some people
complain that the police during that period, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, did not investigate
the killings properly. Some people also allege that the police may have allowed the killings
to go ahead, or that they helped those responsible to escape capture.
The Police Ombudsman is Dr Michael Maguire. He believes that this work is important:
The Office deals with some of the most serious cases that any police oversight organisation
can deal with in relation to history matters. It could be conspiracy to ***, allegations
of malfeasance in public office, of failure to investigate. These are hugely significant
issues. We have been asked to do this work by families, by the police themselves, and
by others who think that it's extremely important that there is an independent and impartial
investigation of this work. Those of us that deal with families can't fail to be moved
by the pain and the hurt that many families feel, often after many decades, and they are
looking to this Office to deal with these issues in a fair and impartial way.
Investigations by the Police Ombudsman’s Office are based on evidence. Paul Holmes,
who leads these investigators, explains how his team go about their work:
The first action for us would be to engage with the family from whom this complaint has
originated. Historic complaints are almost exclusively about the death of a family member,
so we will interview the family, we will get as much information from them as we can. Even
the smallest of details can turn out to be very important. It could be the whole family
we see, or it could be just a small number of members of the family. That's our starting
point, to identify what their concerns are, what their complaints are, and what evidence
they may be able to assist us with in support of those complaints. We will then trawl the
police estate for any relevant documents. These may include *** investigation files,
they may include access to intelligence records, and other material. In fact the PSNI have
a large archive store with a huge amount of material associated with murders which occurred
during 'the Troubles'. We will look to interview other witnesses, whether they are members
of the public or whether they are often, generally for us, former police officers. Some of those
former police officers will assist, like other witnesses, and some won't, but in our experience
many of them do assist us and provide us with evidence. If we identify evidence of criminality,
or we have other reason to suspect that criminality has occurred, we may declare a former police
officer as a suspect, in which case they will be interviewed under caution, often accompanied
by a lawyer.
Paul says the work has its own challenges and demands special skills:
Some of the challenges involved will be that records are no longer available, either because
they have been misplaced or destroyed. Some witnesses or potential witnesses have unfortunately
passed on, are no longer available. Other witnesses may only have vague memories or
indeed even inaccurate memories of what occurred. Some witnesses, including former officers,
may not wish to engage because they take the view that what is behind them is behind them,
and they do not want to revisit that. We have to be mindful all the time of course that
we are asking people to revisit very traumatic incidents in their lives, both the families
who are bereaved and also police officers, so we have to be mindful that we don't re-traumatise.
When the Police Ombudsman’s Office has finished these investigations it will tell the relatives
of those who were killed, and the PSNI, its views on the actions and conduct of police
at the time.
Sometimes the Office finds evidence which makes it critical of the police actions: sometimes
it has no such evidence and makes no such criticism.
All these findings are then published. You can find them on the Police Ombudsman's website
- www.policeombudsman.org. You should look under the ‘Investigations Reports,’ under
‘Other Significant Reports’ tab and then at the dates of the incident.
Sometimes the families welcome the findings of the reports and believe the Office has
got to the truth. In one case, a report by the Office found that police had such information
that they ought to have known there was an IRA *** trap bomb in a property in the Creggan
estate in Derry/Londonderry, but did nothing to warn those living there of the possible
danger. The bomb exploded on Wednesday 31 August 1988, killing two people instantly.
A third person was injured and died seven months later.
Sometimes the families reject the reports. On 30 October 2007, for example, the Office
released the findings of an investigation into police conduct following the *** of
two brothers in Armagh in 1993, and found no evidence of police colluding with terrorists.
Their families rejected those findings.
Dr Maguire believes that how his Office deals with the past is one of its biggest challenges:
The past is a hugely difficult issue. We’re dealing with some of the most complex cases
that any police oversight organisation can deal with. Part of the problem in the past
has been that the work of the Office is seen to be one of winners and losers, and a good
Ombudsman's report was one that you actually agreed with. I think we need to move on from
that, and as citizens I think we need to be able determine how we are going to deal with
the past in a fair, impartial and objective way. That's a hugely difficult thing to do,
but the work of this Office, I think, is fundamental in addressing some of those very serious issues.
You can find out more information about this work, and about the Police Ombudsman’s other
work – its handling of complaints about modern policing - by logging onto its website,
or by following the Office on Twitter or Facebook.