Doubts over evidence used to expel Sinn Féin
A US lawyer who met RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan
in the week that Sinn Féin was expelled from the talks
has revealed that Flanagan was unable to provide
evidence linking the IRA or Sinn Féin to the killings
which were used as the basis for the party's expulsion.
Tom Burke was part of a 5-day fact finding tour of the
Six Counties by The Lawyers Alliance for Justice in
Ireland. Burke and the other lawyers met Flanagan at
the RUC headquarters in Belfast on 19 February.
Burke said: ``Given the `indisputable evidence' standard
of determining whether the Mitchell Principles of
non-violence had been `disavowed,' several of us asked
Flanagan just exactly what the evidence consisted of,
in light of Sinn Féin's denial of involvement and its
public report that the IRA considered its ceasefire
intact.
``Other than to confirm that the evidence had to do with
the arrest of three men accused of killing a West
Belfast UDA man, Bobby Duggan, in Belfast... the Chief
Constable couldn't be more specific, he said, because
to float facts might prejudice someone's later trial.
``What he did instead, he reported, was to furnish Mo
Mowlam an `intelligence report' in confidence.
``Based on this, he said, Mowlam had reached certain
conclusions, ie, that the Mitchell Principles had
indeed been breached and that the IRA had been
involved. In response to comments that in order to
constitute `evidence', somebody should have the right -
at a minimum - to see it, and that if it was supposed
to be `indisputable,' that somebody should have the
right to controvert it, Flanagan replied, irritated,
that this was not possible and that what he had found
was in fact incontrovertible.
``Well, asked one of the group, she had read in the
press that some of the `evidence' said to be relied
upon consisted of results of forensic analysis of
bullet striations which matched those of the pistol
barrel of a captured IRA weapon used in an earlier IRA
operation, so was this some of the evidence he reported
on?
``Flanagan confirmed that indeed the press had reported
about those tests. His questioner went on: Can you
confirm what we also heard, that the forensic tests
turned out to be negative? After an embarrassed pause,
Flanagan admitted the tests had indeed been negative.
Well, then, did the evidence consist of other things we
had heard about, such as gunpowder residue on clothing
worn by the three suspects in the killing of the UDA
man? Yes, said Flanagan, his men had come across
clothing similar to that reportedly worn by the
assailants and were testing it; problem was, though,
that it had been laundered and because of that so far
they had no good results. What was the clothing? Wash
pants, sweat shirts and baseball caps, concededly of
the sort worn by half of West Belfast, was the reply.
``Were the three suspects charged with IRA membership,
itself a crime? No, Flanagan said, there was
insufficient evidence of that.
The Constable finally declaimed he was personally
convinced of the suspects' IRA involvement because the
IRA had signaled they would accept the three suspects
into their H-Block wing at `Maze Prison' while on
remand, a telling admission in his eyes, and with which
we must presumably all, as fair minded people, agree.
``Two days earlier I had met Martin Mogg. The official
Governor of all prison facilities in the Six Counties,
he informed us he was on temporary assignment...at `Her
Majesty's Prison, The Maze.'
Then...Mogg opined that as distinct from past Maze
regimes, as far as he was concerned the Long Kesh IRA
H-Blocks were a prisoner of war camp.
``Mogg then delivered us... to H-Block 4's wings C and
D. There, extraditees Joe Doherty and Jimmy Smyth met
us, with smiles and warm welcomes, for a three hour
tour of the two wings.
``Among the prisoners there was Seán Kelly, the son of
Briege and Jim - Jim had provided all our
transportation while in the north.
``Just before we departed for H-Block 4, Mogg offered,
almost as an aside, that he knew Seán Kelly's
conviction, and that of another young man named
Timmins, were clearly `dodgy', and that neither was
`any more in the IRA than they could fly to the moon.'
``He was just grateful, Mogg said, that the Provisionals
were willing to take in these two to serve their
sentences in IRA H-Block wings.
Whether Mogg's gratitude had been communicated to
Constable Flanagan, who has come to different
conclusions about IRA H-Block hospitality, is unknown.''
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