Questions over police handling of sectarian attack
By Fern Lane
The shambolic handling by Glasgow police of the attempted murder
of Celtic fan Sean O'Connor continues apace.
Sean, who narrowly escaped death last November when his throat
was cut by Rangers supporter Thomas Longstaff in a sectarian
attack, discovered last week that the charge of attempted murder
against Longstaff has been dropped. Longstaff was arrested and
charged in January after boasting about the incident around
loyalist bars in Glasgow.
He pleaded guilty and was due to stand trial on 20 May.
The reason Glasgow police are offering for this turn of events is
that their main witness, Paddy Keenan, has gone missing. However,
An Phoblacht has learned that Longstaff was taken into protective
custody on his release, a fact which raises suspicions that
police offered him a deal of immunity in exchange for
information. Certainly, the argument about their missing witness
is a dubious one; there were at least 20 other people in the
immediate vicinity of the attack, all of whom witnessed the
attempt on Sean's life. Police claim, however, that they did not
take statements from any of them, nor from those present in the
pub where he was taken immediately afterwards. Even if this is
true, it merely demonstrates breathtaking negligence on their
part, as well as their manifest antipathy to Celtic fans in
general. Further, the fact that Longstaff pleaded guilty would
have negated the need for witnesses in any case.
All this is symptomatic of the attitude with which the police
have approached the case and its wider implications from the
start. For example, when Sean was taken, bleeding heavily, into
the nearby pub, two police officers who were present refused to
either call an ambulance for him or to take him to hospital
themselves. When the paramedic who attended Sean expressed his
concern that sectarian incidents of this nature were becoming
alarmingly commonplace and that the police were doing nothing
about it, he was treated with the same contempt. Police have
continued to deny any sectarian motive for that attack and
others; even the recent murder of another young Celtic fan,
knifed after he got off the match bus in Motherwell was reported
as being ``completely random and motiveless''.
Nevertheless, Detective Superintendent Stuart Waugh of Glasgow
police still suggested to the press after Sean's stabbing that
Celtic fans were bringing the attacks on themselves by walking
through loyalist areas wearing colours, saying ``Why bring trouble
on yourself when you don't need to?''. In other words, anyone
wearing a Celtic shirt is asking for it. Apart from adding insult
to injury, this conveniently ignored the fact that Sean was
directed into the area by the police shortly before he was
attacked.
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