Madden & Finucane
Ranked
Number 1
by Chambers,
the clients guide
to the legal profession
Chambers and Partners have been publishing their
world-famous guides to the legal profession since 1990. The key to the success
of their legal directories and the validity of their awards is the in-depth,
unbiased research conducted by their team of highly qualified and experienced
researchers. View more
Madden & Finucane
present
the Madden & Finucane
and Pat Finucane
Aisling Awards
The Aisling Bursaries, launched in March 2000, are
an educational initiative between Belfast Media Group and West Belfast
Partnership. The Aisling Bursaries are designed to help students defray their
education and training costs.
View
more
|
|
Suspicions still surround Falls bookie shop killings
12 January 2000 --
A decade ago today, three men were controversially killed by a top secret army
intelligence unit as they carried out a robbery at a West Belfast bookmakers. In
one of the most notorious incidents of the ‘dirty war’, Peter Thompson (23),
Eddie Hale (25) and John Joseph McNeill (42) died in a hail of bullets at Sean
Graham’s betting shop on the junction of the Falls and Whiterock roads. The
killings led to calls from politicians, clergy and civil rights groups for an
independent public inquiry – one that has never been granted. Relatives of
Thompson are now trying to bypass the British legal system by taking the case to
the European Court of Human Rights. As he emerged from the shop on the morning
of January 13, 1990, unarmed, Thompson was shot at least 10 times. Hale, who was
carrying a concealed weapon in his clothing, was hit 12 times – nine in the
back. The getaway driver, McNeill, was shot in the face at point blank range
behind the wheel of a car outside. No gun was found beside McNeill. The two
soldiers responsible for his death claimed he made a movement indicating he was
armed and they had no alternative to shoot, though this was never proved.
Eyewitnesses reports suggest the men were not given the chance to surrender. Up
to 30 shots were fired in total by the British Army soldiers, who were attached
to the secretive 14 Intelligence Company. Four masks were found at the scene and
the security forces embarked on a manhunt for the ‘fourth man’, believed to have
been Frank Turley. He was questioned but released without charge. Turley was
shot dead near a railway line at Whiteabbey in June, 1998. Turley told the Irish
News the trio had been under surveillance for weeks and had been targeted
because they had handled stolen army material. Rosemary Thompson – Peter’s
mother – had been followed in her car, while Peter received three mysterious
phone calls from a woman with an English accent. His father Joseph – a
Protestant – told the Irish News his son had “nothing whatsoever” to do with
paramilitary activity. A few days after the killings, Sinn Fein leader Gerry
Adams told reporters he had been informed by associates of the dead men how
joyriders stole sports bags from a Nissan car at Drumbo on December 9, 1989. The
bags contained a 9mm pistol, a Heckler and Koch machine gun, documents, maps and
other military material. The guns were said to have been sold on to the men shot
dead, but were retrieved by the RUC a month before the failed robbery attempt. A
‘fence’ used by the three men had pleaded with them before the garage raid to
hand the weapons back after he made a deal with the RUC during interrogation.
Thompson’s father believes the RUC should have arrested his son as a result of
the raid. The stolen guns revelation sparked claims the killings could have been
a pre-planned ‘shoot to kill’ revenge attack for embarrassing the security
force’s most elite unit. On the RUC’s advice, the Director of Public
Prosecutions announced in December, 1990 that the soldiers would not be
prosecuted, leading to outraged accusations of a cover up from the nationalist
community. At the 1994 inquest, the two soldiers who fired the fatal bullets did
not appear, giving evidence through notes and statements instead. Others spoke
from behind screens. A forensic scientific officer contradicted evidence given
by one soldier about the guns he was carrying on the day of the killings. The
soldiers denied it was a revenge attack but at one stage the families withdrew
their legal representatives in protest at restrictions on the questions they
could ask. The jury eventually found the soldiers believed the trio were
paramilitaries who posed a danger to their lives and came across the robbery by
chance on a routine patrol. In April, 1995, Lord Justice Carswell ordered a
second inquest after quashing the jury’s findings from the previous October. The
judge said questions posed to the jury to help them return their finding had
breached coroner’s rules, which do not allow an inquest to come to any result
which strays from factual statements. The high court judge said the jury’s
verdict was in essence “a finding of justifiable homicide” – something beyond
their remit. But at the second inquest in September, 1997, solicitor Peter
Madden led a walk-out after telling coroner Dr John Leckey it was “a charade”.
“What is being attempted is that the people who carried out the killings are
attempting to justify the killings by restricting scope of the inquest. It is
totally unacceptable and it is totally unfair,” said Mr Madden. “They must be
investigated properly and in full. The inquest procedure at the moment cannot do
that.” Despite this and the Thompson family’s refusal to attend, the inquest
went ahead with just five of the 34 witnesses called to give evidence. The jury
took just under an hour to find that the men were killed during an attempted
robbery by an undercover security.
|
|
more..
|
|
|