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Army decision was racist, court is told
30 March 2001 --
THE British army’s decision to retain the two soldiers convicted of murdering
Peter McBride was described as “outrageous” and “racist” in the high court in
Belfast yesterday. “The decision is so outrageous in its defiance of logic or
accepted moral standards, that no sensible person could have arrived at it,”
Seamus Treacy QC said. He was opening a second application for judicial review
of the army’s decision last November not to discharge Scots Guardsmen James
Fisher and Mark Wright. They were taken back into their regiment in 1998
following their release on licence, after serving six years of a life sentence
for murdering Mr McBride (19), who was shot in the back near his home in the New
Lodge area of Belfast in 1992. The latest case has again been brought by the
victim’s mother, Mrs Jean McBride, and is being heard by Mr Justice Kerr – the
same judge who in 1999 quashed an earlier decision allowing the two soldiers to
remain in the army. Attacking the unreasonableness of the army’s decision, Mr
Treacy said the recruitment criteria for the new Police Service for Northern
Ireland debarred anyone convicted of any crime resulting in imprisonment. “It
would even stop you from getting a licence to drive a taxi,” he said. Mr Treacy
added: “It is also fundamentally discriminatory and racist in character. “It is
clear beyond argument that the army treat the loss of Northern Irish lives less
seriously than they treat the loss of other lives, or indeed, that they regard
it as even less important than other much less serious matters, like possession
of drugs, which carry automatic discharge.” Court papers lodged by Mrs McBride’s
solicitors, Madden and Finucane, stated that 2,002 soldiers had been discharged
from the army in the past 10 years for lesser crimes than murder. The papers
said the army’s lack of censure in the case of Fisher and Wright “not only
enhances the risk that the guardsmen will murder again, but also affords them
the opportunity to do so, by providing them with weapons”. Mr Treacy’s written
submissions also referred to the recognition that victims have a legitimate
concern and interest in the treatment meted out to those who injured them. In
the McBride case, he said, the army’s decision had clearly aggravated the
suffering of relatives and the inference must be that the army was indifferent
to this. “Every civilised country should regard the sanctity of life as
paramount to be protected at all times – and its violation as totally
abhorrent,” Mr Treacy said. Mr Ian Burnett QC, for the army, will address the
judge today, and it is expected that judgement will be reserved.
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