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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.
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Preliminary hearing into IRA men’s deaths opens
14 September 2009 --
A preliminary hearing into the deaths of two unarmed IRA men shot dead by the
SAS almost 20 years ago is due to open today.
Martin McCaughey (23) and Dessie Grew (37) were shot dead by SAS soldiers at a
farm building near Loughgall, Co Armagh in October 1990.
The preliminary hearing is scheduled to take place at Mays Chambers in Belfast.
The families of the two republicans have mounted a series of legal challenges
over the RUC investigation into the killings and the failure to hand over
intelligence documents to allow inquests to be held into the deaths.
It remains the longest outstanding inquest in Northern Ireland’s legal history.
The two men were shot close to outbuildings at Lislasley where three AK47s were
found nearby, although the two men were unarmed.
Postmortem examinations revealed that Grew had been shot 48 times and McCaughey
12 times.
The shootings became part of a series of unarmed security force killings known
as ‘shoot to kill’ after it emerged that the shed had been under surveillance
and that police had prior intelligence that the two IRA men were due to visit.
In May 2001 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered the British
government to pay £10,000 each to the families of 10 IRA men shot dead by the
security forces after the court ruled that police had not properly investigated
their deaths.
In November 2007 the ECHR ruled that the RUC had also failed to properly
investigate allegations of security force collusion in the killing of eight Co
Armagh men.
One month later the House of Lords ruled that all police intelligence files
relating to the Grew and McCaughey killings should be disclosed to the coroner
to allow full inquests to take place.
Last month it was revealed that the two men’s families were taking their case to
Europe claiming there was no proper police investigation into their killings.
Martin McCaughey’s mother Brigid and Dessie Grew’s father Patrick have launched
a legal challenge at the ECHR.
Speaking last month, a spokesperson for the families solicitors Fearghal Shiels
of Madden & Finucane said the relatives believed that the state had “clearly
breached its legal obligations to conduct an effective official investigation
into the deaths”.
“The RUC officers who investigated the killings lacked the requisite degree of
independence from the undercover soldiers involved in the shooting,” the
spokesperson said.
“No attempt was made to seriously challenge the excessive force used, involving
the firing of at least 72 rounds, and in circumstances where one of the men was
shot twice on the ground as he was dying or already dead.
“There was clearly no meaningful attempt made by the RUC to explore the
credibility of the accounts provided, failing even to re-interview the soldiers
in light of significant discrepancies in their accounts.”
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