FETCH ....... !
By Gene Kerrigan .
Four years ago this month the RUC began trying to put JOHN O' REILLY away . Four 'Supergrasses' failed to do the job . O' REILLY is now in Michael Noonan's custody . The RUC have demanded that Noonan "...bring him forthwith .. " to answer the accusations of HARRY KIRKPATRICK .
From 'MAGILL' magazine , February 1986 .
The (Free State) Supreme Court was deliberately misled into believing that the RUC had a case against Dominic McGlinchey for the murder of an elderly woman , Hester McMullen ; this murder was handed to the court as a vicious crime which it could declare non-political : McGlinchey might well have been accused of being the Yorkshire Ripper . The crime he was accused of did'nt matter as long as it provided sufficient grounds for the (FS) Supreme Court to hand him over .
The RUC had not one sliver of evidence against Dominic McGlinchey in connection with that crime ; only after the extradition , when they had him in custody , did they begin building a case , and an extremely flimsy one , so flimsy that it fell apart in court ! The embarrassment for the Free State Supreme Court was deepened in cases which followed , including the Shannon and Burns cases .
Increasingly it was clear that the (FS) Supreme Court was being treated as a device , much like a supergrass , to jail people by questionable methods . The RUC said " Fetch ! " and it was done , whether by John Grimley or a Supreme Court Justice , on equally discreditable evidence .
In the John O' Reilly case , unlike, for instance , the McGlinchey and Shannon cases , the North of Ireland Authorities are seeking to implicate the (FS) Supreme Court in the discredited supergrass system .......
(MORE LATER).
TO WESTMINSTER AND BACK .......
The Life And Times Of Gerry Fitt.
By Nell McCafferty .
First published in ' MAGILL' magazine , July 1983 .
1973 opened with a British 'White Paper' that suggested the formation of an Assembly to which power would be devolved if it was shared between Protestants and Catholics (ie Nationalists and Unionists) ; an election was called for June 1973 and exactly one week before polling day Gerry Fitt received a phone call from RUC Assistant Chief Constable Sam Bradley - " He asked me if I had thirty pounds , and I said I had , and he said he was sending a detective up right away with a gun and a permit . 'It won't stop the loyalists killing you , Gerry ' , he said , ' but if you fire it in the air when they come at you they'll have to put a bullet through you . They won't get close enough to cut your throat' . " (' 1169... ' Comment - why should the RUC seek to arm and protect its 'enemy' .... ?)
He got the gun on Friday night and set off from Belfast with Senator Paddy Wilson for a tour , as leader of the SDLP , of the country constituencies : " I paid £28 for the hire of a car and Paddy drove me round . A police (RUC) sergeant in Cushendall , a pal of mine , took me up into a quarry and taught me how to fire it . We came back to Belfast on Monday night . Paddy met a bird in a pub and went off up the Cave Hill in a car . The butchers followed him into a quarry ... " Both bodies were stabbed and mutilated from top to bottom . Gerry Fitt identified them in the morgue .
The Assembly was formed and though more votes were cast for the dissident Unionist parties of Paisley and Craig than were cast for the unionist party of Brian Faulkner , the former Stormont Premier went off to Sunningdale to engage in talks with the SDLP and the Alliance parties .
Between them these three parties cobbled out a power sharing agreement , under the direction of Edward Heath ; they returned to the North of Ireland to form an Executive which took office on January 1 , 1974 .......
(MORE LATER).
UPS AND DOWNS FOR RUC's PERJURER STRATEGY .......
SEAN DELANEY looks at recent developments in the use of perjurers in the North .
From ' IRIS ' magazine , November 1983 .
British Lord Chief Justice Lowry rubbed salt into the wounds of incredulity by using his summation for the purposes of a policy statement on the use of perjurers , in which he formally signalled the willingness of the Northern judiciary to accept uncorroborated evidence of an 'accomplice witness ' as the sole basis for a conviction .
Arguing that the judiciary was , and remained , independent of the (Westminster) ' Northern Ireland' Office and was not in any form of collusion , Chief Justice Lowry stated - " The resort to supergrasses has been described by some people as a method of convicting suspected terrorists . But the expression 'method of conviction' is a complete misnomer , since it is likely to give the impression that the Executive and Judges are together implementing a trial process with the joint object of convicting and imprisoning suspects .
It is for the Executive to prosecute a case if , on the available evidence , that seems to be the right course . But the function of the Judges , acting quite independently , has not altered ; it is simply to decide whether or not in any individual case the allegations of the prosecutor have been proved . "
Two days before Lowry made the above statement , the British Attorney-General , Sir Michael Havers , had spoken about the " financial arrangements ... " made with those informers .......
(MORE LATER).
