1 Introduction and background
1. On 20 July 1982, the Provisional IRA detonated
a remotely-controlled car bomb, packed with nails to maximise
fatalities and injuries, in Hyde Park as soldiers and horses from
the Blues and Royals Regiment were passing by on ceremonial duty
on their way from Knightsbridge Barracks to Horse Guards. Two
soldiers, Lieutenant Anthony Daly, aged 23, and Trooper Simon
Tipper, aged 19, died at the scene; one soldier, Lance Corporal
Jeffrey Young, aged 19, died the day after the bomb, and a fourth
soldier, Squadron Quartermaster Corporal Roy Bright, aged 36,
died two days after that. A further 31 people were injured, some
seriously, with the effects being felt by survivors and victims'
families to this day.
2. A few hours after the Hyde Park explosion, the
IRA also detonated, by means of a timing device, another bomb
in Regent's Park, killing seven members of the Royal Green Jackets
band as they gave a performance. Nobody has ever been charged
with the Regent's Park murders.
3. In 1987, Gilbert "Danny" McNamee was
jailed for 25 years after being found guilty of building the bomb
used in the Hyde Park attack. He was released from prison in November
1998 under the terms of the Belfast Agreement (also known as the
"Good Friday Agreement") of that year, and had his conviction
overturned by the Court of Appeal the following month on the grounds
that his conviction was unsafe.
4. No one else was charged with being involved with
the Hyde Park bombing until May 2013; indeed, as we were told
by Christopher Daly, brother of Anthony, when he later gave evidence
to us on behalf of the Hyde Park families:
prior to […] May 2013, neither I nor any
of the families of those killed on that tragic day were even aware
that anybody was wanted in connection with the Hyde Park bombing.[1]
5. On 19 May 2013, John Anthony Downey, an Irish
national, resident in County Donegal, was arrested at Gatwick
Airport on his way from the Republic of Ireland to Spain. He was
charged and prosecuted on four counts of murder and causing an
explosion-the Hyde Park bomb. If the law had taken its course,
John Downey would have stood trial; if found not guilty, he would
have left court an innocent man. If he had been found guilty,
he would now be serving a prison sentence. However, due to what
would later be called a "catastrophic error", he was
able to walk free without having to face trial.
6. It transpired that Downey, who was one of those
former members of the IRA classed as an "on-the-run"
(OTR), was the subject of a letter, signed by an Official in the
Northern Ireland Office (NIO), stating that, as far as the Police
Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) were aware, Downey was not
wanted by the PSNI, nor, as far as they were aware, by
any other UK police force. It is essential to note that the PSNI
were unaware of the exact content of the letter issued by the
NIO. In fact, the PSNI were kept 'in the dark' by the NIO about
these secret letters for some 11 years. Downey was, therefore,
free to travel to any part of the United Kingdom without fear
of arrest.
7. By a bitter irony, the letter was dated 20 July
2007, the 25th anniversary of the Hyde Park bomb. The
letter was wrong; Downey was wanted, and the PSNI knew he was
wanted, by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) on suspicion
of involvement in the Hyde Park bomb. However, the PSNI's Terms
of Reference did not consider Downey to have been on the run from
the UK, as he had been born and resided in County Donegal in the
Republic of Ireland.
8. Due to the NIO's letter, the trial judge in R
v John Downey, Mr Justice Sweeney, ruled, on 21 February 2014,
that it would be an abuse of process to try Downey, who had acted
to his detriment in travelling to the UK in reliance on the NIO's
letter.
9. The collapse of the case against John Downey provoked
a huge public outrage, including a threat from the First Minister
of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson MLA, to resign; to keep him
in post, and prevent a collapse of the Northern Ireland Assembly,
HM Government announced that it would set up an independent review
of the administrative scheme for OTRs, in particular, to examine
the circumstances of the letter, whether it had been issued in
error to Downey, and to investigate whether any other letters
might have also been issued in error. This review was chaired
by Rt Hon Dame Heather Hallett (Lady Justice Hallett, although
she did not act in a judicial capacity). The Terms of Reference
for the Hallett Review are annexed to this Report.
10. Whilst we welcomed Dame Heather's review, we
considered the Terms of Reference for the Hallett Review far too
narrow. We therefore announced, on 11 March 2014, our own inquiry
which was much wider ranging than simply the circumstances surrounding
the Downey letter, and if any others had been issued in error.
In addition, unlike Dame Heather's Review which took all its evidence
in private, the evidence taken in our inquiry was in public, as
we did not consider that taking evidence in private was in the
best interests of establishing the truth for victims; taking our
evidence in private would only have reinforced the secretive nature
of the scheme.
11. During the inquiry, we held 26 public evidence
sessions, at both Westminster and at Stormont, taking evidence
from 55 individual witnesses, three of whom-former Prime Minister
Tony Blair, and former NIO Officials Mr Mark Sweeney, who signed
the letter dated 20 July 2007 to Mr Downey, and Dr Simon Case-we
had to summon to attend. We chose not to summon Lady Justice Hallett
to attend, but we consider it to be a regrettable discourtesy
to Parliament that she declined our initial invitation to give
evidence to the Committee, especially as she had not acted in
a judicial capacity when carrying out her review. We
urge the Government to ensure that, in future, all parties that
carry out inquiries or reviews on behalf of the Government are
instructed from the outset that they would be required to explain
their findings to Parliament if invited to do so.
12. Sinn Féin were responsible for providing
a number of the names of people who went on to receive letters
from the NIO. Given that they are part of the government of Northern
Ireland, we think it was wrong for Sinn Féin to decline
our invitation to give evidence in public, even though they had
given evidence to the Hallett review in private. This put into
further question the private nature of the scheme, and did, of
course, deprive them of the opportunity of putting their side
of the argument forward in public.
13. We are grateful to all those who gave oral evidence
and to those who submitted written evidence, to the then Speaker
of the Northern Ireland Assembly, William Hay MLA,[2]
for allowing us to hold our evidence sessions at Stormont, to
the Assembly staff who facilitated our meetings there, and to
Andrew Trollope QC and Dr Austen Morgan[3],
who provided specialist legal advice during the inquiry.
14. We would also wish to place on record our particular
thanks to the Attorney General's Office (AGO) for making available
to us the witnesses' statements and many other documents which
were available to Mr Justice Sweeney during the Downey case-the
"Downey disclosure documents". Although these documents
were, technically, already in the public domain, we agreed to
make them available also on the Committee's website whenever the
Committee, or witnesses, quoted from a particular document. In
that way, we hoped that we would make those documents more readily
accessible to members of the public. We have now placed all the
documents on our website.
The impact on victims
15. During our inquiry, we have sought to keep the
views and feelings of victims, survivors and relatives uppermost
in our minds. It is invidious to speak of one event as being the
"worst" of the Troubles; to anyone who lost a loved
one, the incident which took his or her life will always be regarded
as the "worst" for those left behind.
16. Nevertheless, the Downey case will have been
particularly poignant for the Hyde Park families as, over 30 years
after the murder of their son, brother or father, there seemed
to be a real possibility that justice might finally be achieved.
Any optimism they might have had was cruelly shattered due to
the administrative scheme for OTRs which is described in this
Report.
17. In our meetings with victims' families and representatives,
what struck us, apart from the dignity they have all displayed,
was the fact that no one expressed a desire for "vengeance".
The majority asked for truth and justice. For example, we were
told by Julie Hambleton, of Justice4the21, and whose sister Maxine
was killed by the IRA in the pub bombings in Birmingham on 21
November 1974, that:
Justice, in the context of the Birmingham pub
bombings, is the use of authority to uphold what is just and to
administer the investigations, establishment and uphold the principles
of laws set by precedent and to treat all before the law fairly
and decently. The basic principle that all are equal before the
law has been conveniently and deliberately ignored. The authority
of the United Kingdom has blatantly discriminated against the
many seeking justice for this crime. The United Kingdom has witnessed
[…] a total corruption of justice in this matter […][4]
18. Michael Gallagher, of the Omagh Support and Self
Help Group (OSSHG), and whose son Aiden was killed in the Omagh
bomb on 15 August 1998, also told us:
I am concerned about truth, justice and dignity
for those who have suffered. By sending letters of assurance,
the possibility of justice is denied to many victims and their
basic human rights have been ignored […] There seems to be
no accountability mechanism working that stops politicians from
ignoring the wishes of Parliament.[5]
19. Some other victims, however, simply express the
wish to be able to get on with their lives. Kevin Skelton, who
lost his wife, Mena, in the Omagh atrocity, writing on behalf
of Families Moving On, said that:
At the end of the day we are all victims some
want justice and are entitled to justice but as we all know that
will never happen so you have to talk to the victims in the middle
ground who are prepared to move this process forward because the
past is the past and we can't always keep looking back.[6]
20. However, the emotion that seems most prevalent
amongst victims and survivors is a sense of betrayal by HM Government,
which it seems sought to keep key elements of the OTR scheme secret.
As Cat Wilkinson, sister of Aiden Gallagher, from OSSHG, said:
[…]it is about the secrecy. There are secret
deals being done and they say it is for the better good and the
victims, to be honest, are always the last thought in their mind
[…] Even with the Government, which you put your trust into
[…]things perhaps have to be done behind closed doors that
we do not need to know about, but not something so major as to
let people get away with murder. They tried before, in 2005, to
do it openly and it failed[…][7]
21. Another particularly telling comment came from
David Scott, a member of the Victims and Survivors Forum, and
whose father was an indirect victim of The Troubles. He told us
in Belfast that:
The phrase that comes continually to my attention
is the word "justice". Justice does not appear to be
on the radar currently. There is a deep sense of betrayal since
the perpetrator appears to be benefitting much more from the benefits
of the Belfast Agreement than the victim. For many folk, there
is a difficulty in relation to the Belfast Agreement[…][8]
22. When Ann Travers, also a member of the Victims
and Survivors Forum, was asked whether the secrecy surrounding
the scheme had affected her confidence and trust in political
parties and the system itself, her response was:
It has irritated me whenever I hear people say,
"You should've known about this. It was reported. I reported
it." We are talking about 1998 when we agreed the Belfast/Good
Friday Agreement. Maybe peoples' loved ones had been blown up
or murdered only 10 years previously […] Anything I can do
is to help prevent victims from being retraumatised. They have
been through enough. I do agree that the secrecy just cannot happen
any more. We need to have transparency, and we need to have honesty.[9]
The Belfast Agreement 1998
23. On 10 April 1998—Good Friday—an agreement
was signed in Belfast that, effectively, put an end to more than
30 years of bloodshed known as The Troubles. Perhaps one of the
most controversial parts of the Belfast Agreement[10]
was that both the UK and the Irish Governments would "put
in place mechanisms to provide for an accelerated programme for
the release of prisoners, including transferred prisoners, convicted
of scheduled offences in Northern Ireland or, in the case of those
sentenced outside Northern Ireland, similar offences (referred
to hereafter as qualifying prisoners)", and that "both
Governments will complete a review process within a fixed time
frame and set prospective release dates for all qualifying prisoners[…]should
the circumstances allow it, any qualifying prisoners who remained
in custody two years after the commencement of the scheme would
be released at that point." In other words, someone convicted
of mass murder could be released after serving as little as two
years in custody.
24. Referendums on 22 May 1998, in both Northern
Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland, endorsed The Belfast Agreement,
and legislation, the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998, enacted
the early release scheme. However, the Belfast Agreement did not
cover those individuals suspected of having carried out terrorist
offences, nor those who had been charged, or convicted, but had
subsequently escaped from detention. Most of these individuals
were members of the Provisional IRA, and many had sought refuge
from justice in the Republic of Ireland, though some had fled
to other countries, such as the United States, and they came to
be known as the "on-the-runs".
25. The situation of OTRs was not discussed during
the negotiations for The Belfast Agreement, as Tony Blair, Prime
Minister at the time, told us that the issue of OTRs "only
arose after those discussions".[11]
26. In contrast, many loyalist terrorists, from organisations
such as the Ulster Volunteer Force or the Ulster Defence Association
had no equivalent safe haven or bolt-hole to escape to. Most loyalists
fleeing Northern Ireland went to Scotland where, of course, they
were still subject to UK law.
27. In order to deal with OTRs, HM Government came
up with an administrative scheme to have individual cases looked
at, details of which are set out below.
28. There was no public indication whatsoever that
OTRs had been issued with what came to be called "comfort
letters". The fact that Downey escaped justice due to his
reliance upon a "comfort letter" was devastating news
for the families of the Hyde Park victims, as well as inspiring
feelings of real anger and incredulity for those who knew nothing
about such letters before Mr Justice Sweeney's ruling on 24 February
2014.
1 Q1918 Back
2
Now Lord Hay of Ballyore Back
3
For declaration of relevant interests, see 2 April 2014 in 'Formal Minutes 2013-2014',
Northern Ireland Affairs Committee Back
4
Q2285 Back
5
Q2251 Back
6
Families Moving On (OTR0021) Back
7
Q2281 Back
8
Q1153 Back
9
Q1155 Back
10
The Belfast Agreement, 10 April 1998 Back
11
Q3656 Back
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