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JULY 2002
judge peter cory
On 2nd July Fiona Murphy of BIRW met Judge Cory
together with Amnesty International and CAJ to discuss the arrangements for his
investigation into the cases of Billy Wright, Robert Hamill, Rosemary Nelson and
Patrick Finucane, Lord Justice and Lady Gibson, and senior RUC officers Buchanan
and Breen. Since his investigation
is private and we will not have access to any submissions made by the
government, we want to be certain that our submissions will be treated on an
equal basis to theirs. Doubt has
now been cast on the situation by a meeting I attended in Belfast on 31st
July with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, John Reid.
During a meeting with David Wright, the father of Billy Wright, Dr Reid
disclosed that five civil servants, three of them from the Northern Ireland
Office, are being seconded to work for the judge.
The Secretary of State was impervious to any suggestion that this could
adversely affect the judge’s independence and referred us to the judge for
clarification. Accordingly I am
meeting the judge next Thursday.
majella o’hare
On 18th July I travelled to Belfast to meet a representative of the Irish government with members of Majella O’Hare’s family. We were able to brief the Irish government on the tragic shooting of this twelve year old child by an on-duty soldier in 1976. They agreed to put a number of questions to the British government about the incident
safety in
maghaberry
We continue to receive complaints from prisoners at Maghaberry concerning death threats and assaults in the prison. We are urging the government to undertake an urgent review of safety in the jail.
monitoring
policing issues
This month has seen the end of a lengthy project to re-organise our files on policing in Northern Ireland. We now have 25 files on every aspect of policing, covering over 200 separate categories. Very many thanks to our volunteer Ayesha Mohsin, who has patiently and carefully revised these files over many months.
Jane Winter,
Director, 2nd August 2002.
For Peace Justice & Human Rights
