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JUNE 2002
success in the house of lords
On 20th June the House of Lords ruled that the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission has the right to make third party interventions in court cases, overturning adverse rulings by the Lord Chief Justice and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland. British Irish rights watch, together with the Committee on the Administration of Justice and Amnesty International, ourselves intervened in the NIHRC’s case in support of their case, arguing that it would be ironic indeed if we could intervene but they could not. We had an inkling that the case would be successful when the government also intervened on the NIHRC’s side. We hope that this vidication of the NIHRC’s important role in promoting the human rights of everyone in Northern Ireland will put an end to the campaign of vilification that some unionists have seen fit to wage against the NIHRC.
APPOINTMENT OF NEW CHIEF CONSTABLE
The appointment of Hugh Orde as the next Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland heralds the potential for real changes in policing in Northern Ireland. Hugh Orde has been in day-to-day control of the Stevens 3 inquiry into collusion, and is known to have strong views about the re-organisation of Special Branch. On 5th June we met the new Chief Constable to be, in what it is to be hoped will be the first of many frank and constructive exchanges.
rosemary nelson
The suicide of LVF leader Mark Fulton in Maghaberry prison on 10th June has closed down a potential avenue of enquiry into the murder of Lurgan solicitor Rosemary Nelson in 1999. Mark Fulton was widely reported as being a prime suspect, although he denied any involvement.
patrick
finucane
Two documentaries by BBC journalist John Ware were broadcast by Panorama this month. The programmes included clandestinely recorded interviews with Ken Barratt, who admits having been one of the gunmen, who says the UDA was incited to murder Patrick Finucane by a senior RUC officer. They also included interviews with Sir John Stevens and members of his team. The documentaries confirmed that there were many victims of the policies adopted by both military intelligence and RUC Special Branch to allow loyalist murders to go ahead in order to safeguard intelligence and agents. The Finucane family have renewed their call for an immediate public inquiry. It is a call that has been echoed in many quarters, not least of all in the unionist Belfast Telegraph and the News Letter, which is calling for a truth commission. In our view, it is only a matter of time before the government concedes a public inquiry.
judge peter cory
We have prepared detailed submissions for consideration by
Judge Cory, who has been appointed to examine six cases.
Our submissions concern the cases of Billy Wright, Robert Hamill,
Rosemary Nelson and Patrick Finucane. We
will be presenting these reports to him once we have had a chance to meet the
judge. On 25th June I
travelled to Belfast to meet the families of the victims and their lawyers prior
to their meeting the judge in July.
seamus ludlow
We have also submitted a detailed report to Judge Henry Barron, who has begun his consideration of the murder in 1976 of Seamus Ludlow. Seamus Ludlow was killed by northern loyalists, some of whom were serving soldiers. Inexplicably, An Garda Síochána shut down their murder investigation after just 19 days. We have urged Mr Justice Barron to recommend a public inquiry into this sad and sordid case.
safety in
maghaberry
Following complaints from inmates at Magherry prison that they have received death threats, we have written to the Governor expressing our concern about the safety of prisoners and also suggesting that the time has come for a radical review of the prison estate in Northern Ireland. With only two large jails available for adult prisoners, the prison authorities have too little flexibility and must juggle dangerous and vulnerable prisoners, some of them from opposing factions, in order to avoid violence. The arithmetic of the situation in Northern Ireland also means that republican prisoners are now heavily outnumbered by loyalists, adding to the tensions in the jail.
health care in
porTlaoise
We
have also written to the Governor of Portlaoise prison in Ireland, following the
death of a prison from an undiagnosed brain tumour and a failure to diagnose a
serious heart condition in another inmate. Portlaoise is a very old prison which is unsuitable for
seriously ill prisoners, and its medical services leave a great deal to be
desired.
Kevin fulton
For a number of months now we have been trying to help the former military intelligence and Special Branch agent known as Kevin Fulton to regularise his position. Kevin Fulton says that his work as an agent saved many lives, and that he was promised a pension and a new identity when his role came to an end. Instead, he has been disowned by his former employers and his life has been put at risk. He is one of a group of agents in the same boat. We have written no less than three times to security minister Jane Kennedy asking her to take responsibility for sorting this situation out, to no avail. We have also been in correspondence with the PSNI about Kevin Fulton’s personal safety.
judicial review
in the billy wright case
On 27th June there was yet another hearing in the High Court in Belfast concerning David Wright’s application for disclosure of inquest papers and the police investigation file into the death of his son Billy Wright. Judgment in this test case was reserved and may not now be available until the next legal term in the autumn.
all change at the
american embassy
On 18th June I attended a reception at the
American embassy to say farewell to Sarah Rosenberry and Mark Burnett and to
welcome Patricia Hoffman, with whom we will be liaising in the future.
I also had the opportunity to meet Alex Karagiannis, who is about to
become the Director of the European Bureau at the State Department.
WINTER DISAPPEARS
I will be on holiday from 28th June to 14th July. Normal service will resume on 15th July.
Jane Winter,
Director,
27th June 2002.
INTERNATIONAL JUDGE APPOINTED
The British and Irish governments have now appointed the
Honourable Peter de Carteret Cory, a retired judge of the Supreme Court of
Canada, to decide whether there should be public inquiries into the murders of
Patrick Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill, Billy Wright, Lord Justice and
Lady Gibson and RUC officers Harry Breen
and Bob Buchanan. BIRW will be
making detailed submissions to him concerning the four cases – Finucane,
Hamill, Nelson and Wright – on which we have worked for the past number of
years. All four families are
seeking full public inquiries, and refuse to accept this exercise as being in
any sense a substitute for such inquiries, but are hoping to persuade Judge Cory
of the merits of their cases. This
month the Law Society for England and Wales has called for a public inquiry into
the murder of Rosemary Nelson and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission
has done so in the case of Billy Wright. We
welcome their support.
rosemary nelson and robert hamill
On 8th May Fiona Murphy of BIRW addressed a well-attended meeting in the House of Commons organised by the Robert Hamill Campaign, at which she spoke about the murder of the Hamill family’s lawyer, Rosemary Nelson. The meeting took place on the fifth anniversary of Robert Hamill’s death. He died some twelve days after being set upon by a loyalist mob while armed RUC officers sat by in a police vehicle and did nothing to intervene.
psni
transparency policy
We have sent the Police Service of Northern Ireland detailed comments on their draft transparency policy. While welcoming their adoption of such a policy, we have pointed out that transparency in itself is neutral. It is possible to be transparently oppressive, or transparently aggressive, and bad policing is frequently both. A commitment to transparency, then, is only as good as the reasons behind it. We have suggested that the principle that ought to underlie transparency in any public body is accountability. In this regard, we perceive two stumbling blocks to transparency in policing. The first lies in the right of the Chief Constable to appeal to the Secretary of State against a decision by the Policing Board to initiate an inquiry following a report by the Chief Constable under s. 60 of the Police (Northern Ireland) Act 2000. The second is the history of Special Branch supremacy within the police service and the subordination of traditional policing to the demands of intelligence gathering. If the transformation of policing in Northern Ireland is to have any reality, the PSNI will have to undergo a radical reappraisal of its attitude towards collusion. It will have to recognise that collusion has happened, and that, like racism in other police services, it has been institutionalised. It will have to put in place measures to root out collusion and to prevent its recurrence. We have offered to enter into serious dialogue with the PSNI about collusion.
psni equality scheme
We have also commented on the PSNI’s draft scheme for
promoting equality of opportunity. We
are very glad that the PSNI has been designated as a public authority for the
purposes of s. 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 and that the police service
is clearly responding positively to its obligations under the Act.
Equality is very much a live issue for the PSNI, given its history and
the fact that it is currently severely imbalanced in relation to at least two
groups, both of them sizeable: Catholics and women.
We do not know what percentage of the PSNI is made up of people with
disabilities, gays, or ethnic minorities, but suspect that, in common with many
other public bodies, they too are under-represented.
We think it would be helpful if the draft scheme acknowledged these
imbalances. In the absence of any
mention of them, it has a slightly unreal air.
If the PSNI is truly committed to promoting equality of opportunity then,
rather than presenting the PSNI as a brand new butterfly emerging from the
chrysalis of the RUC, it needs to acknowledge that it has quite a distance to
travel before it achieves its aim.
POLICING BOARD CODE OF PRACTICE ON DISTRICT POLICING
PARTNERSHIPS
It has been quite a month for commenting on draft documents to do with policing! We have made a number of comments on the Policing Board’s draft code of practice on District Policing Partnerships. We have urged the Board to view the DPPs in a rather more positive light than the draft code presents; to encourage exchange of information between DPPs so that they can learn from each other’s experiences; and to promote best practice.
bill of rights seminar
On 3rd May we held a seminar jointly with the Department of Law at the University of Leeds about the Northern Ireland Bill of Rights. Grateful thanks to our speakers: Brice Dickson, Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission; Maggie Beirne of the Committee on the Administration of Justice; and Francesca Klug of the London school of Economics; and to the British Institute of Human Rights for their help in providing a venue.
ADMISSIBILITY OF EVIDENCE IN THE DIPLOCK COURTS
In
the Diplock courts in Northern Ireland confession evidence is admissible in
cases scheduled under the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act unless it
was obtained under torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, or violence or
threat of violence, whereas in England under PACE a confession must be excluded
unless it is proved beyond reasonable doubt, upon representations being made,
that it was not obtained by oppression or in consequence of anything liable to
render it unreliable. The Northern
Ireland Office is carrying out a review of whether to apply the PACE standards
in the juryless Diplock courts. Although
we would want to see an end to the Diplock courts altogether, such a reform
would be a welcome step. We are
hopeful that it will be implemented because the Policing Board for Northern
Ireland is supporting such a move.
DEROGATIONS
This month we also made a submission to the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights’ inquiry into United Kingdom derogations from the European Convention on Human Rights. We advocated far more parliamentary scrutiny of any derogations than currently exists, and the bringing into force of a Derogations Act which would lay down:
· the procedures for derogation, including provisions for parliamentary scrutiny of derogations;
· the circumstances in which it is permissible to derogate, which should be strictly defined;
· time limits for the duration of any derogation, which should be short;
· a mechanism for keeping derogations under constant review; and
· provisions for entering reservations, which should also be strictly defined.
welcome and farewell
Farewell to Leanne Pang, whose internship with BIRW as a
graduate human rights student at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies has come
to an end. We are glad that we are
not losing her altogether, as she continues to work on our chronology in a
voluntary capacity. We wish her
well in the future and thanks her for her work.
As she leaves, we welcome Danielle Koster of Colombia University in New
York. Danielle is helping us to
create our submissions to Judge Cory.
Jane Winter,
Director,
31st May 2002.
For Peace Justice & Human Rights
