The former chief justice of Northern Ireland, Mr Justice Robert Lowry, who presided over scores of non-jury trials of republicans during the Troubles, “dislikes Jews as much as he dislikes Catholics”, Belfast lawyers believed in the 1980s.
The issue was raised by the leading Belfast-based Catholic lawyer, PJ McGrory, in 1985 in a discussion with senior Department of Foreign Affairs official Daithí Ó Ceallaigh about upcoming judicial appointments.
One highly regarded lawyer, Ronnie Appleton, who led the successful prosecution of the Irish National Liberation Army’s Dominic McGlinchey, was “a strong contender” for a bench appointment, Mr McGrory believed.
Mr Appleton played “an essential role” in McGlinchey’s conviction since he had come up with “the brilliant idea” of getting an affidavit filed to a Dublin court when he had been charged with IRA membership.
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In it, McGlinchey admitted to being a member of the IRA. “McGrory claims that without those affidavits, which were made after the request for extradition [to NI], McGlinchey could not have been convicted,” wrote Ó Ceallaigh in a note to Iveagh House.
However, Mr Appleton’s hopes faced a problem, since Mr Justice Lowry was “reputed to dislike Jews as much as he dislikes Catholics”, said Mr McGrory, later internationally known during the Gibraltar inquest into the killings of three IRA members.
In his conversation, Mr McGrory voiced his belief that internment without trial would be a better option than non-jury Diplock courts, where people would be automatically locked up if they were found with weapons or explosives.
“Even a special mobile police force, designed to deal with the terrorist threat using their weapons relatively freely, would be better than the use of the courts in a manner that effectively politicises them,” Mr Ó Ceallaigh reported him as saying.
Sharply critical of Mr Justice Lowry, Mr McGrory believed “the courts have been manipulated in an unprecedented fashion” by him, especially by exploiting the lack of legal transcribers.
The lack of transcripts of judgments had delayed the hearing of appeals to such an extent “that the appellants will nearly all have served their sentences before the appeal is heard”, Mr McGrory complained.
“It is Lowry who ensure that particular judges hear particular trials for the purpose of ensuring that the judgment serves his political end,” the confidential Department of Foreign Affairs note continues.
Given his position as lord chief justice, Mr Justice Lowry was able to control which judges heard Diplock cases, where people facing alleged terrorist offences were tried before a single judge in a non-jury trial.
In one case, two students faced trial for conspiracy in the killing of official unionist politician Edgar Graham, but “considerable circumstantial evidence” existed that they were “under duress” when the gunman stayed in their apartment before the killing.
Mr McGrory believed some judges would have acquitted both of them, but others “might give them five years”. Mr Justice Lowry intervened and directed that the case be heard in Belfast High Court.
“Luckily, [Mr Justice] McDermott heard the case and gave them a suspended sentence,” Mr McGrory told the Irish diplomat, who was then newly installed in the Maryfield Secretariat which housed Irish officials in Belfast after the Anglo-Irish Agreement.
In another case involving so-called “supergrass” evidence against suspected Irish National Liberation Army members, Mr McGrory believed Mr Justice Lowry favoured having the case thrown out because the defendants would “be assassinated within a month”.
“If the case were thrown out it would enable Lowry to point to the justice of the supergrass system. The crown might not thereby ‘lose too many of those it wants behind bars’,” Mr McGrory believed.
