Legal action is being prepared against the Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions by a number of Derry families who lost relatives in controversial killings involving the security forces during the last 30 years, it was announced yesterday.
At a press conference in Derry, the families' lawyers said High Court judicial review proceedings were to be instituted in a number of cases, to seek to compel the DPP to provide detailed reasons why no prosecutions followed these deaths.
They have invoked a ruling last year by the European Court of Human Rights in four sample cases taken against Britain in relation to individuals killed by security forces in the North.
Mr Paul O'Connor, of the Pat Finucane Centre which campaigns on human rights, said the Strasbourg court had found the UK in violation of article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights because it had not properly investigated the circumstances of the deaths. The court had also ruled that there had been a lack of public scrutiny and information to the families concerning the reasons for the DPP's decision not to prosecute those responsible.
Because this judgment was now part of UK domestic law, Mr O'Connor said, letters had been written to the DPP on behalf of nine Derry families asking what measures were being undertaken to inform them of the reasons for the failure to prosecute.
In a reply from the DPP's office on October 31st last, the families were informed that senior counsel's advice was being considered. It said a further letter was anticipated within 14 days, but no further communication was received.
A further letter was written to the DPP on January 15th but was not acknowledged, Mr O'Connor said, and Mr Peter Madden, of Belfast solicitors, Madden and Finucane, was now instructing counsel to prepare papers for judicial review applications.
The cases include the shooting by a soldier of Kathleen Thompson (47) , a mother of six, in the Creggan in 1971. Also involved are the families of Stephen McConomy, an 11-year-old who killed by a plastic bullet in 1982, and Daniel Hegarty, shot dead by the British army in 1972, and Manus Deery, killed by an army bullet in the Bogside in 1972.They were both 15.