British ministry of defence (MoD) claims that it cannot afford to pay for searches for documents linked to killings committed by soldiers during the Troubles have been sharply rejected by a leading judge in Belfast.
Lord Justice Weir is conducting a review into more than 50 long-delayed inquests, including the killing by the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1989 of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
Told that the MoD had missed deadlines for disclosing classified papers to the coroners’ courts because of a lack of staff and money, the judge said: “The MoD is not short of money. It’s busy all over the world fighting wars and it’s about to buy some new submarines with nuclear warheads – so it’s not short of money. This is obviously very low on their list of priorities.”
Northern Ireland’s lord chief justice, Sir Declan Morgan, has asked the judge to investigate why the 56 stalled inquests, covering 95 deaths, have failed to be concluded – some of them 45 years after the victims died.
Lord Justice Weir yesterday examined the deaths of seven IRA men in SAS ambushes in the early 1990s and the 1972 shooting of father of six Patrick McVeigh by the British army’s military reaction force (MRF) unit.
The MoD had failed to give papers to the coroner inquiring into the deaths of IRA men Kevin Barry O’Donnell, Seán O’Farrell, Patrick Vincent and Peter Clancy in Clonoe, Co Tyrone, in 1992, a year after it said that it would.
“The MoD have been rather inclined to think they can thumb their nose at directions from the coroner and that they were quite free to abandon the promises they made,” said the judge. The Police Service of Northern Ireland’s Legacy Investigations Branch is investigating allegations the MRF committed numerous random attacks on civilians in the early 1970s.
Demanding that the MoD put more effort into handing over papers to the next of kin, the judge said the investigations were not to be ignored:
“It’s not like buying a new Jeep or getting a new regimental mascot. This is not an option – this is an international obligation on the state,” he said, adding that the MoD claim that it was struggling with cutbacks raised questions about London’s desire to comply with international law.
“You want to avoid any suspicions that this approach is designed to prevent the matter being aired in a public arena, that it’s a deliberate attempt to delay and obfuscate,” he told an MoD lawyer.
The judge said the lack of disclosure by the PSNI in the case of Patrick McVeigh case was disgraceful.
“Not one pick of paper has been given to the next of kin,” he said.