The disclosure that a suspect in the murder and disappearance of Gareth O’Connor mistakenly received an “on the run” letter assuring him he was not being sought for any criminal offences must cause great distress to the O’Connor family.
It also has the potential to cause some distress to the relationship between the DUP and Sinn Fein and to Northern Ireland politics generally at a time when politics appeared to be returning to a reasonable level of stability after the Christmas Stormont House Agreement.
Jim Allister, leader of the Traditional Unionist Voice party, posed the main and obvious question: "Isn't it telling that Gerry Kelly assures the grieving family the IRA was not involved in the O'Connor murder and then delivers an OTR letter to the IRA suspect?"
A similar point was made at the Armagh inquest on Monday into the 2003 murder and disappearance of Mr O'Connor. Gerry McAlinden, QC, lawyer for the coroner John Leckey described Sinn Féin Assembly member Mr Kelly's role as a "matter of public concern".
“It’s something that will have to be looked at in due course in terms of the investigation of this matter,” he added.
Gerry Kelly however was insistent that while his name may have been on the OTR letter in relation to the suspect in the Gareth O’Connor murder that as the main Sinn Féin go-between for the overall scheme his name was on most of these letters which went to about 200 republicans. He said he had no idea what any of the OTR letter recipients might have been wanted for.
“There was never any discussion about what they might (be) on the run for or not on the run for,” he said.
Gareth O’Connor is not on the list of the disappeared the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains deals with because he went missing from south Armagh in 2003. That was five years after the April 1998 Belfast Agreement, which is the cut-off date for the work of the commission.
But for all the families he is regarded as one of the Disappeared. He was 24 when he went missing. He was stopped in south Armagh in May 2003 when he was on his way to Dundalk Garda station to sign as part of his bail conditions on charges of Real IRA membership.
His family was convinced that the Provisional IRA abducted him. Indeed, as the inquest heard, his father Mark O’Connor contacted Gerry Kelly in the days after he went missing. He also made statements blaming the IRA for his son’s disappearance.
Mr Kelly contacted him to say he believed the IRA when it said it was not involved in Gareth O’Connor’s disappearance. Two years later Mr O’Connor’s decomposed body was recovered from a car in Newry Canal.
Kelly ‘conduit’
And now following Monday’s inquest it rather startlingly emerged that Gerry Kelly was the “conduit” for handing over the “on the run” letter to a suspect in the murder of Mr O’Connor.
What happens to that suspect now will be for the lawyers and police and possibly a judge to try to resolve. A big question here is will the suspect's OTR letter make it impossible for the PSNI to try to prosecute him, just as early last year the Hyde Park bombing case against John Downey collapsed because he too was mistakenly issued with an OTR letter.
It also raises questions about how the NIO and the police operated the scheme. As Mr Allister said: “That someone wanted in connection with such a recent murder received one of the letters suggests that the PSNI and Northern Ireland Office issued them without even the most elementary checks.”
It also appears based on what lawyer Mr McAlinden said at the inquest – which is now postponed pending a new criminal investigation – that as part of that process Mr Kelly will be asked to elaborate on the explanation he provided at Stormont on Monday evening.
Still, politically matters could be a lot worse. Had this erupted ahead of or during the Stormont House Agreement talks it might have scuppered any prospect of a deal.
So far, however, most political reaction, while critical of Sinn Féin, the PSNI and the NIO, has been reasonably tempered. But with the OTRs you just never know for sure what fiasco might be coming next.
