belfast news letter

My life in a banana republic: December

Jambo Jambo!

My lodgings in the Biblical Lands of Belfast are cold. My friend , Dingle, says that I will be ‘foundered’. I have not encountered this word before.

To warm up I walked into the City. There are villages springing up. One is by the Great Hall of the City Fathers, just where there are many flegs on a Saturday. Many countries have sent aid in the form of kitchens. The citizens are so hungry that they come from many miles and spend days on the M1 to eat at these kitchens.

Another village is to be found near the Great White Church, outside of which a man in black begs for alms , just like in Morocco. This other village is called Lidl Land and has comestibles from many poor countries. Really poor people buy things here.

Belfast is a kaleidoscope!

Tomorrow a Christian Pastor is to be put on trial for Insulting Islam. It is perplexing that 3,000 people have been murdered and nobody has been put on trial by the Great Prosecutor [who is really small in person] but he chooses to put a 75 year old man on a Show Trial. Perhaps the Grand Mufti asked him to do so. [There is great corruption in this place]. Tomorrow there will be a Great Gathering at the place of Trial and his Brothers and Sisters will pray and sing hymns. If he were in a place where ISIS rules he would already be hanging off the great gates of the Royal Courts of Justice, where Dec lives.

Also, it is interesting that the Great Province will have a new Ruler! My friend Dingle [who has inside information] says that the new Ruler will be a woman. Women , like in Africa, are not valued here. Nobody cares for their health when with child. In my cousin’s country such a Ruler is called Ntfombi, which means ‘Great She Elephant’. This not disrespectful but a great accolade.

Soon my classes will finish for this term. However Marxists are occupying University buildings because they object to the University burning coal.

Perhaps if I burned coal I would not be Foundered!

Jambo Jambo.

The past

 

My attention turns towards Christmas Past. Who can avoid such stuff?

Thousands contemplate the empty place at the table , the gift not bought.

“the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” comes to all our doors.

Christmas is especially burdensome for those who have lost relatives or friends at the hands of terrorists. Much worse again if the crime was committed by the State.

As time moves on ,those OxBridge boys and girls in Whitehall look for ever more cunning ways to disengage GB  from the disaster which is Northern Ireland.

The Army is perplexed as  to why its squaddies might be prosecuted. I’d be happier if an officer or two was in the frame but what do you think is the likelihood of that?

Here, George Hamilton, the somewhat sturdy leader of the Constabulary calls the murders of my parents, in June 1990, a ” legacy issue”. Extraordinary for a policeman. More and more as he manoeuvres at the behest of his paymasters [those OxBridge ones again]  he wants nothing more to do with old crimes.

Only in the fantasy world of Northern Ireland would the most senior police officer suggest such a course.He is pretending that this all came as a terrible shock when he became Chief Constable. What a jolly jape!

Nothing to do with me Guv!

But there is worse.

In November 2015 Pablo de Grieff , the UN rapporteur on transitional justice , published a preliminary report on us.

He says that there are four pillars in a transitional justice policy;  truth , justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence.

On all of these the Northern Ireland vehicle is running on empty.

During his ten day visit he met [apparently] with a wide range of people. It didn’t take him long to spot our segregated education system as being a major problem.

Nor did the Spooks pass him by. Here is what he said about that:

“Although everyone must acknowledge the significance of national security concerns, it must also be acknowledged that particularly in the days we are living in , it is easy to use ‘national security’ as a blanket term.”

For those who have been bereaved, the sting is in the tail.

He says: “the issue of reparations for victims will need to be tacked in a serious and systematic way.  Here it may be important to bear in mind the many international experiences that have established reparations programmes on the basis of broad acknowledgement of responsibility distinct from acknowledgements of criminal guilt.”

In this jurisdiction no organisation has remotely come near  this standard.

It is facile and useless to expect the Northern Ireland Executive might so do. Might our Westminster MPs? Might the Victims’ Commissioner?

Barra and George

Barra McGrory has been in post since 2011. Time enough , you might think, to get the basics right.

Let’s look at how his team is doing on disclosure.

Disclosure,  Dear Reader is an obligation placed on the prosecution to give to the defence any material [statements, forensics etc.] that might be considered capable of undermining the case for the prosecution or of assisting the case for the accused. In other words the prosecution cannot hide evidence which does not suit their case.

This month,  Criminal Justice Inspection NI published a report into the quality of police files.

It found that “disclosure was dealt with satisfactorily by police in only 23% of Crown Court cases. This is unacceptable”.

In his report Brendan McGuigan , Chief Inspector of Criminal Justice, listed the consequences of disclosure obligations not being followed. See para 3.41. Astonishingly, he failed to mention the most important risk of all, that an innocent man might be convicted.

Imagine that you are wrongly accused of shoplifting. Your defence is that you were not in the shop at the time, you were walking in the local  park. The police fail to disclose that they took a statement from a man who  recognised you , walking a dog.

You are convicted.

The issue of disclosure has featured in many  appeals and  in references by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. It is not new and it is not rocket science and the subsequent acquittals or quashings of conviction may only be the tip of the iceberg.

You might be tempted to say ‘ now that it has been highlighted I’m sure George and Barra will fix it’.

Well, in April 2013 the Inspector found that the PPS records of continuing disclosure to defence teams were “not good” and some compliances were “very poor”.

So what did Barra say about that?

He said ” I am confident that the PPS can rise to the challenges highlighted”.

Well Barra, as they say in Belfast has not “riz” at all. This despite publicly criticising PSNI files in March 2012 , only four months into the job, in an effort to divert attention away from his underachieving and dysfunctional Service.

The lesson?  Try not to be prosecuted in the Crown Court in Northern Ireland. It is a dangerous place for defendants.

All of this has received little coverage in a media obsessed with sensation.

More disturbingly, unless I have missed it ,the Criminal Bar Association [with justice  as its watchword],  has not commented on this limp  performance by Barra and George.

Barra would serve justice better by putting his head down and delivering a first class prosecution system, instead of sound bites.

Villiers’ rubber stamp

So the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland wants an assessment of paramilitary activity.

Where to turn?

To MI5/PSNI of course, silly girl.

But no. Let’s have three Wise Persons. They will compile a report and all will be happy.

So.

MI5/PSNI compile a report.

It is given to the Wise Persons, only one of whom has any experience of terrorism, crime or naughty people.

They read it, meet the authors, probe the authors, ask them for a bit more info and declare themselves happy.

Et voila! The report of the experts, the PSNI/MI5 is deemed good and accepted lock , stock and [missing]barrels.

Not a mention of Semtex.

Am I mad?

Answers on a postcard…

An open letter to Emma Pengelly

I had thought to give you some time to settle into your new role.

Not cognisant with the nuances of DUP South  Belfast, I thought it best to let you bed down and make a fist of it.

Now I read that you want to trade punches with Jim Allister. You, who have  no mandate. You who have until lately, been earning in excess of £90,000. You , who had a completely unaccountable role. Jim Allister has been selected by the people. You have not and might be a little modest regarding that.

You, who together with your [under achieving]  permanent secretary husband , have been trousering over £200,000 per annum.

You want to criticise the Bar for its earnings. Well, they don’t steal the money and they have to be selected , unlike your role as a SpAd.

How do you think the people of South Belfast regard you?

A blow in , because, for whatever reason you were favoured by Peter Robinson, as having , according to the press, been a comfort to him during the Iris crisis.

Worse than a blow in, a well heeled one. How do you justify your combined income, ten times or more the income of a family in South Belfast?

I hope they tip you out at the election.

Invest NI Money before principles

In 2014 Invest NI led a delegation to Libya while that country refused to compensate victims for the harm caused by their supply of Semtex to PIRA.

Of course, it was a delegation approved by the DUP and particularly by Arlene Foster, who should know , more than most , what Gadafy did here.

It raises the question ,posed most remarkably by Jamie Bryson, does this state exist for the aggrandisement of the few at the expense of the many?

What does the DUP really stand for? Corruption, fracking, land grabbing , planning scams, sexual misdemeanours, anti-gay angst, queer sects and more?

Noel Johnston, of Invest NI said “Libya is becoming an important place for our companies.” How interesting for those whose family members are dead, maimed or crippled at their hands.

Hiding in plain sight

Aren’t we missing something, Dear Reader?

During the vexed times when Sinn Fein/IRA were negotiating with Blair and matters such as decommissioning, or the lack of it, on-the-runs and Royal Pardons were being discussed there was a class of person for whom there was a difficulty. The murderer  such as Martin McGuinness or Brian Gillen, who had not been convicted. If you had a conviction, a Royal Pardon solved it. If you were outside Northern Ireland you got a letter. What to do with the rest? Given the level of detailed negotiation and subsequent events, there must , at least , have been an understanding about their future.

Try this. Unless the participants  commit a further offence, HMG will ensure that nobody will be prosecuted for a crime committed prior to the GFA. Should the PSNI arrest, charge and/or report someone on the list for an offence pre-GFA , HMG will ensure that , even if there is evidence which passes the test for prosecution, the prosecuting authority will be advised that prosecution is not in the public interest.

The legal basis for this is the Shawcross Doctrine. The executive can overrule the law officers in certain circumstances. Originally , regard had to be given to “the effect which a prosecution successful or unsuccessful as the case may be would have on public morale or order”.

Dominic Grieve also included ” where necessary to safeguard national security”.

Does this explain the paralysis re Gerry Adams, the dropping of a case against McGuinness in the 1980s, the disappearance of the file in Operation Taurus and the remarks of the investigators into the Enniskillen bomb? Does it explain the shock articulated by McGuinness when Adams was arrested and the mention of dark forces. Does it explain Bobby Storey’s guldering on a west Belfast platform? [ the caterpillar, before he was the butterfly]

Prosecutions are going nowhere, unless it is now in the public interest to let them.

Is it?

QUB Human Rights Centre

For as long as I have been a lawyer, QUB lawyers have displayed bias against the unionist and Protestant community.

No surprise then that Brice Dickson and Luke Moffett’s submission to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee urges them not to allow me to have access to the compensation I have sought for twenty five years , without any assistance from them. Read paragraph 14 of their submission.

Is it any wonder that people like Dickson are despised by loyalists?

In thirty years at the Bar I displayed more respect for human rights than Dickson and his sidekick could ever command.

Unsurprisingly , nobody from this taxpayer funded ‘centre’ ever contacted me to discuss the issues.

Libya, Semtex , PIRA and the duplicitous British Government

The regular readers of my blog will know that I have a personal interest in the craven behaviour of the British Government in relation to compensation for the PIRA use of Semtex.

There will be more of this in the coming weeks because the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee has promised to conduct an investigation into why every other nationality received compensation except holders of a United Kingdom passport.

It might interest readers, in the meantime, to ponder this statement.

On 11th September 2008, Gordon Brown [surely the worst prime minister since Spencer Perceval] said, in a letter to my lawyers; “Libya has answered questions about its involvement with the IRA to the satisfaction of the UK government”.

So there you have it. Libya supplied tons of arms, ammunition and explosives to the IRA. Hundreds of people were killed but the UK Government is satisfied.

Of course, at this point Blair had done his deals and UK firms were flocking to Libya. So much for the Paddies…..

Human rights in the summer

There is a cartoon of a young lawyer , being interviewed by three American heavyweight partners.

“We practise law for the money, Gene, if you can think of a better reason, let us know”, says the chairman.

It may well be the purest of motives but, having heard little about access to justice from the profession these last six weeks, I wondered how citizens were coping.

Were they able to plead that the fat cats were in their second homes [Banus, Portugal, Donegal or the Port] and would be back soon?

It strikes me, as a retired Non-Human-Rights-Lawyer, that the access to justice argument only surfaces in times of Legal National Emergency. That is to say , a further reduction in fees.

Perhaps I’m unduly sceptical. Well, let me quote from an article written by Professor Kieran McEvoy in 2011.

“Internment suspects were entitled to be represented by a solicitor and counsel of choice… the remuneration was quite substantial for the time – a joint fee of £250-£300 for solicitor and counsel.Although groups of lawyers periodically threatened to withdraw their services, in practice the Northern Irish legal profession cooperated in the system of hearings…It is hard to quibble with the conclusion of Boyle et al [in 1975]  that the legal profession’s decision to continue to provide legal services was in part due to the lawyers’ genuine desire to assist their clients and …also in part due to the very substantial remuneration which had been provided.”

As clients on the Shankill and Falls often observe about lawyers: ‘plus ca change’.