chief constable

PSNI and forensics

My parents were killed by an under car booby trap bomb [UCBT], the sort of device that cowards use, [directed by Martin McGuinness], in the “war” where they couldn’t lawfully be shot, because it wasn’t a war, if you see what I mean.

I was told by ACC Harris that fifteen UCBTs were recovered intact. He informed me that as a result of a SCRT review, “a senior scientist has concluded that although the bombs were similar in their make up , they had subtle differences and could not be attributed to a single bomb maker.”

I asked  Forensic Science Northern Ireland for a copy of the report. They replied, on 12 November:

“FSNI examined a number of devices during the period 1990 to 1992 however these were not correlated into any single report that we hold or have access to in our files”.

I wrote a FOI request to the police on the same day, asking

1. When the conclusion was reached by the “senior scientist”.

2. The name of the “senior scientist”.

3. The organisation for whom the “senior scientist” worked.

I also asked for a copy of the report which provided the basis for ACC Harris’s assertion

The PSNI say that “a response should be sent to you within twenty working days. Twenty eight working days later there is no reply, and no response to a follow up email to them. I am hoping,  that this assertion by ACC Harris has more foundation than his statement about Ed Moloney.

PSNI “liars” part II

Senior Assistant Director Stephen Herron of the Public Prosecution Service also spoke to the police about this matter. Here is what he recounted to me in his letter of 28th November.

“it has been confirmed by ACC Kerr that with the exception of open source reference material  [Mr Maloney’s book…] which directly implicates Mr McGuinness, there is no evidential basis or intelligence available to link him with the murder of your parents.

As has been noted in previous correspondence you received from PSNI, the contributions to the book are anonymous and cannot be verified or corroborated for factual accuracy. Mr Moloney has previously been spoken to by police and was unwilling to disclose the identity of his sources”

Hopefully the PPS will also seek an explanation.

Stand by for the mystery of the missing forensic report…..

PSNI “liars”

Readers may know that on more than one occasion I asked the police to investigate McGuinness’s part in the murder of my parents and the allegations made by Ed Moloney, in his book, ” A secret History of the IRA”, page 347.

Here is what ACC Harris [now DCC Harris] wrote to me on 11 August 2104:

“The author Ed Moloney has previously been spoken to and is unwilling to disclose the identity of his sources”.

Here is what Ed Moloney told me today, when I put Harris’s version to him:

“No-one from the RUC or PSNI has ever approached me about anything I wrote in ‘secret history’ and certainly not about your parents’ terrible deaths…if they are telling you that , they are lying to you and you have my permission to say so in whatever arena you choose”

I will be writing to the Chief Constable, seeking an explanation and possibly taking the matter further, depending on his answer. So much for ACC Kerr telling the PPS that my parents’  case had been thoroughly investigated.

Other inconsistencies are emerging in  information supplied by senior officers and this will be the subject of future blogs.

Where would we be without the opportunity to put these matters in the public domain , by blogging?

I say this because the Bar Council avidly reads my blogs!

Denis Donaldson, an imaginary conversation?

January 1990

Handler: “Denis , the big bosses want an update. Who is on the Army Council at present?

Denis: “Gerry, Pat Doherty, head of intelligence; Joe Cahill, Martin McGuinness, Kevin McKenna, Mickey McKevitt and Slab.”

Handler: “Great, and is McGuinness still head of Northern Command?”

Denis:”Of course”

In Policing the Shadows, by Holland and Phoenix, a book written posthumously about Ian Phoenix, who was in RUC Special Branch, the authors state at page 215: “most of the information gathered on the paramilitaries and their links lay idle in police files and was never exploited”

Moral of the story: a succession of Chief Constables ignored [or were instructed to ignore] the activities of PIRA senior figures because of the “peace process”. Alternatively, McGuinness was “the Fisherman” a tout and therefore untouchable. As one commentator has said, why sacrifice Donaldson at the time of the Stormont arrests unless the State had higher placed informants?

McGuinness and others, the need to prosecute

When a “volunteer” attaches a bomb below a retired policeman’s car in Belfast, he [or she] is the last person in a chain that stretches back to PIRA  Northern Command and perhaps beyond. Volunteers did not go out and plant bombs on a whim. The police officer will have been targeted. The area will have been scouted and his movements monitored. Other Republicans, such as staff in hospitals, may have given vital information. The proposal to kill X will then be put up the chain and approved by the head of Northern Command, in 1990, McGuinness. The under car booby trap bomb will be made by one of a small group of people and authorisation given for it to be delivered to the active service unit who will be responsible for going out and placing it.

Each person in the chain is complicit in the eventual murder.

I have asked the Chief Constable a series of questions relating to the above scenario. So far he has declined to give me any meaningful  answers.

Soon I will set out the questions and readers may judge for themselves.

Too many victims have been fobbed off by the RUC, PSNI and HET with the excuse that there are “no evidential opportunities”. It all depends on where you look.