maguire

I’m not far wrong

Readers of my blog will know that PIRA murdered my parents, James and Ellen Sefton, on 6th June 1990.

I started enquiring into the circumstances in 2002, when it began to dawn on me that all was not as it seemed.

I contacted the PSNI in 2002 who, in terms , told me that the file had been packed away years ago and there was nothing to see. No suspects , no leads, just one of those things….which happened to one of their own…..

I contacted the HET. Same story. ‘We have had access to all intelligence’ there is nothing to see.

I contacted PONI. ‘We have reviewed all intelligence- it has all been made available- nothing to see here’

Then in 2017 I contacted Operation Kenova. I made the pitch that Sean Maguire, now SFIRA director of PR , was involved in the murders and was closely connected to Scappaticci.

This month, after a series of meetings, the Kenova team produced intelligence that had been in possession of the RUC since June 1990.

It raises all sorts of questions as to how the RUC handled intelligence and as to why this intel was suppressed for thirty three years and not acted upon.

It raises issues about cross border cooperation with AGS.

I’m reserving the intel for the moment whilst [hopefully] I receive further and better particulars from Op Kenova, which has been as good as its word about providing victims’ families with new information.

I’ll then be putting the intel into the public domain and inviting you to consider it.

Some time ago I wrote a piece called ‘Money talks’ -you can find it on my blog. Some ex-RUC officers were outraged by it. When you finally see what I know you will have an understanding of how much was suppressed and left undone by James’ colleagues , who went on to have luxurious retirements.

The message to all of you who have lost loved ones in the ‘Troubles’ is simple.

Never give up. The State will always lie to you. The State has no honour. The State has no loyalty. The Judiciary is in the pocket of the State.

Some years ago Geoffrey Miller, a County Court judge, said that I was “tilting at windmills”.

Some windmills- some tilting ,Geoffrey……

Loughinisland, the strange case of K

Who is person K, referred to in the PONI report ?

His family live between Clough and Dundrum. He is related to Delbert Watson who was convicted of the murder of Jack Kielty in Dundrum in January 1988. Also convicted of that murder were David Curlett and William Bell, the driver of the getaway car. Doreen Watson, whose husband had been murdered by the IRA , sister of Delbert , was convicted of manslaughter.

K , according to Maguire, is a heavily traced terrorist. He has been linked to a conspiracy to murder Peter McCarthy  and the attempted murder of John Henry Smyth. He is alleged to have been involved in the murder of Peter McCormack in Kilcoo on 19 November 1992.

Police told Maguire that he was part of a UVF unit.

Dear Reader, you might pause here to wonder, if the RUC Special Branch, inter alia , was involved in collusion with terrorists, why it would divulge this information to the PONI. I leave that with you.

K and others were identified by Special Branch  to the Loughinisland MIT on the morning after the murders, as potential suspects.

K was arrested and interviewed several times on 18 July 1994. He provided an alibi for the time of the shootings. He said that he was in the Clough Inn with his girlfriend.

This alibi was not properly investigated, says Maguire . It is hard to see what the police could have done , two years later, to establish the truth of the alibi.

Maguire makes a mistake when he says at paragraph 7.169 that K’s hair sample was obtained and found to be a ‘microscopic match ‘ to a hair recovered from a holdall. The bag had not been found at this point.

The holdall was  not found until  4 August 1994. A hair found therein was examined and K was arrested again on 22 August  and the match was made. Caution should be exercised re hair matching after the FBI scandal regarding the science of hair matching.

However, police had a holdall in which they had found, inter alia,  the hair and some overalls. The overalls showed a link with the seats of a Triumph Acclaim car found in a field and bearing a resemblance to the getaway car. Close by was found the VZ58 rifle which was the murder weapon. Fibres from the rifle matched fibres recovered from the Triumph Acclaim.

It is tolerably clear that the Acclaim was the getaway car.

Also, found on a roadway , was a blanket. It has not been properly examined.

I do not know if K has a criminal record, or other matters which might be used as bad character.

I do not know if the hair provided DNA evidence to link K to the bag.

In any event, it is hard to understand why K has not been charged in connection with the murders.

Maguire provides no explanation.

Additionally he makes no case that K was in any way protected, especially by Special Branch. If there was “collusion” as widely defined by Maguire , one might have expected Special Branch to have with held information in respect of K. Instead, the morning after the murders, they tell the MIT about K. K is , one might have thought, a prime suspect.

Maguire makes no criticism of the rigour of the initial investigation.

What is always absent from these reports is the general context.

Viewed as a homicide in leafy Surrey, I’m sure there are points to be made. Northern Ireland was a different environment, with the police overwhelmed by terrorist  crime.

But the question remains.

Who is K and is he a State agent?

That, more than grandstanding by Maguire , would be a fact that the relatives of Loughinisland would prefer to know.