This is the last article you can read this month
You can read more article this month
You can read more articles this month
Sorry your limit is up for this month
Reset on:
Please help support the Morning Star by subscribing here
THE police’s failure to investigate state collusion with a loyalist death squad in Northern Ireland was inconsistent with its human rights obligations, a judge ruled yesterday.
The independent Historic Enquiries Team (HET) — set up in 2006 — had partially completed a probe into the activities of the Glenanne gang before its work was halted in 2014 by Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) commanders.
Before it was axed, the HET had examined individual murders committed by the gang but had not undertaken an overarching thematic review of the collusion allegations.
Delivering judgement at Belfast High Court, Judge Seamus Treacy found that changes made by the PSNI to how it investigated historic cases were “fundamentally inconsistent” with its obligations in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Glenanne gang was a unit of the Ulster Volunteer Force that has been blamed for around 130 sectarian murders during the 1970s and 1980s.
The judicial review into the investigation’s termination was taken by the family of Patrick Barnard, who was killed in a bomb blast in Dungannon in 1976.
