HET chief opposes amnesty
A RETIRED Metropolitan Police commander, Dave Cox comes from an era when police officers were unafraid to speak their mind.
Speaking to the News Letter at the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) headquarters on the outskirts of Lisburn, he gives little indication of being muzzled by press officers or politicians.
The Englishman, who is director of the PSNI unit re-investigating every Troubles' death, he has form on speaking his mind.
In 2005, he broke cover to speak out against the then Labour government's eventually abandoned law to grant an amnesty to on-the-run terrorists.
Last year the veteran detective voiced serious doubts in front of Westminster's Northern Ireland Affairs Committee about the Eames-Bradley plan to give former terrorists' a de facto amnesty in return for information about their past activities.
Speaking from a room on the site where nine teams of detectives comb through evidence, case by case, year by year, Mr Cox is candid about the chances of prosecutions arising from his officers' work.
But he insists that every reasonable chance to uncover fresh evidence is explored.
Sinn Fein is the only political party not to have engaged with the HET, although its attitude appears to be one of fairly quiet indifference, rather than outright hostility.
Asked whether, given how much it would rock the political boat, he would feel constrained from making arrests should evidence against senior political figures such as Martin McGuinness emerge during investigations, he says: "No because it's not our boat, sadly.
"I mean nobody wants to see the peace process collapse around our ears but the fact is this is set up as a police-based response.
"The chips will fall where they may – people have to be accountable for whatever they did in the past.
"We get criticism sometimes that we are perhaps a little bit more focused on cases involving nationalist/republican victims. It isn't actually the case... but the problem we have in terms of presentation is this: if we say ‘This was an absolutely horrific murder, conducted by a ruthless terrorist group’, which we’ve said on several occasions, people say ‘Yeah, and? PIRA were a ruthless terrorist group and we know that.’
“If we say ‘The guy who for 30 years has been described as a gunman didn’t actually have a gun and the soldier accepts it’s just one of those things, that’s news and people will say ‘Blimey goodness, he didn’t have a gun.’”
Mr Cox has not given an interview for about two years, careful not to tread on the toes of the Eames-Bradley group tasked with finding a way to deal with the past.
But now that the controversial group has reported, Mr Cox is fairly damning in his comments about aspects of their work.
Asked about unionist fears that the ‘legacy commission’ proposed by Eames-Bradley would be one-sided by disproportionately focusing on the actions of the security forces who unlike paramilitaries hold extensive documentary evidence, Mr Cox says: “To a degree that’s true.”
Asked about the legacy commission’s concept of trading justice for information from former terrorists, Mr Cox says: “I don’t think it’s necessary.
“I personally would not be up for supporting amnesties and things like that for a whole host of reasons.
“The checks and balances in the system that has evolved over a hundred plus years have arisen for a particular reason – you are entitled to be cautioned before you say anything, for example.
“If there’s no threat or penalty, what would prevent somebody being sent in to confess a whole heap of things to clear the books for other people?
“I think what you’d end up with would be potentially quite a skewed result and that wouldn’t advance either people’s knowledge or understanding of what happened.”
He adds: “I think the current system, for all its flaws, does provide more information for people. It does enable people to ask questions and, as far as possible, get answers.
“Sometimes one of the tough things is that the answers are not necessarily what they want to hear...we can’t find government collusion; we can’t find an agent or this or that.
“I can’t see amnesties being a way forward. They’ve gone as far as they can, I think, with the reduced sentence provisions in the Good Friday Agreement.”
Although Mr Cox says he “doesn’t know” how budget cuts will impact on his work, the Conservative government is clearly supportive of the HET work, with prime minister David Cameron favourably mentioning the HET seven times in the debate after his statement about Bloody Sunday and Owen Paterson has also praised their work.
Compared to the 200 million Saville Report, the HET’s 30 million cost is a prudent value-for-money exercise if it works.
But, however important, politicians know that the money cannot compare to victims’ decades of suffering.
And Mr Cox adds: “If I had to do this again I wouldn’t call it the Historical Enquiries Team, because actually families can find that quite offensive - for them it’s a misnomer to call this ‘historical’.
“This is as real to them today as the day when they lost their loved one 20, 30, 40 years ago.”
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Monday 13 February 2012
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