'Meet relatives' McGuinness is urged
MARTIN McGuinness has been challenged to speak with the relatives of the Claudy bombing victims after revealing he met the priest suspected of the 1972 atrocity shortly before he died.
The deputy first minister confirmed he spoke with Father James Chesney about the priest's support for a united Ireland - but the no-warning car bomb attack which killed nine people was never mentioned in their conversation.
The Sinn Fein MP, widely assumed to be regarded as a senior IRA commander in the area at the time, also maintained that the Derry brigade of the IRA had no "hand, act or part" in Claudy.
Last month, a report by the police ombudsman Al Hutchinson claimed that senior police officers, the Catholic Church and the Government were involved in a cover-up, protected the rogue cleric from even being questioned about the bombings.
Father Chesney was transferred to another parish across the Irish border in Co Donegal. He died in 1982.
Mr McGuinness said: "I never knew Father Chesney before Claudy. I never knew Father Chesney for many years after the bombing.
"I was asked, whenever I was told that Father Chesney was dying, I was told he was a republican sympathiser, would I go and see him and meet with him in Co Donegal.
"I did that. There was no mention whatsoever of the Claudy bomb. During the course of that, he just talked about his support for a united Ireland."
Asked if he had any information specifically about Claudy, Mr McGuinness said: "The Derry brigade of the IRA on a number of occasions since the Claudy bomb said they had no hand, act or part in it. I absolutely believe that."
Reacting to the admission by the deputy first minister, Mary Hamilton, who suffered shrapnel injuries in the terrorist attack, said the onus was now on Mr McGuinness to "meet the Claudy families, talk to them and answer their questions."
"If he knows that the Derry brigade of the IRA did not do it, then maybe he knows who did carry it out," she told the News Letter.
"I still feel that Martin McGuinness and all the other leaders need to come and meet the families. The church, the state and the police need to get around a table to help the relatives."
The Ulster Unionist councillor, who has sent a formal letter to the prime minister calling for an inquiry into the bombings, admitted she found it hard to believe the priest did not divulge relevant information to Mr McGuinness.
"I am quite sure if Chesney was a dying man, as Mr McGuinness claims, then I am sure he probably confessed to him."
Mark Eakin, whose eight-year-old sister Kathyrn was the youngest victim of the bombings, admitted he would welcome a face-to-face meeting with the deputy first minister.
"I would have no problem sitting in a meeting with him," he said.
"It is hard to believe that he (McGuinness) or the provisional IRA did not know who is responsible for it (Claudy). It is nearly as the government saying, they didn't know. It is all very convenient."
He added: "Having nothing to do with it and knowing about it are two different things."
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Sunday 27 May 2012
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