William Matchett: Coagh ambush on IRA death squad in 1991 made people safer and brought peace closer

Special Branch got wind of the attack. Elite units were deployed.

Creeping into Coagh was a version of the Shankill Butchers only with assault rifles, triple the kills and active three times longer.

Driving, Tony Doris.

Gripping AK47s, Michael ‘Peter’ Ryan and Lawrence McNally.

The decoy narrowly escaped.

Soldier G shot dead both hitmen. Soldier B shot dead Doris.

Inquest verdict – three terrorists attempted murder and for each, the use of lethal force was justified.

Had the Provisional IRA leased Ryan and McNally as a pair of hitmen to the Mexican ‘Sinaloa’ drugs and crime cartel, it would have made a fortune.

They grew up together in Tyrone. Ryan is credited with 30 kills by 1980 and was charged with two.

In 1976 in Dungannon, he murdered a school cross patrolman, firing three shots into the back of his head at close range.

Joseph Scott was helping kids cross a busy road. He was a part-time police officer.

In Omagh,1979, Ryan ordered a “sausage supper and fish supper” off a 13-year-old boy in a chip van.

He paid the lad and cracked a word or two in waiting for the food. When it arrived, he shot to death his father James Fowler.

Ryan knew the boy was James’ son. That James left the UDR a year earlier was not enough, he and his family had to leave the land.

Tyrone Provos didn’t want a Prod about the place.

Victims killed in front of kids was Ryan’s modus operandi.

In 1980, such was the danger associated with Ryan, the SAS did the routine arrest. If it was the “dirty war” the media claim, Ryan died in 1980. Within months he escaped prison.

County Monaghan was the new home. McNally moved down, too. The pair nestled under Provisional IRA leader Jim “The Executioner” Lynagh and reportedly were in his big gang at the 1981 Tynan atrocity that left Sir Norman Stronge and his son James dead, and their home in ashes.

It was halcyon days for the fearsome East Tyrone and Monaghan PIRA, the most bigoted PIRA brigade of them all.

McNally stood trial with Lynagh and a third notorious gunman for the murder of Henry Livingstone in 1980 near Tynan.

As the former UDR part-time soldier fed cattle, two bursts of gunfire were heard.

Despite compelling forensic evidence and Royal Ulster Constabulary officers testifying in an Irish court, no prosecutions. The acquittals were controversial. Charlie Haughey was taoiseach and not one to tolerate RUC officers being key to convicting Irish republicans in the Republic. Charlie was known for perverting justice.

For 11 years, Ryan and McNally operated with impunity out of Monaghan.

At 22, Doris was roughly half the age of the AK47-wielding duo, keen to increase a joint death tally of 60, a conservative estimate.

Sectarian violence plagued Tyrone with Ryan and McNally prominent. Both rifles recently accounted for four fatalities in the area, all Protestants. Three had no connections to the security forces.

The one that had was Derek Ferguson. He had just joined the part-time UDR. Before executing him, a pair of gunmen goaded two of his kids. The boys ended up splattered in their father’s blood.

Of the four murders, Provo propaganda lied that it was either an accident, or the victim was a loyalist terrorist, in the process of praising the perpetrators. This was the norm.

Legacy is severely skewed against the state. Hence, no family plunged into grief by Ryan and McNally got the multi-million-pound Article 2 inquest they and Doris just enjoyed.

Connectedly, try to name a legacy body or broadcaster over the last 25 years praising the nous or bravery of elite forces pitted against top terrorists, and you’ll struggle.

Meanwhile, Sinn Fein sells the “no alternative” to bona fide serial killers like Ryan and McNally in highly effective sanitisation of the Provisional IRA, proving popular with young Catholic voters. Appeasing faceless republican leaders who created and directed death squads like the PIRA one at Coagh was the priority.

Following the recent inquest verdict, that use of lethal force by SAS soldiers in Coagh was justified, no media cut to the families of Scott, Fowler, Stronge, Livingstone, Ferguson.

The forgotten victims got justice in Hanover Square in 1991, not at the 2024 inquest.

The Coagh reality is simple, and it is this.

After, the people were safer, and peace was closer.

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William Matchett is author of Secret Victory: The Intelligence War that Beat the IRA