Is truth now the closest victims will get to justice?
As the Saville Report re-opens debate about discovering the truth of the Troubles, SAM McBRIDE examines the arguments for and against a 'truth commission'
THE comprehensive Saville inquiry has prompted many to again consider the merits of a 'truth commission'.
The Eames-Bradley report, discredited by unionists, endorsed the concept as an "information recovery" process, recognising that describing its outcome as 'truth' would be optimistic.
While that recommendation had seemingly fallen by the wayside due to the accompanying Eames-Bradley call for the relatives of dead terrorists to be paid the same compensation as their victims, it has never been formally rejected by the NIO in the way which it ruled out the 'recognition payments'.
The News Letter understands that the Victims Commission - now minus Mike Nesbitt who has joined the Ulster Unionists - will within days publish its response to the Eames-Bradley call for a type of truth commission.
But, aside from the fact that such a commission would finally extinguish any hope of seeing justice served on perpetrators of violence, the biggest downside of such a process is that it has the potential to be hugely one-sided.
Saville was fairly clear in his findings against the soldiers on Bloody Sunday, something made easier for him to do by their identities being known, the military and political chain-of-command being publicly available and the state retaining substantial records of what transpired that day.
None of those things were in place on the terrorist side, and, even if Martin McGuinness had co-operated with the inquiry, Saville had very limited concrete information on his actions that day.
In the wake of Saville, Lord Eames himself has already attempted to lay the ground for resurrecting his report's call for a 'legacy commission', saying that it is "more relevant than ever".
The former secretary of state Shaun Woodward has also called for a "truth recovery" process to be set up.
And, more surprisingly, and certainly less explicitly, First Minister Peter Robinson appeared on Wednesday night to endorse a process not entirely dissimilar from that suggested by Eames-Bradley.
"I strongly believe the best way of dealing with the past is to have a public record where all of those who are victims are able to put on the record their story so that others who wish to research it can read it," he said.
"I think there is a requirement from all paramilitaries to 'fess up" and indicate the roles they have played and that in itself can give closure to many."
Mr Robinson did not spell out that there would be no more police inquiries or prosecutions for Troubles' atrocities, but there was scant encouragement for those who still harbour hopes of seeing their loved one's killers in the dock.
The DUP leader said of Saville's outcome: "I really do think that closure must mean closure," and added that "we should close the book and move on".
But, while Mr Robinson did not say so, the logical conclusion of not investigating whether prosecutions should be taken against soldiers who wrongly killed innocent people on Bloody Sunday is that investigations should not be opened and prosecutions should not be taken against IRA men who massacred dozens of people in attrocities such as Bloody Friday, Warrenpoint, Enniskillen or Darkley.
Former Victims Commissioner Mike Nesbitt says that while the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) - which is investigating every unsolved Troubles murder - is looking for evidential leads which could end in court cases, "very, very, very few of those investigations will lead to any sort of prosecution" because of the passage of time.
"Eames-Bradley said that if people were going into a process of information recovery they were waiving their right to the state prosecuting somebody.
"It seemed to me - although they were never explicit about this - that victims were also having to waive their right to a civil action, otherwise why would (paramilitaries) participate?"
He says that before politicians or quangos pronounce on what should happen there should be a formal consultation with Troubles victims about what they want, recognising that "victims are not a homogenous group - they want different things".
And, he adds, at present families have the right not to participate in HET investigations, but do not have the power to stop them.
"If you are going to have this thing to record everything that happened, there will be families that will find that hurtful and against their wishes.
"And the big danger is that the state and the agents of the state are consistently painted as villains in any process because there is more information on what they did.
"In the 80s, when I was doing Good Morning Ulster, that was one of the constant things - people were calling for inquiries into things such as shoot-to-kill but not for inquiries into the IRA because while what the IRA did was totally wrong, totally illegal, it was obvious and what's to investigate other than to take a prosecution?"
Writing in today's News Letter, the Presbyterian moderator, the Rev Dr Norman Hamilton argues that it would be "liberating" for victims to have their stories heard but cautions that "an extensive judicial or forensic framework would not be the best way forward".
Any truth process would face the huge obstacle of perpetrators' vested interest in explaining away their actions. In cases so barbaric that explanations would be discredited, the danger would be that no one came forward to admit the crime.
Saville all but said that both Martin McGuinness and some of the soldiers lied when giving evidence to his inquiry.
There seem few reasons to believe that protagonists testifying before a 'truth recovery' panel would be more honest.
While some will want to, as they would see it, absolve themselves of their terrible actions by publicly confessing, others would no doubt be keen to use such a platform to re-write the historical account of what took place.
FAIR director Willie Frazer probably echoes the views of many IRA victims when he says that a 'truth recovery' process would never work because terrorists would stay outside it.
"Gerry Adams will never come forward and tell us what he did – he can't even admit that he was in the IRA," he says.
And the victims' campaigner believes that paramilitaries' atrocities are too grim to allow them to own up, arguing that while republican paramilitaries may own up to killing policemen or soldiers and loyalist terrorists may accept responsibility for killing IRA members, the "shame" of some atrocities is such that they can never be admitted.
"Do people honestly believe that people in the IRA will say 'We kidnapped William Meaklin, brutally tortured and killed him and dumped his body?
"Or what type of man can stand up and say 'I went in and murdered a 65-year-old man, cut his throat, stabbed him 57 times, hung him upside down from a tree and boobytrapped his body as a bomb?
"The person who owned up to that, his own family would probably disown him."
No one has convincing answers about the way forward for Troubles' victims.
But it will become increasingly difficult to sustain the current absence of any process to understand at least some of the truth of the Troubles before perpetrators and victims die and the chance is forever lost.
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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