Brother of IRA victim says news that the RUC linked Co Tyrone death squad to 43 killings feels 'unreal'

The claim is contained in a court judgement concerning an ongoing inquest into the deaths of three IRA members - Michael James ‘Peter’ Ryan (37), Anthony Patrick Doris (21), Laurence McNally (38) - who were found in a hijacked car with rifles when they were shot in 1991.

Doris was the cousin of Sinn Fein's regional leader, Michelle O'Neill.

It is thought the trio were on their way to kill a UDR soldier when the Army shot them dead in what has come to be known as the Coagh ambush.

The coroners courts in Northern Ireland are currently re-hashing an investigation into their deaths.

Wilbert Dallas, now aged 62 and living on the outskirts of Coagh, is convinced that at least two of the dead IRA men (Ryan and McNally) were behind a drive-by shooting in the village in 1989 which killed his brother Leslie, alongside two other Protestant civilians, Ernest Rankin and Austin Nelson.

Responding to news that RUC intelligence at the time linked the same IRA unit to some 43 killings, Mr Dallas told the News Letter: “It's unreal, coming now to hear this. We knew they'd a big number, but we never thought a total of 43."

WHAT IS THE SOURCE OF THE CLAIM?:

The claim of a 43-strong death toll emerged as a result of a court dispute surrounding the new inquest into the IRA men’s deaths.

The coroner in charge of the inquest had wanted student who once interviewed a pair of RUC men about the ambush to disclose the identities of the two policemen, but the student was reluctant to do so.

Mr Justice Humphreys has now ordered that the policemen's names should indeed be disclosed to the court (but not neccesarily publicly), and his official judgement contains remarkable snippets from those interviews with the RUC pair.

One of the interviewees (known only as Officer L and described as being the boss of Special Branch in east Tyrone at the time) had said: "The Tyrone man has a different way of operating. They had a lot of support and a lot of loyalty. We worked hard to get a clear picture and we did well. You know McNally and Ryan had 43 murders under their belts as a team. How do you deal with people like that?"

The other RUC man, Officer F, had said: “At this stage, sectarian hatred was fuelling a lot of what was happening in East Tyrone. On both the PIRA front and loyalism, murder and mayhem was fuelled by personal hatred and vendettas…

"Coagh was part of the local war. It wasn’t an Adams and McGuinness strategy, it was an East Tyrone strategy [involving...] revenge for family members they perceived were killed by security forces or murdered by loyalists.

"Peter Ryan had a tomahawk concealed on his body at Coagh. He intended to injure the target and finish him off with a tomahawk; it was in a shoulder holster. It was personal, believe me."

‘OUR INQUEST LASTED AN HOUR AND WE LEARNED LITTLE’:

The News Letter has reported before about the fact that paramilitaries make up a big proportion of the inquest backlog facing the coroner’s courts; in 2017, paramilitaries made up about a third of all the death investigations in the backlog of Troubles inquests – and in a number of cases, the inquests had already been heard once, but were being re-opened many years later.

Mr Dallas, who was a joiner and helped his brother Leslie at his car sales business, said: “I’m totally disgusted to think of the inquiry going on. [Their] guns were used in numerous killings in our area.”

He said that his small village alone lost “eight good men” to the IRA.

In addition to his brother Leslie, Mr Dallas’ cousin Derek Ferguson was also shot dead in the village in April 9, 1991.

This was also believed to have been the work of the same IRA unit.

In both cases, the IRA claimed the men were involved in the UVF, but their families, the police, and the UVF denied this.

Mr Dallas recalled the accidental shooting of Jim Taylor in east Tyrone in 1978 by the Army; Mr Dallas says the soldiers had mistaken the victim for IRA man Ryan.

"The army thought it was Ryan at that time – so that's how long they knew Ryan had been about,” said Mr Dallas.

"It makes me angry to think that some of those murders [later carried out by Ryan] probably could've been prevented.

"We knew they were serious killers, no doubt about it - McNally and Ryan, and Doris (I don't know how long he was with them; it wouldn't have been as long).

"It's unreal, coming now to hear this. We knew they'd a big number, but we never thought a total of 43."

He described the current inquest investigation into the death of the IRA trio as a “waste of money” and a “disgrace”, noting that there had been “armed to the teeth” and en route to kill again when they were shot.

He added that his brother Leslie’s inquest, some time in the 1990s, lasted one hour, and “very, very little” had come out of it.

More from this reporter:

Just the facts: As pro-IRA chanting spreads across Ireland here are the hard numbers behind the IRA's insurrection