Judge reserves verdict in legal challenge to Legacy Act as he is urged to stop victims being further traumatised

As a major challenge to the controversial legislation closed after eight days of argument, a judge was urged to stop them being exposed to “vicious” further traumatisation.

Mr Justice Colton reserved his verdict on the legal bid to block The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act.

He pledged: “I will give the case priority and try to give judgment as soon as I can.”

The Act, which came into effect in September, offers a conditional amnesty to those accused of crimes during more than 30 years of sectarian violence.

It will also end future civil litigation and inquests into conflict-related deaths not completed before the cut-off date of May 2024.

Victims organisations, political parties and the Irish Government are all fiercely opposed to the new law.

A raft of judicial reviews have been brought by some of those who either lost loved ones or were injured in the Troubles.

They claim the legislation is unconstitutional, denies access to justice and incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The British Government has described the Act as an attempt to draw a line under Northern Ireland’s troubled past.

It involves the establishment of an Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) headed up by former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland Sir Declan Morgan.

Self-confessed perpetrators who fully cooperate with the legacy body may be offered immunity from prosecution.

Lawyers for some of those mounting the challenges have claimed the objective of the Act is to protect British Army veterans and other security force personnel from prosecution for any wrongdoing in Northern Ireland.

In a legal battle ultimately expected to reach the Supreme Court, proceedings issued by Martina Dillon, John McEvoy and Lynda McManus are among the lead cases.

Ms Dillon’s 45-year-old husband, Seamus, was shot dead in a loyalist attack at the Glengannon Hotel in Dungannon, County Tyrone, in 1997.

Mr McEvoy survived a loyalist shooting on the Thierafurth Inn in Kilcoo, County Down, in 1992 which claimed the life of 42-year-old Peter McCormack.

Ms McManus's father, James, was among those wounded in the Sean Graham bookmakers massacre earlier in the same year.

Five people were murdered when loyalist gunmen opened fire inside the betting shop on the Ormeau Road in south Belfast.

In closing submissions counsel for the applicants insisted that they were at the heart of the case.

John Larkin KC said: “All of them in their different ways reflect experiences which are unique to them but share an anguished commonality with so many people in this community.

“Not only are the themes which they developed in their affidavits common to each other and to the great number of victims of serious crime in our troubles, they are reflective of a larger aspect of the human condition.”

Citing a passage from the epic Latin poem The Aeneid, he quoted the translation by Seamus Heaney as “there are tears at the heart of things”.

Mr Larkin said: “The experiences of the Troubles, year by year, continues to confirm that.

“Legislation is sometimes incapable of ensuring that all tears are wiped away, it’s simply impossible for legislators to achieve.

“What the applicants seek, individually and collectively, is not that the legislation will wipe away their tears, but that legislation will not cause them to weep again and impose, as this Act does, a particularly vicious form of secondary victimisation by shutting out emphatically any prospect of redress or justice.”

He told Mr Justice Colton: “Your Lordship can stop that secondary victimisation and invite you to do so.”