Kingsmill Massacre Inquest: Coroner slams IRA and Sinn Fein for refusing to engage despite ten years of appeals

Nine of the ten families of victims walked away from the inquest in 2020 in large part because they believed the Coroner was not cooperating with them on this matter.

The IRA waved down a minibus of factory workers returning home near Kingsmills in 1976. They then gunned down the ten Protestant occupants.

The legacy inquest into the atrocity began in 2014 and concluded in Belfast yesterday with Coroner Brian Sherrard delivering his conclusions.

Three times he singled out the political representatives of the IRA and the terror group itself for failing to make any disclosures to the inquest or even admit "the utter wrongness" of the attack.

”The glaring omission in the Inquest, he said, "was the absence of any disclosure or evidence from those who caused the deaths. Unlike other ‘legacy’ inquests which have examined the actions of the state in directly causing death, those responsible for the deaths at Kingsmill have not given an account either personally or through any organisation or any political party. Numerous calls to assist and provide answers were met with silence.

"Accordingly the Inquest did not receive disclosure from any individual concerned in the attack, nor their organisation nor their political representatives although expert evidence was given that records may well exist.

"Neither did the Inquest hear evidence from the perpetrators regarding matters such as the motivation for the attack, its planning and personnel and its execution.

"There has been no recognition by any perpetrator or their organisation or political representatives as to the utter wrongness of the attack which served to end the lives of 10 men and to devastate the lives of untold others.”

He said Kingsmill was not an operation undertaken by "a rogue element", but was an attack "permitted by the Army Council’s order and carried out by the IRA".

"The formation of a splinter group using IRA weapons would not have been permitted by the IRA. The IRA claimed to be non-sectarian. The use of a nom de plume was a cynical ploy to allow the IRA to carry out nakedly sectarian killings without tarnishing its brand."

He added: "Many decades have now passed since the atrocity and no recognised organisation much less any individual has admitted responsibility for it.... Neither the organisation nor the individuals responsible for this atrocity have any intention of explaining it, much less being held to account. They are uninterested in transparency concerning their actions."

In his closing words, said the ten victims were murdered purely because they were Protestants.

"Shortly after the attack the so called South Armagh Republican Action Force claimed responsibility for it. That was a lie.

"The attack was carried out by the IRA operating under the authority of the Army Council which had, in April 1975, given wide authorisation to IRA units."

He added: "The attack, while ostensibly in direct response to the murderous attacks on the Reavey and O’Dowd families by loyalist terrorists on the evening of 4 January 1976, was not spontaneous but had been planned well in advance.

"The IRA failed to engage with the Inquest. There has been no acknowledgement by the IRA of the utter wrongness of the atrocity, its impact on those bereaved or the damage caused to the entire community. Kingsmill was an overtly sectarian attack by the IRA. It was mounted because the deceased men were Protestants and for no other reason."