‘New Lodge Six’ sister loses legal challenge

Rosaleen Beatty brought proceedings against Northern Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) for not directing the Chief Constable to give priority to a case currently in a queue with more than a thousand other Troubles-era deaths to be reviewed by a team of detectives.

But the Court of Appeal dismissed her challenge due to limitations on any ability to intrude on the PSNI’s autonomy.

Lord Justice McCloskey said: “In short, this case has no feature which would warrant the exercise by the DPP of the relevant statutory power.”

Ms Beatty’s brother, Ambrose Hardy, was one of the men, known as the “New Lodge Six”, killed in two separate shooting incidents in February 1973.

James McCann and James Sloan, both 19, were shot by a gunman firing from the back seat of a car as they stood outside a bar at the junction of the New Lodge Road and Antrim Road. Later that night soldiers are believed to have opened fire on the other four victims from the top of nearby flats.

Anthony Campbell, out celebrating his 19th birthday, was shot outside an ex-servicemen’s club. Brendan Maguire, 32, and John Loughran, 34, were hit as they tried to drag him out of the line of fire.

Mr Hardy, 24, was shot in the head when he emerged from the bar waving a white cloth, according to eyewitnesses.

At the time the Army stated they were all IRA gunmen - a claim disputed by at least some of the bereaved families.

No weapons were recovered and there is no evidence that any of them were armed.

In 2018 former Attorney General John Larkin QC expressed an opinion that there had been no adequate criminal investigation.

He referred the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) to consider using powers under the Justice (NI) Act 2002 to compel a fresh police probe.

But in February 2020 the DPP declined to order such inquiries as the PSNI’s Legacy Investigation Branch (LIB) was already examining the case.

Ms Beatty mounted an appeal after failing in an initial bid to judicially review the Director.

The court heard that the LIB has a caseload of 1,122 incidents involving the deaths of more than 1,400 people.

In the last three years approximately 28 of those cases were completed, with files submitted to the DPP for directions on prosecution in two thirds of them.

But appeal judges were told it could take decades before some of the cases are investigated.

Counsel for Ms Beatty claimed potential perpetrators may have died and avoided justice before the New Lodge Six incidents get allocated to LIB detectives.

Lord Justice McCloskey confirmed the DPP does have power to direct police to prioritise a particular LIB investigation in certain circumstances.

But dismissing the challenge, he stated: “The legislature must have intended that, in general, the Chief Constable/Police Service would exercise autonomous control over its modus operandi, its budgetary and policy priorities and allocations, (and) its formulation of criteria in identifying the most pressing cases in its workload.

“We consider that limited DPP intrusion and superintendence were also contemplated.”