Tory terror immunity plans: ‘We have been craving justice for as long as I can remember: and this is not it’

Keith James Powell, whose father Keith Powell was one of 11 fatal victims of the attacks upon London’s Hyde and Regent’s parks, was speaking as the Tory leadership revealed revamped plans for a kind of qualified amnesty.

Keith, who will mark 40 years this July since the atrocity that claimed his father, also dubbed it “unbelievable” that Sinn Fein is now the Province’s largest party.

He was speaking after the government revealed on Tuesday that it is changing its plans for dealing with the backlog of thousands of unsolved Troubles cases.

Previously, it had suggested a blanket amnesty for all crimes committed during the Troubles.

After a tsunami of opposition to this from all political quarters in NI, it has now come up with an alternative - a ‘reconciliation commission’ will be set up, allowing paramilitaries to come forward and admit their crimes.

If they are judged to have done so honestly, they will be granted immunity from prosecution.

Many details of how exactly this will work remain obscure. But the groups Innocent Victims United and WAVE Trauma Centre have already come out strongly against the blueprints.

Now Keith has added his own sceptical view to the mix, telling the News Letter: “It’s not justice, is it? That’s clear as day. We don’t accept it. That’s it.

“We deserve justice. I’ve been craving it for as long as I can remember. It just doesn’t deliver.”

SINN FEIN VICTORY ‘DEPLORABLE’:

He also said that the result of last week’s election was “deplorable”.

“I can’t trust Sinn Fein,” he said.

“I still don’t know for sure who planted the device that killed my father. I’m pretty sure they know.”

He added that “our family have never received justice for the murder, let alone been compensated for the misery”.

He said that his father, 24 at the time of his death, “was only in the army because of his love of music”.

At the time of his death at the bandstand he was playing clarinet, but he could play “any instrument”.

“He lived in Antrim for a while, and had Irish friends,” Keith (a 39-year-old furniture salesman from north-east England) said.

“The bomb was underneath him. My brother was seven years old when it happened, so he had a little time with him. He can’t really talk about it. It just upsets him too much.

“It was senseless. It was uncalled for. He was literally just a young lad.”

A DAY OF CARNAGE WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE STILL:

The other soldiers killed by the IRA on July 20, 1982, were:

Anthony Daly, 23; Roy Bright, 36; Simon Tipper, 19; and Jeffrey Young, 19 – killed by a carbomb at Hyde Park.

And Graham Barker, 36 John McKnight, 30; Robert Livingstone, 31; Laurence Smith, 19; George Mesure, 19; and John Heritage, 29 – killed by a bomb under Regent’s Park bandstand about two hours later.

As bad as the carnage of the double London bombing was, it could have been worse still.

It appears to have been little-reported-upon, but one of the unexplained aspects of the bandstand bombing was that police dredged a nearby park lake and found a briefcase.

The Wikipedia entry about the Regent’s Park bombing states that “unlike the Hyde Park bomb, it contained no nails and seemed to be designed to cause minimal harm to bystanders” – but this may not be so.

The briefcase in the lake contained wood glue, a saw, 64 four-inch nails, and 38 three inch nails (according to a Thames News bulletin from the time, which said the fake leather make-in-Taiwan case had been “abandoned”).

It is not clear why, or how, it ended up in the water.

More from this reporter:

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Baltic Exchange bomb: Portrait of a family devastated by IRA bloodbath that claimed three lives

Inquest reveals tragic last days of Carrick loyalist Mark Gourley, killed by the UDA as he lost grip on sanity

Sean Graham slayings: Murder spree set in motion the deaths of two UDA figures years later

Sean Graham Massacre & Troubles death toll: By the early ‘90s loyalists began to out-murder republicans for the first time