You don’t defeat terrorists talking to choir boys: PFNI chairman

Responding to comments made by former police ombudsman (PONI) Nuala O’Loan, Mark Lindsay said the context relating to the officers’ actions and methodology was being repeatedly overlooked in a succession of damning PONI reports.

In a radio interview yesterday morning Baroness O’Loan, who served as the police ombudsman for Northern Ireland between 2000 and 2007, said her successor Marie Anderson was justified in asserting that officers were involved in “collusive behaviour” with loyalist paramilitaries – even though the evidence gathered was not strong enough to merit criminal charges.

“The reality is that you can identify the behaviour which has occurred and you can identify with absolute clarity, but you may not have the audit trail of evidence which takes you to the place where you can prosecute those who are responsible for the behaviour,” she told BBC Good Morning Ulster.

“In those circumstances, Marie Anderson has done exactly what she was charged to do, and what I did in the case of the final report on the UVF in 2007.

“These reports have to be published. We have found a lot of collusive behaviour in the RUC and indeed at times in the Metropolitan Police. So Marie Anderson is exactly right in what she has done. And she has shown that the facts she has reported are facts.”

However, the latest PONI report has angered a large number of former police officers, who have repeatedly stressed that almost all of the ‘collusive behaviour’ claims relate to standard police practice where human intelligence sources are involved.

A number of former police agent handlers have contacted the News Letter to outline how guns were often secretly removed from hides, given to a handler for forensic examination, and then returned to the agent with a view to mounting an arrest operation at the hide.

The former officers state that the weapons involved were often deactivated and fitted with a tracking device – to minimise the risk should the operation be compromised and the hide unexpectedly emptied before the police operation was in place.

Mr Lindsay has echoed their concerns, that this kind of background information is frequently lacking in the ombudsman’s reports.

“When we talk of any of the investigations or any of the reports by the police ombudsman, we have to recognise that there are families of innocent victims - families who have endured years of pain trying to find out what exactly has happened, and the causes behind the inexcusable murders of their loved one.

“My concern around this is that there is very little context in any of the reports which look at the context of what was happening in policing at the time,” he said.

“In some cases I think there needs to be a deeper dive into why certain things happened, and in some cases I’m even led to believe that, and I won’t go into the detail now, of evidence that the ombudsman would have that would explain why certain things were done.

“Whenever we look at the very nature of intelligence, of who police have to talk to, to get information that actually saves countless lives, they cannot speak to choir boys.”

• A body representing retired police officers in Northern Ireland will meeting within days to examine their legal options following another damning report from the police ombudsman, the News Letter understands.

In a report published earlier this week, ombudsman Marie Anderson said her probe into eleven UDA murders in south Belfast uncovered “collusive behaviour” involving police officers.

Ms Anderson also highlighted what she called “significant investigative and intelligence failures”.

When the NI Retired Police Association challenged a previous ombudsman’s report into the UVF murder of six men at Loughinisland in 1994, Justice McCloskey ruled that none of the police officers subjected to “destructive and withering condemnations” of colluding with UVF terrorists in the Heights Bar attack had the protection of due process.

“They were, in effect, accused, tried and convicted without notice and in their absence,” he said.

Although subsequent court hearings have reinforced a restriction on the ombudsman using the term ‘collusion’ in respect of similar police activity, the latest commentary around alleged “collusive behaviour” – in the absence of any criminal charges being brought – has angered many former officers.

Writing in the News Letter on Wednesday, former ACC and head of Special Branch Ray White said: “Why is it that after seven years of investigation and the expenditure of many thousands of pounds of public money, all were are treated to is a series of views and opinions delivered without any of the detailed evidence one would expect to see if the ombudsman took the legal pathway set out in law for her to follow, that of due process where the probity of what is alleged to be evidence can be tested in open court and those accused of transgressions given a voice to challenge their accusers.

“The justice minister or attorney general needs to step in and remind the ombudsman that her task is one of investigation and the production of hard evidence within the parameters laid down in law.”

READ: Ombudsman reports ‘lacking substantive evidence’ and ‘inexcusable’

READ: Police Federation chairman stepping down after seven years

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