Editorial: Ex RUC officers face an ongoing injustice in legacy probes, as identified by a judge

The Police Ombudsman has again found the RUC guilty of 'collusive behaviour'. Almost everyone who hears of that wording will assume that it means the police were guilty of collusion, which – in effect – it does mean. The common understanding of collusion, as it is used in NI, is that the police actively assisted loyalist terrorists. Yet, as this newspaper never tires of pointing out, the statistics prove that the security forces did not engage in systemic collusion. If they had done, many republicans would be dead.

But the myth of collusion is embedded. The emergence of the phrase 'collusive behaviour' comes from a dispute about the RUC response to the 1994 Loughinisland loyalist massacre. An earlier Ombudsman Al Hutchinson issued a report which did not find collusion in the killings. Dr Michael Maguire, who as criminal justice inspector criticised that report, later became ombudsman. When the first report was quashed, he issued one that found collusion. In 2018, Mr Justice McCloskey deemed the Maguire findings of collusion “unsustainable”. He said RUC officers “were, in effect, accused, tried and convicted without notice and in their absence. None of the essential elements of the criminal or disciplinary process existed”.

There was then a most unusual claim of bias against the judge. He firmly rejected it yet stood aside. Ms Justice Keegan, later Lady Chief Justice of NI, heard the case and issued a ruling that was as if the McCloskey ruling never existed. Retired police officers then appealed her ruling, and senior judges criticised Dr Maguire for overstepping the mark in his collusion findings but upheld Ms Justice Keegan. The case did not go to the Supreme Court, where this newspaper urged ex RUC to take it. The outrageous situation facing ex RUC, as identified by Mr Justice McCloskey, remains.