Editorial: ​The outrage of hounding SAS and RUC heroes

The SAS deserves huge thanks for its outstanding role in the Troubles.

Above all thanks for its work protecting life on that small number of occasions when it stopped IRA terrorists at Loughgall, Gibraltar, Coagh and Clonoe. Populations around the world demand nothing less with such terrorists today, yet IRA were rarely stopped.

But in a handful of painstaking operations (based on intelligence, often given by terrorists who had become sickened by the sectarian murder) the IRA was stopped. Thanks is also due to the RUC, which was so restrained in its operations as it outwitted the IRA mass murder machine. Yet a coroner, Mr Justice Humphreys, has found that the SAS used illegal force in its 1992 killings of four IRA terrorists at Clonoe. Will this lead to prosecutions of those SAS and RUC heroes? Yesterday’s outcome is a disgraceful example of the deluge of retrospective inquests into deaths almost all of which involve claims against the state. The inquest exception to this was Kingsmills, which, as Jim Allister wrote in 2023, “lost the confidence of most families,” a process which underlined “the failure of the legacy process to deliver for anyone other than republicans”.

Yet Hilary Benn has restored these lop-sided inquests, which the last government tried to shut down, and also restored civil actions, which are almost all pro terrorist claims.

These latest findings also symbolise the multiple probes into state actions decades later, long after the context in which security forces operated. Meanwhile, IRA leaders enjoy an obvious undeclared amnesty.

The courts have driven the legacy scandal, for example Mr Justice Humphreys ordering that the murder of Sean Brown get special treatment, after the courts in effect ordered that Pat Finucane get the same. Just as the courts assisted Gerry Adams in his damages bid.