Letter: Guns found in south Armagh were obviously republican yet the PSNI will not say so

​Police have said that it has not been possible to attribute a haul of weapons found during a search in Crossmaglen, south Armagh last year to any one group (‘Not possible to attribute significant South Armagh arms haul to any group, says PSNI,’ April 8).

For several years I was a member of the NI Policing Board and on each occasion that weapons were recovered the police would not attribute the arms to any group. It is clear these guns were republican, as was the case with many during my time on the Policing Board. The police would make no further comment as they would say the weapons were now part of ‘a current investigation’ and the matter was dropped.

These weapons will probably be now filed under ‘current investigation’ but what of all the other weapons that were being investigated over the last 10 years which I presume are stored somewhere?

The Provisional IRA did not decommission all their weapons, I have made this point many times, certain ‘Quartermasters’ retained their cache of weapons and explosives. This was clear in Londonderry/Strabane and in South Armagh. The Sinn Fein leadership engaged in the de-commissioning process knew who didn’t surrender ‘their stock’. We have ongoing investigations to 50 plus year old cases Soldier A, B, C, etc because there are records, the excuse SF cannot be held accountable as they had ‘no records’ doesn’t hold water as this is a more recent event and I’m convinced a senior Quartermaster issued various caches of weapons to well known republicans and that information is available. So let us see QM A, B, C, before the courts for possession of arms and explosives.

The speech in 2021 by Michael McDowell to the Irish senate motion on the British government’s legacy proposals highlights the total hypocrisy of Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein asked the Irish government and British (Ahern and Blair) for immunity for their members. “The people who came on their knees to the government demanding letters of comfort and demanding pardons for the members of their movement.” He went on to say “Members of the Oireachtas have actually stated that activities by IRA volunteers are not crimes at all”. This indicates the clear double standards Sinn Fein expect from the British and Irish governments and it seems to me they have been granted immunity.

I am not in favour of the proposed ‘amnesty’, I believe if you murdered someone, whether you be Protestant, Catholic, Heathen, Loyalist, Republican or former member of the security forces you should face the full power of the law. Deals were done so that any forensic evidence found on the remains of ‘the disappeared’ could not be used in prosecutions. Why? The reason was that SF did not want the publicity of republicans facing prosecution for the heinous crime of murder then 'disappearing' the remains.

I won't be here when the papers in relation to the activities of the British the Irish agencies will be opened, they will probably be sealed for 100 years. By which time nobody will be made amenable for the 'dirty war'. The whitewash of rewritten republican Irish history will flake off at some point, which dirty deals were made, who decided who was getting 'letters of comfort', how many royal pardons or state pardons were granted, etc.

Ross M Hussey, Ex Ulster Unionist MLA, Omagh