| | OMBUDSMAN EXPECTED TO PROVIDE DAMNING EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION
08/14/06 02:32 EST
A report due to be published by Northern Ireland police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan is expected to provide damning evidence that the RUC Special Branch allowed loyalist informers to carry out more than a dozen murders of innocent people.
O’Loan’s report is expected to be published in the coming weeks. It is understood to provide some of the most serious evidence ever uncovered on the murders.
The investigation is the culmination of a nine-year campaign by Belfast man Raymond McCord Sr to bring the killers of his 22-yearold son to justice. Raymond McCord Jr was beaten to death by a UVF gang at Ballyduff Quarry on the outskirts of north Belfast in November 1997.
The 22-year-old, who was himself linked to the UVF, is understood to have been murdered to protect a senior loyalist who was being investigated by the UVF leadership over involvement in drug dealing.
For most of the last nine years, the victim’s father fought a hopeless campaign claiming that his son’s killers were Special Branch informers who had been allowed to kill citizens with the full knowledge of their police handlers.
However, a UVF attack on Belfast doorman Trevor Gowdy in December 2002 was to bring a dramatic breakthrough in the case.
North Belfast UVF leader Mark Haddock and other members of the paramilitary organisation’s Mount Vernon unit were arrested and charged with Gowdy’s attempted murder.
The case and the publicity that came with it forced the RUC (renamed PSNI) Special Branch to cut loose one of its most prized agents.
While McCord continued to allege that Haddock was a police informer and had ordered the murder of his son, few took the claims seriously.
Little attention was paid to the news that O’Loan had agreed to investigate McCord’s allegations in 2003. However, it was the decision by former RUC detectives Johnson ‘Jonty’
Brown and Trevor McIlwrath to publicly endorse McCord’s allegations that put the first hole in the wall of silence.
Brown and McIlwrath had both been police officers for more than 30 years before they retired. More importantly, they were the men who had sent Johnny Adair to jail in 1994 after secretly recording him admitting to directing UDA terrorism.
Brown and McIlwrath, however, were not afraid to speak out about the Special Branch allowing informers to murder with impunity.
In 1991, they secretly taped UDA man Ken Barrett admitting the murder of human rights attorney Pat Finucane.
However, they claimed that when RUC Special Branch became involved in the case, the confession tape went missing and they were blocked from charging Barrett with Finucane’s murder.
Crucially, Brown and McIlwrath recruited the 16-yearold Mark Haddock to become an informer in 1985 after he was arrested for petrol bombing a bus.
For six years, Haddock fed them information about low-level crime, but in 1990, when he told them he had joined the UVF, Special Branch took over control of the agent. What took place over the next decade will be the subject of O’Loan’s report.
Haddock is alleged to have shot dead Catholic taxi driver Sharon McKenna in north Belfast in January 1991 after the UVF suspected she might be an informer.
Brown and McIlwrath would later claim that, within days, they had enough evidence to charge Haddock with McKenna’s murder.
However, they claim that Special Branch blocked them from moving against the agent.
Over the next decade, Haddock is alleged to have been involved in more than a dozen murders, yet no charges were ever brought against him.
When he was charged with the attempted murder of Trevor Gowdy in August 2003, the Special Branch could no longer protect Haddock. In February of this year he was shot and seriously wounded by UVF gunmen for being a Special Branch informer.
He is on remand on a hospital wing inside Maghaberry prison awaiting judgment in the Gowdy trial.
In October last year, Irish Labour Party leader Pat Rabbitte used Dail privilege to name Haddock as a Special Branch informer who had been involved in murder.
In May, Sir Reg Empey, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), was widely criticised after he allowed Progressive Unionist Party leader David Ervine to join his party’s assembly team at Stormont.
Ervine’s party is accepted as having close ties to the UVF.
In an ironic twist, Brown, McIlwrath and a third former police officer were arrested by O’Loan’s detectives earlier this week and questioned about alleged attempts to pervert the course of justice.
All three were later released without charge.
The arrest of Brown and McIlwrath is seen as a technicality.
Their questioning is understood to have related to the fact that they had provided evidence of Haddock’s alleged involvement in McKenna’s murder but were blocked from pursuing him by Special Branch.
It is understood O’Loan’s investigators will now seek to question senior police officers in the coming weeks over the allegation that Haddock was protected by the highest ranks within RUC (PSNI) Special Branch.
O’Loan is understood to be preparing to recommend charges against a number of senior Special Branch officers.
If, as expected, she concludes that senior police officers allowed state agents to carry out more than a dozen murders with impunity, the implications for both the PSNI and the UUP will be immense.
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