RNU Rejects Loughinisland Whitewash

national | crime and justice | press release Thursday June 30, 2011 16:07 by RNU PRO - Republican Network for Unity (RNU)

Speaking in support of the Loughisland victims, CARL REILLY, Chairperson of the REPUBLICAN NETWORK for UNITY (RNU) said; "The Loughinisland Report will be remembered far longer for Al Hutchinson’s Houdini like twists to escape finding RUC collusion, than for any truths revealed about the victims marked for death by the UVF for watching an Ireland World Cup match.

Speaking in support of the Loughisland victims, CARL REILLY, Chairperson of the REPUBLICAN NETWORK for UNITY (RNU) said; "The Loughinisland Report will be remembered far longer for Al Hutchinson’s Houdini like twists to escape finding RUC collusion, than for any truths revealed about the victims marked for death by the UVF for watching an Ireland World Cup match.

During the decades in which hundreds of sectarian murders, like those at Loughinisland were committed by loyalists, nationalists came to observe repeated patterns of collusion with British crown forces .These patterns of collusion, in turn, generated obvious lines of inquiry and questions which both the survivors and families of the Loughinisland victims had a right to expect, would be investigated and answered:

Were Special Branch agents among the UVF gang which planned and committed the atrocity?

Did UVF agents of Special Branch, provide, move, or dispose of the weapons used? Were UVF agents gifted with intelligence or surveillance from their Special Branch handlers?

Did agents within the UVF name the perpetrators to their handlers either before or after the murders?

Were any communications transmitted by Special Branch to insure that the area targeted was out of bounds or cleared of patrols which might have detected and intercepted the murder team?

How could multiple sources of forensics including the weapons, getaway car and balaclavas in a mass murder investigation be destroyed independently by multiple RUC members, without a focused, coordinated plan to act as part of a cover-up to conceal the identities of one or all of the UVF death squad?

Hutchinson dealt with these fundamental questions by an ostrich-like refusal to face them, or even to mention the role of Special Branch, presumably lest such lines of inquiry make impossible his predetermined outcome of no collusion. The coordinated destruction of multiple exhibits and sources of forensic evidence in a mass murder inquiry, carried out by multiple RUC members, was presented as a mere inattention or lack of focus.

From the outset, there were concerns that Ombudsman did not want to know about any facts or evidence which pointed to constabulary collusion in mass murder. Investigators seemed in a headlong rush to clear or whitewash the constabulary no matter the facts. RNU has long questioned whether the Police Ombudsman was acting as a Police apologist, turning a blind eye to every inconvenient truth which tended to show planned PSNI culpability, as a prelude to saying they could see no such proof.

We have already seen the righteous anger and anguish of the bereaved relatives of the McGurk Bombing victims, who publicly and rightfully slated the Ombudsman for the same faults, failings and insensitivity in that fiasco which the Loughinisland families now feel. The CAJ has documented facts which undermine any perception of independence and fairness which the position was supposed to hold.

Al Hutchinson has forfeited any remaining shred of credibility by his Loughinisland Report. Few nationalists will ever expect anything more than a whitewash from the office of Ombudsman as long as he remains there.”