A report due out next week set to reveal the hidden hand behind one of Ireland’s worst terror atrocities
By Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald Home Affairs Editor
BRITAIN is faced with being blamed for colluding with loyalist terrorists this week in the worst single atrocity in the history of the Irish Troubles – the Dublin and Monaghan bombings which took place in May 1974 and claimed the lives of 33 people and injured 240.
A report by Justice Henry Barron on the bombings has already been seen by the Irish Cabinet and Taoiseach, and has been forwarded to the Irish parliamentary Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights. It will be published by the committee on Wednesday this week.
The Irish government says there will be minimum alterations to the report but some names will be deleted. The findings of the report are likely to be massively damaging to diplomatic relations between the UK and the Irish republic.
Investigations by the Sunday Herald and the respected independent human rights monitoring organisation, British Irish Rights Watch (BIRW), point towards collusion between elements within the British security forces and intelligence services and the loyalists who perpetrated the bombing.
Any confirmation that British security forces had a role in the bombings would be hugely embarrassing for the UK. It could be used by critics of both the Irish and British government to say that the UK carried out “an act of war” on a friendly state.
The Barron report was meant to be released earlier but was delayed because of the havoc that allegations of collusion could have caused during the recent elections for the Ulster Executive.
Greg O’Neill, the solicitor acting for Justice for the Forgotten, which represents the families of those who died in the attacks, said he has been told by a number of sources who have already read the report that Barron “has not pulled his punches”.
O’Neill added: “They say some of his conclusions are quite stark … [Relatives] will be very happy with parts of the report, and not so happy with other parts.”
The bombings took place during one of the most turbulent times in Irish history. In January 1974 a power-sharing executive was set up in Northern Ireland which faced intense opposition from loyalists. On May 15 the Ulster Workers’ Council began an all-out strike . Two days into the strike, four massive car bombs exploded in the Irish republic – three in Dublin and one in Monaghan.
While the Garda (the Irish police) had no prior intelligence of the attacks, the British Army and RUC had a number of well-placed informers within the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force, the loyalist terrorist group behind the attacks.
The Sunday Herald has the names of a number of loyalists suspected of taking part in the atrocities – four of them were former or serving members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, the British Army’s “home guard” in Northern Ireland. The four can only be identified by as Mr H, Mr B, Mr J and Mr M.
J, H and M were all working for either British military intelligence or the RUC Special Branch, as was another one of the eight-man UVF team behind the attacks, who can only be referred to as Mr D. A group of undercover SAS soldiers, known as 4 Field Survey Troop, under the command of a named army captain and a lieutenant were running M, B and J before and after the bombings.
Jane Winter, the director of BIRW, says: “We find it very hard to believe that an operation involving so many people could have been planned at that time without the British intelligence services knowing about it. If we are right about this, then the question arises of whether or not the British told their Irish counterparts about what they knew.
“All the evidence available to us so far suggests that the Irish authorities were taken completely by surprise by the bombings. Furthermore, it is difficult to envisage any political or strategic motive that the Irish authorities might entertain that could justify allowing the bombings to go ahead.”
The Dublin bombings also involved a level of expertise in bomb-making which was far more sophisticated than loyalists showed either before or after the atrocity. Lieutenant Colonel George Styles, the former head of British Army bomb disposal; Commandant Patrick Trears, a senior Irish army bomb disposal officer; and former Garda Commissioner Eamonn Doherty, one of the officers who lead the initial inquiry, all agree that the 1974 bombs were more sophisticated than any other explosive devices used by loyalists.
A former RUC officer has also claimed in a statement that a named captain in the Ulster Defence Regiment supplied the explosives for the bombs. At least four British army intelligence officers and an RUC Special Branch officer are believed to have been involved in planning the attacks.
There have also been allegations that a British military intelligence officer who may have been involved in planning the bombings had charge of some of the forensic evidence from the bomb sites which was sent to Northern Ireland for analysis.
After the Irish police passed some forensic material to the RUC for analysis, the Northern Ireland police in turn gave the material to a military intelligence officer who was later identified by G2, the Irish military intelligence, as one of the bomb planners. The named British military intelligence officer was in possession of the forensic material for a number of days. He was a major with training in both bomb disposal and intelligence gathering.
Irish army intelligence officers have long suspected that the bombings were the work of British-trained experts because of the skill in placing the car bombs in a co-ordinated pattern, the fact that all three bombs in Dublin went off within 90 seconds of each other and because the fusing system differed from other loyalist devices. Most loyalist bomb attempts before and after the 1974 attacks are characterised by being crude, ill-conceived and ineffective.
Suspicions have also been fuelled by the refusal of the RUC to allow the Garda to interview a number of witnesses and suspects in the North, some of whom were informers for the British security forces. Both the Garda and the RUC had the names of a number of suspects not long after the bombings.
Questions have also been raised over whether the Irish government tried to keep the lid on evidence of collusion between the bombers and British forces in order to prevent reprisals against UK targets and the deterioration of the security situation in the republic.
Senior loyalists, who have been interviewed by the Sunday Herald over a number of years, have repeatedly dismissed claims that there was any collusion with the British state in the 1974 bombings. They insist that the plan was “a UVF job from start to finish”.
Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald Home Affairs Editor
Article republished, courtesy of The Sunday Herald: http://www.sundayherald.com
Please also see:
British Irish Rights Watch; http://www.birw.org/
By Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald Home Affairs Editor
BRITAIN is faced with being blamed for colluding with loyalist terrorists this week in the worst single atrocity in the history of the Irish Troubles – the Dublin and Monaghan bombings which took place in May 1974 and claimed the lives of 33 people and injured 240.
A report by Justice Henry Barron on the bombings has already been seen by the Irish Cabinet and Taoiseach, and has been forwarded to the Irish parliamentary Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women’s Rights. It will be published by the committee on Wednesday this week.
The Irish government says there will be minimum alterations to the report but some names will be deleted. The findings of the report are likely to be massively damaging to diplomatic relations between the UK and the Irish republic.
Investigations by the Sunday Herald and the respected independent human rights monitoring organisation, British Irish Rights Watch (BIRW), point towards collusion between elements within the British security forces and intelligence services and the loyalists who perpetrated the bombing.
Any confirmation that British security forces had a role in the bombings would be hugely embarrassing for the UK. It could be used by critics of both the Irish and British government to say that the UK carried out “an act of war” on a friendly state.
The Barron report was meant to be released earlier but was delayed because of the havoc that allegations of collusion could have caused during the recent elections for the Ulster Executive.
Greg O’Neill, the solicitor acting for Justice for the Forgotten, which represents the families of those who died in the attacks, said he has been told by a number of sources who have already read the report that Barron “has not pulled his punches”.
O’Neill added: “They say some of his conclusions are quite stark … [Relatives] will be very happy with parts of the report, and not so happy with other parts.”
The bombings took place during one of the most turbulent times in Irish history. In January 1974 a power-sharing executive was set up in Northern Ireland which faced intense opposition from loyalists. On May 15 the Ulster Workers’ Council began an all-out strike . Two days into the strike, four massive car bombs exploded in the Irish republic – three in Dublin and one in Monaghan.
While the Garda (the Irish police) had no prior intelligence of the attacks, the British Army and RUC had a number of well-placed informers within the outlawed Ulster Volunteer Force, the loyalist terrorist group behind the attacks.
The Sunday Herald has the names of a number of loyalists suspected of taking part in the atrocities – four of them were former or serving members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, the British Army’s “home guard” in Northern Ireland. The four can only be identified by as Mr H, Mr B, Mr J and Mr M.
J, H and M were all working for either British military intelligence or the RUC Special Branch, as was another one of the eight-man UVF team behind the attacks, who can only be referred to as Mr D. A group of undercover SAS soldiers, known as 4 Field Survey Troop, under the command of a named army captain and a lieutenant were running M, B and J before and after the bombings.
Jane Winter, the director of BIRW, says: “We find it very hard to believe that an operation involving so many people could have been planned at that time without the British intelligence services knowing about it. If we are right about this, then the question arises of whether or not the British told their Irish counterparts about what they knew.
“All the evidence available to us so far suggests that the Irish authorities were taken completely by surprise by the bombings. Furthermore, it is difficult to envisage any political or strategic motive that the Irish authorities might entertain that could justify allowing the bombings to go ahead.”
The Dublin bombings also involved a level of expertise in bomb-making which was far more sophisticated than loyalists showed either before or after the atrocity. Lieutenant Colonel George Styles, the former head of British Army bomb disposal; Commandant Patrick Trears, a senior Irish army bomb disposal officer; and former Garda Commissioner Eamonn Doherty, one of the officers who lead the initial inquiry, all agree that the 1974 bombs were more sophisticated than any other explosive devices used by loyalists.
A former RUC officer has also claimed in a statement that a named captain in the Ulster Defence Regiment supplied the explosives for the bombs. At least four British army intelligence officers and an RUC Special Branch officer are believed to have been involved in planning the attacks.
There have also been allegations that a British military intelligence officer who may have been involved in planning the bombings had charge of some of the forensic evidence from the bomb sites which was sent to Northern Ireland for analysis.
After the Irish police passed some forensic material to the RUC for analysis, the Northern Ireland police in turn gave the material to a military intelligence officer who was later identified by G2, the Irish military intelligence, as one of the bomb planners. The named British military intelligence officer was in possession of the forensic material for a number of days. He was a major with training in both bomb disposal and intelligence gathering.
Irish army intelligence officers have long suspected that the bombings were the work of British-trained experts because of the skill in placing the car bombs in a co-ordinated pattern, the fact that all three bombs in Dublin went off within 90 seconds of each other and because the fusing system differed from other loyalist devices. Most loyalist bomb attempts before and after the 1974 attacks are characterised by being crude, ill-conceived and ineffective.
Suspicions have also been fuelled by the refusal of the RUC to allow the Garda to interview a number of witnesses and suspects in the North, some of whom were informers for the British security forces. Both the Garda and the RUC had the names of a number of suspects not long after the bombings.
Questions have also been raised over whether the Irish government tried to keep the lid on evidence of collusion between the bombers and British forces in order to prevent reprisals against UK targets and the deterioration of the security situation in the republic.
Senior loyalists, who have been interviewed by the Sunday Herald over a number of years, have repeatedly dismissed claims that there was any collusion with the British state in the 1974 bombings. They insist that the plan was “a UVF job from start to finish”.
Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald Home Affairs Editor
Article republished, courtesy of The Sunday Herald: http://www.sundayherald.com
Please also see:
British Irish Rights Watch; http://www.birw.org/