Britain’s reputation will be severely damaged by the Northern Ireland “legacy” act, an international panel of human rights experts has warned while calling for the government to scrap moves to grant conditional amnesties for Troubles-era crimes.
The warning is being made as the legislation comes into force on Wednesday, offering soldiers and paramilitaries a limited form of immunity from prosecution for Troubles-related offences for those who cooperate with a new body aimed at truth recovery.
Victims’ families, who are in effect being banned from future legal challenges, welcomed a report due to be published by the panel, which was convened by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights (NCHR).
In one of the first authoritative studies of state impunity, Britain is accused of having operated a “widespread and systemic” practice of protecting security forces from sanction during the conflict.
The panel investigated claims that the state not only engaged in collusion but blocked proper police investigations into conflict-related killings to protect security force members and agents implicated in crime.
The family of Stephen McConomy, an 11-year-old who died after he was hit in the back of the head with a plastic bullet fired by a British soldier in Derry in 1982, were among those who welcomed the report, titled Bitter Legacy: State Impunity in the Northern Ireland Conflict.
“This report highlights the injustices that the British government perpetrated against victims’ families for the last 40 years,” said Stephen’s brother, Emmett McConomy.
“The report sets out in black and white that the British government has had a policy to protect its soldiers despite their involvement in murder. They are determined to continue with this policy of impunity by blocking families like ourselves access to legal justice from 1 May. The Legacy Act tramples over the rights of victims. It protects the perpetrators, be they British soldiers or paramilitaries. Our rights don’t count.”
A key focus for the panel, which included a retired senior Norwegian police officer and human rights lawyers from various countries, was on the impact of a policy operated between 1969 and 1973 by police in Northern Ireland and the British army when troops were accused of wrongdoing.
The arrangement, which was said to have involved a policy known as “tea and sandwiches” interviews of soldiers, meant police investigations into killings were replaced by “presentational” inquiries conducted by the Royal Military Police.
The panel concluded that the “blatant deficiencies of this system shielded soldiers from accountability for state violence and is arguably the reason why not a single state actor was prosecuted between 1969 and 1974”.
In-depth studies into 54 killings where state involvement was confirmed or suspected were carried out by the panel, led by a Norwegian former detective superintendent, Kjell Erik Eriksen. The NCHR, based at the University of Oslo, convened the panel at the request of two Northern Ireland rights groups, the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) and the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC).
The report also concluded that a huge disparity in prosecutions – when compared with those of paramilitaries – ensured de facto impunity for security forces involved in killings, torture and ill-treatment.
About 30,000 loyalists and republicans were jailed for paramilitary offences, but only a handful of security force members were imprisoned despite involvement in killings and torture, it found.
While the report primarily concentrates on the actions of the UK, it also found the Irish government failed to carry out effective investigations, which was said to have damaged victims’ rights to justice.
