Cllr Denise Mullen: Aontú Call for All Ireland Investigation into British State Collusion after Operation Achilles Report.
Speaking on the publication of the Police Ombudsman’s Report, Aontú Deputy Leader & Candidate for Fermanagh/South Tyrone, Cllr Denise Mullen, has welcomed the report’s findings and states that this is more evidence of the inescapable fact of collusion between the British State and Loyalist paramilitaries to murder innocent people.
Cllr Mullen: “The 344-page report by the Police Ombudsman into the RUC handling of loyalist paramilitaries in South Belfast offers further vindication to the victims of British collusion. The report shows the RUC were embedded within the UDA and took part in murders. Indeed, 8 ‘UDA informants’ for the police were involved in the murder/attempted murder of 27 people. One of the worst instances of this collusion, was the RUC ‘destruction of files’ in the wake of the 1992 attack on the Sean Graham betting shop by loyalist gunmen who murdered 5 innocent Catholics and wounded 7 more. The report explicitly states the RUC deliberately destroyed files pertaining to the case, failed to test subject’s alibi or adequately test blood samples. Furthermore, guns used in the murders had previously been in police control only to be end up back in the hands of informants. The nexus between the Loyalist Paramilitaries, the RUC and British State in the murder of innocents is undeniable.”
“The need for an All-Ireland inquiry into the death toll of British collusion cannot be denied any longer. County by county, report after report, the full extent of British state-sponsored violence is becoming known. In the ‘Murder Triangle’ between Armagh and Tyrone, a British government-sponsored death squad made up of Loyalist terrorists, members of the British Military in Ireland and RUC officers, murdered over 120 innocents across the North of Ireland. The Miami Showband Massacre, the sectarian murders of the Reavey and O’Dowd families, the Dublin and Monaghan bombs, the murder of my father. In the wake of the Dublin & Monaghan bombings, the Barron Report stated RUC officers and UDR soldiers were involved in bombings, but the British government blocked the Inquiry’s investigation into the role of British collusion. Two public inquiries in Britain concluded that British security officials were involved in the murder of Pat Finucane. A previous Police Ombudsman’s report earlier this year, implicated the British State in 19 murders across Antrim, Derry, Tyrone and Donegal between 1993 and 1998. The evidence mounts and mounts. It is now time for a comprehensive 32 county investigation into the death toll of British collusion on our island.”
