Raymond McCord jnr
On January 22nd this year the Police Ombudsman, Mrs. Nuala O’Loan, published a devastating report into the events surrounding the killing of Raymond McCord Jnr, which was to rock the policing and political establishment.
On 9th November 1997 members of the Mount Vernon UVF, in North Belfast, kicked Raymond McCord Jnr to death in a vicious attack. In the weeks and months following the attack his father Raymond Snr, himself a Protestant from North Belfast, began to realise that there was no effective investigation into his son’s killing and people from the local area were telling him the name of the person responsible for his son’s death and that he was working for the RUC/PSNI and therefore would never be brought to justice. Indeed Raymond McCord Snr was the victim of persistent harassment by both the RUC and the PSNI in a bid to coerce him from his campaign for truth and justice for his son. He is still under death threat by the UVF whose political wing is the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP).
Mr McCord, at great risk to his own life, gathered evidence and brought these concerns to the Police Ombudsman in May 2002. What followed was one of the most comprehensive investigations ever carried out by the Police Ombudsman’s office. Indeed such was level of resistance by the authorities to Mrs. O’Loans investigation that the NIO initially succeeded in denying the requested additional financial resources to enable her office to conduct its inquiries thus frustrating the inquiry for up to 18 months during which period vital information was destroyed.
Other forms of resistance came from 3 former heads of RUC Special Branch, Chris Albison, Freddie Hall, and Raymond White who all refused to cooperate. White was also a former Assistant Chief Constable to Sir Ronnie Flanagan. Flanagan, it was widely reported, during his 4-hour interview, with officers from the Ombudsman’s office, was vague and could not recall in any great detail answers to the questions put to him. Flanagan is currently the head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies (HMIC) with responsibility for setting the standards of policing across England, Scotland, and Wales and for the PSNI. There have been repeated calls for his sacking and for him to be stripped of his Knighthood.
During the entire period of Haddock’s tenure Flanagan was Divisional Commander for Greater Belfast, Operations Head for the same area, Head of Special Branch, Assistant Chief Constable and Chief Constable
Mrs O’Loans findings not only vindicated Raymond McCord Snr’s worst fears but also officially exposed the deep and systemic policy of collusion within the RUC and elements of the PSNI. Raymond McCord Jnr was murdered on the orders of RUC/PSNI Special Branch agent Mark Haddock. Several paid agents who are responsible for multiple murders not detailed in the Ombudsman’s report remain within the Mount Vernon UVF. It is believed that some may still be working for the PSNI. The Police Ombudsman’s full report is available on the website http://www.policeombudsman.org
Among the findings of the Police Ombudsman are:
>Paid police agents, including Mark Haddock, were known by the RUC and identified in police reports as responsible for the murders of
1. Peter McTasney (24/02/91);
2. Sharon McKenna (17/01/93);
3. Sean McParland (25/02/94);
4. Gary Convie (17/05/94);
5. Eamon Fox (17/05/94);
6. Gerald Brady (17/06/94);
7. Thomas Sheppard (21/03/96);
8. John Harbinson (18/05/97);
9. Raymond McCord Jnr (09/11/97);
10. Thomas English (31/10/00) – No action was taken in respect of any of these murders despite clear evidence.
>That Mark Haddock’s, (referred to as Agent 1 in the report), details are linked in RUC/PSNI files to at least 5 other killings. – No action was taken in respect of these killings despite the evidence. It is widely believed that Haddock was involved in many other murders not yet officially documented.
>That Mark Haddock was identified in police files as being linked to ten attempted murders between 1989 and 2002.
>That police intelligence linked Mark Haddock and other paid agents in a significant number of crimes in respect of which no or insufficient action was taken including armed robbery, grievous bodily harm, punishment shootings, possession of ammunition, drug dealing, extortion, conspiracy to murder and threats to kill.
>Mark Haddock was paid at least £79,000 during his time as an agent.
>A series of grave concerns about the systemic RUC and PSNI practices around running agents for police “intelligence” which included giving cover to murder suspects who were being used as paid agents, and the destruction of key evidence in murder cases in order to protect paid agents.
>In 1997 the RUC introduced new rules for agent handling, a decision was made by chief officers that those rules did not apply to RUC Special Branch.
>The lack of co-operation of former and serving police officers in the course of the investigation, including a lack of co-operation by former chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan.
These findings have substantiated the assertion by many families that collusion was a policy endorsed by the very top of the policing, military, and above all political establishments. That this occurred in a relatively short time period in a small area of North Belfast gives an indication of the scale of collusion when this case is applied to the rest of the North. Indeed on the day the report was published British Secretary of State, Peter Hain, was forced to concede that this incident could be replicated across the country.
|
