Cousin of Claudy bombing victim says the full truth must now be uncovered

Coleraine man Adrian Eakin, while welcoming the findings of last week's Police Ombudsman's report into the atrocity, said the full truth was still to be uncovered.

Adrian's cousin Kathryn, then aged eight, was among the nine people killed and more than 30 injured when three vehicles exploded on the village's main street without warning on 31 July.

It was one of the worst atrocities of the bloodiest year of the Troubles.

Adrian said: "We are glad that this report has come out and confirmed what we knew, that the parish priest James Chesney and South Derry Brigade of the IRA carried out these bombings.

"But nothing less than a full public inquiry into the atrocity will satisfy the families of the Claudy bombings. This also has implications for Coleraine to as it was the same IRA team who carried out the Railway Road attack in which six people died."

The Ombudsman's Report revealed that Father Chesney directed the devastating IRA car bomb attack and that his role was covered up by senior police officers, government ministers and the Catholic hierarchy.

The report said that RUC detectives had concluded "that the priest was the IRA's director of operations in South Derry and was alleged to have been directly involved in the bombings and other terrorist incidents".

The report went on to state: "The arrest of a priest in connection with such an emotive atrocity at a time when sectarian killings in Northern Ireland were out of control and the province stood on the brink of civil war was feared, by senior politicians, as likely to destabilise the security situation even further. A deal was therefore arranged behind closed doors to remove Fr. Chesney from the province without provoking sectarian fury."

Adrian added: "We always knew the truth about what happened though it has taken a very long time to come out.

"It seems as if the RUC are getting all the blame for everything that happened but there is no doubt in my mind that there was collusion in the highest levels of the RUC, government and Catholic Church.

"I feel that (the Secretary of State) Willie Whitelaw did not take the decision to cover it up on his own. The present inquiry has lifted the lid off Pandora's Box, but there is much, much more to come out.

"There is no doubt that there was political interference in policing and justice and that British intelligence's full role in this has yet to come out. Their records have to be released into the public domain."

Adrian said that as a youngster he grew up beside Kathryn and her parents Billy and Merle in Claudy.

"I remember Kathryn being born and her as a toddler. Her mother Meryl was a very kind hearted woman.

"I was older than Kathyn and she would have played with my younger brother and sisters. We were in and out of their house all the time.

"Her death, like the death of my son Andrew, never leaves you. She had just come up from a holiday in Castlerock that morning and was cleaning the windows of her father's shop on Main Street when the bomb went off.

"She was a totally innocent victim. The bombings were meant to have been a sectarian attack but Protestants and Catholics both bled and died in the street that day.

"Claudy was a mixed village, people lived cheek to jowl with one another. Everyone knew everyone.

"The question is if this matterer had been properly dealt with at the time the people responsible would have been apprehended and bombings like the one in Coleraine could have been prevented."

REPORTS: David Rankin