OTRs warned ‘comfort letters’ no longer count

During the ongoing inquiry into OTRs, Kevin McGinty, Director of Criminal Law and Deputy Head, Attorney General’s Office, told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, that if the letters had been issued by mistake and were to be withdrawn, he believed the recipients would have to be given some time to go “on the run” again if the authorities ever wanted to prosecute them in future.

Today (September 9) Mrs Villiers signalled that the scheme is over and that the letters are no longer valid.

She stated: “Individuals who received letters or statements through the scheme should take careful note of today’s statement.

“Fair and proper notice will also be provided to each of those who made requests on behalf of specific individuals.”

According to the Minister the letters do not represent any commitment that the recipient will not be investigated or prosecuted, if that is now considered appropriate by the responsible authorities.

She warned that those who received individual or composite letters indicating that they were ‘not wanted’ and who derived comfort from that, should cease to derive any such comfort.

In short, recipients should cease to place any reliance on their letters.

However, decisions about investigation and prosecution in specific cases, now or in the future, will be taken on the basis of intelligence or evidence relating to whether or not the person concerned committed offences.

These decisions will be based on the views of those who now have responsibility for these matters.

Their views may be the same as those that led to the letters being sent in the past, or they may be different.

Mrs Villiers added the proviso that the letter recipients are not necessarily wanted by the PSNI or the various forces in England and Scotland.

She said: “This statement does not mean that all those who previously received ‘not wanted’ assurances are now considered ‘wanted.’

“It simply means they are in the same position as any other member of the public. If there is considered to be evidence or intelligence of their involvement in crime, they can be investigated by the police. And if the evidence is sufficient to warrant prosecution, they will be prosecuted.”

Back in April Mr McGinty told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee he believed attempting to prosecute without formally withdrawing the letters would lead to successful ‘abuse-of-process’ challenges as successfully levelled in the John Downey case.

He said: “The reason why I say that is that if we simply arrest them and prosecute them, then we will be in exactly the same position as we were with Mr Downey and we can guarantee that we will not survive and abuse-of-process argument and therefore the victims in this particular case will never get any trial.

“If we tell them and give them the opportunity to abscond, if we ever manage to get them back, we will probably survive any abuse-of-process argument and we will be able to try them. You just have to balance the public interest between those two things.”