Retired police officers call for fresh Claudy inquiry

THE Northern Ireland Retired Police Officers Association has called on the PSNI Chief Constable to initiate a new inquiry into the Claudy bombings.

In a statement released on Monday the organisation challenged some of the findings of the recently released Police Ombudsman's report into the 1972 atrocity. The statement also alleges that other relevant issues have been overlooked. And, the Association also contends that the rights of deceased RUC officers have not been properly protected.

The Retired Police Officers' Association said relatives of the dead and injured had also been let down by what it described as the "inadequate" and "highly constrained" nature of the investigation.

The statement from the organisation also said there were serious shortcomings in the report because of a "one-dimensional and highly selective approach" appeared to have been adopted which had left many retired police officers feeling as if they had been made "scapegoats".

Information obtained and subsequently released in the Ombudsman's report also fell far short of what could justify its conclusions, the statement said.

Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson's report found that the police, Catholic Church and the state were embroiled in a conspiracy to cover up the suspected actions of priest, Fr James Chesney, in the bombings. The re-examination by the Ombudsman, which centred on the role of the RUC in the original investigation, found that high-level talks led to Fr Chesney being moved to the Irish Republic. Fr Chesney died in 1980, without ever having been questioned by the RUC. Mr Hutchinson's report said the RUC was guilty of a "collusive act", in relation to disguising the suspected role of the priest. The report also utilised excerpts of contemporary RUC intelligence which named Fr Chesney as an IRA leader in the South Derry Brigade of the Provisional IRA.

But, the retired Officers' Association has said the "decision making process at the time" had to be "measured against what was happening" in Northern Ireland when the Claudy bombings took place.

The Association said it would have been infinitely more desirable" if the late Fr Chesney had been interviewed regarding his alleged role in the attacks which claimed nine lives on July 31, 1972. It claimed that the actions taken by police and other authorities had been fundamentally misrepresented in Mr Hutchinson's report and wrongly presented as "collusion, that could amount to criminal wrongdoing."

The Retired Officers' Association said: "The Association has, as a consequence of its deep concern that such an incomplete record of the Claudy atrocity is now in the public domain, written to the Chief Constable urging a complete criminal re-investigation into all aspects of the bombings, in the hope that some offenders may still be brought to justice."

Last week it emerged that Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness admitted meeting Fr Chesney despite a denial to a BBC programme in 2002.

Mr McGuinness who admitted to the Saville Inquiry being second-in-command of the IRA in Londonderry on Bloody Sunday, the same year as the Claudy bombings, said he had forgotten travelling to Donegal to speak with the priest on his deathbed in 1980.

In a statement Mr McGuinness said: "I never knew Fr Chesney before Claudy; I never knew Fr Chesney for many years after the bombing. I was told he was a republican sympathiser;would I go and see him and meet with him in County Donegal?"

It also emerged last week that a former Deputy Chairman of the Policing Board also met Fr James Chesney.

Denis Bradley, himself a former Catholic Priest, also chaired the Consultative Group on the past which dealt with the legacy of the conflict.

Mr Bradley said he was not aware of Fr Chesney's link to the atrocity at the time. He said he found the priest flamboyant and a little immature and added he was not surprised that Martin McGuinness forgot meeting the priest shortly before his death.

"Outside of that I don't really have any memory, apart from I liked him, but then I like flamboyant people. I certainly had no knowledge of the fact there were any accusations or insinuations that he was involved in the IRA or the Claudy bombings, so it wasn't common knowledge at that particular time," said Mr Bradley.

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