In an unprecedented move the Police Ombudsman for the north-east of Ireland, Michael Maguire, is to sue the Chief Constable of the PSNI, the region’s paramilitary police force, over his organisation’s repeated failures to cooperate with enquiries into dozens of killings carried out by British terrorist groupings and others during the 1966-2005 conflict. From an investigation by The Detail:
“NORTHERN Ireland’s Police Ombudsman Michael Maguire is to launch a legal action against Chief Constable Matt Baggott over the failure to provide information on major investigations including killings from the Troubles.
The dramatic move follows long-running complaints over delays in the police supplying of documents and intelligence to investigators reviewing allegations of security force wrongdoing.
The ombudsman is understood to have instructed former Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales Sir Keir Starmer to seek a judicial review of the police conduct.
The police said they had met their legal obligations but had to balance the release of sensitive information with the right to protect life, a duty which it said it took “extremely seriously”.
The dispute centres on recent and historic cases, but The Detail believes that the list includes the 1994 Loughinisland massacre, where loyalist gunmen killed six people as they watched the World Cup in a Co Down bar.
In a statement to The Detail the ombudsman’s office said investigations into the circumstances surrounding more than 60 deaths “have now been stalled by a PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) refusal to provide certain material”.”
At the start of May the same news and current affairs website revealed that John Leckey, the north-east’s senior coroner, had officially complained that his investigations into historical deaths during the Long War were being being starved of resources by the British state.
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
So how much longer is this going to go on?…..With the recent behaviour of the First Minister, it is clear what we are dealing with. The Unionist community and politicians and paramilitaries are still not getting it, are they?…..The nationalist community entered into the peace agreement, ad then they have picked and poked at it ever since, from every angle, to try and slowly bring it down and put the clock back. Enough is enough. , Serious thought must now be given to the Republican politicians withdrawing from the Assembly. If they do so, even direct rule is preferable to these racist nasty fascist thugs. The PSNI also needs to be boycotted. A withdrawal of such cooperation would bring down the NI Government, expose its increasingly “Bantustan” nature, and bias. What exactly are the Nationalist community now getting from the peace process?….The recent attempts to arrest and try Republicans, in violation of the agreements, is an example. I am seriously worried by the direction things are going in.
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A lot to agree with in those points, Graham.
I was always of the opinion that the PSNI should have been, from its inception, an unarmed fully civilianised police service with armed officers confined to specialist units. Others favoured a 10 year transitional process from armed to unarmed. No one in Republican circles believed that 16 years after the Belfast Agreement that policing in the north-east would still be conducted by a paramilitary force. An opportunity was missed to make a clean break with the past and undermine the rational of “Dissident” attacks on the PSNI. The view I hear from those in their twenties and thirties is the PSNI as simply the RUC under a different name. I fear troubling times ahead. Reform is failing (has failed?).
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