Human rights group says bill will suppress truth

A HUMAN rights organisation has expressed grave concern about a British Government bill allowing people who committed offences before the 1998 Good Friday Agreement to avoid serving a prison sentence.

London-based British Irish Rights Watch has campaigned for inquiries into the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane and other victims of alleged security force collusion with loyalists.

It said the Northern Ireland Offences Bill would suppress the truth further.

In an appeal to MPs to vote against it, the group said: “This bill, if enacted, will allow anyone who committed a crime prior to April 10, 1998, to claim that his or her motive was terrorist to get out of jail free. While in some cases it will be possible to prove beyond reasonable doubt that a crime was not motivated by terrorism, once a criminal claims to have been a member of a proscribed organisation and, for example, to have killed someone because she or he feared that the fact of his or her membership of the organisation would be exposed, it will be virtually impossible to disprove such assertions.

“Sir Hugh Orde, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, has recently established a Historic Enquiries Team to reexamine every conflict-related unsolved murder prior to April 10, 1998.

“It will examine over 3,000 deaths. On our reading of the bill, every single person charged by the Historic Enquiries Team will never serve a day in jail.

“What concerns us most is that agents of the state who colluded with terrorists will not be held to account because they will be able to claim that any crimes they committed were carried out in the efforts to combat terrorism.”

Victims’ groups, the SDLP, the Alliance Party and unionist parties have criticised the bill, accusing the government of handing out an amnesty to anyone who committed an offence before the Good Friday Agreement.

Northern Ireland Office minister David Hanson has insisted the bill will ensure people who have carried out offences have to answer for what they have done in a special judicial process.

It would mean people like paramilitaries who fled abroad or members of the security forces can avoid arrest and a jail sentence in Northern Ireland by applying to a commissioner who will examine if they are wanted for crimes.

If they are, the commissioner will give them a certificate keeping them out of jail but also initiating a legal process which will see their offences examined by a special tribunal with its own prosecutors and judges.

On-the-run paramilitaries, rogue members of the police and army and civilians suspected of crimes before 1998 would not have to attend the hearings.

If they are found guilty, they will get a licence similar to the one given to the republican and loyalist prisoners freed early under the Good Friday Agreement.

If they offend again, their licences could be revoked and they would be sent to prison.