Former bishop condemns report linking priest to bombing

FORMER Bishop of Derry Edward Daly has hit out at the recent report which named Fr James Chesney a prime IRA suspect in the Claudy bombing in 1972.

Earlier this month, the North’s Police Ombudsman found that the RUC engaged in a “collusive act” in 1972 in how it dealt with high-level intelligence that the priest was a prime suspect in the IRA bombing which killed nine people and injured more than 30.

However, in a strongly worded article in yesterday’s issue of the Irish News, former Bishop of Derry Edward Daly said he was “not at all convinced” Fr Chesney was involved in the Claudy bombings and that he found aspects of the report “strange”.

Bishop Daly also hit out at media coverage of the report whose assumptions were based on RUC intelligence, an agency with a history he described as “far from clean”.

“Everyone takes the same unquestioning line and competes to write the most lurid headline. The once sacrosanct presumption of innocence has been dispensed with and replaced with a presumption of guilt. I am not at all convinced that Fr Chesney was involved in the Claudy bombings. I may be mistaken, but I do not think so. I was a contemporary of his at school. I did not know him very well but knew him reasonably well,” he wrote.

The bishop, who is perhaps best remembered for leading a group carrying a dying victim through the streets of Derry in search of aid on Bloody Sunday whilst waving a white tissue, also took issue with key aspects of the report.

“The Report aired suspicions about him that were based solely on intelligence reports. But intelligence and evidence are completely different things. Why was the Ombudsman unable to find evidence against him after years of investigation? He found only these ‘intelligence reports’, and 1972-type RUC intelligence at that.

“In the 1970s there was widespread scepticism about RUC Special Branch intelligence. Hundreds were interned on such intelligence. Now, media portray as fact unsubstantiated claims emanating from agencies whose history is anything but clean,” wrote Bishop Daly.