Relatives' families kept out of Stevens conference

As police chief John Stevens arrived at a Belfast city centre hotel to publish a report into collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, he was met by angry relatives of some of those murdered and injured by loyalist gangs.

Family members were furious that they had been kept out of the specially arranged press conference.

Mark Thompson of the Relatives for Justice campaign group said: “It’s an absolute disgrace that the families who have been bereaved and who are being discussed in this report have been excluded.

“It’s bad enough that only around 20 pages of this document is being published without us having to endure this sort of treatment.”

During the biggest investigation of its kind ever mounted in Britain, John Stevens found that members of the Army's covert Force Research Unit and the police Special Branch were guilty of a major lack of accountability by failing to keep records.

“The unlawful involvement of agents in murder implies that the security forces sanction killings,” the Stevens report said.