Families hail UN inspection into shoot-to-kill claims

A top United Nations inspector will travel to Northern Ireland later this year to probe allegations that the Army operated a shoot-to-kill policy towards IRA men, it was claimed tonight.

Civil rights group Relatives for Justice have launched a major campaign to force the British government into answering questions about its policy in two controversial killings more than a decade ago.

Campaigners also want the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions, Pakistan-based Dr Asma Fahangir, to investigate claims loyalists who murdered a pensioner were plotting with the security forces.

Inquests into all three cases in the Co Tyrone area have been blocked because Defence and police chiefs refuse to provide material to the families’ lawyers, the grouping said.

Contact has been made with Dr Fahangir’s office and Relatives for Justice representatives are due to fly to Geneva to meet her in the autumn.

Spokesman Mark Thompson said: “We expect before the end of the year to have the Rapporteur in Co Tyrone to carry out a preliminary fact-finding visit.

“She would speak with the families, their lawyers, the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable.”

Ultimately the families want to have government officials ordered to appear before a high-powered UN Human Rights Committee to answer tough questions.

This should happen alongside inquests into each of the deaths, they claim.

“The UN cannot demand documents but it can highlight issues and compile a report which carries significant moral and ethical weight,” Mr Thompson said.

“That report would be delivered to the council of ministers and the UN Human Rights Committee and we believe the British government would then have to go to Geneva.”

The first of the cases involves IRA men Tony Doris, Lawrence McNally and Peter Ryan, who were shot dead by the SAS as they drove through the village of Coagh in a stolen car on June 3, 1991.

It is believed the men were planning an attack when the soldiers opened fire.

Peter Ryan’s sister, Rosemary, claimed today: “We believe that the killings were pre-planned and pre-meditated.

“A conscious decision was taken at several levels to kill our relatives rather than prevent actions and make safe and effective arrests.”

Relatives for Justice has also posed questions about the SAS killings of Kevin Barry O’Donnell, Peter Clancy, Sean O’Farrell and Daniel Vincent at Clonoe near Coalisland on February 16, 1992.

Minutes earlier they had used a heavy machine gun to open fire on the local Royal Ulster Constabulary station.

The third case involves the murder of Roseanne Mallon, 76, by loyalists in her home near Dungannon, Co Tyrone, on May 8, 1994.

The Ulster Volunteer Force claimed it had been trying to kill nephews of the dead woman who had served prison sentences.

Relatives for Justice claim a covert Army unit had been observing the Mallon house using sophisticated surveillance cameras at the time of the shooting but had decided not to intervene.

Senior nationalist and republican political representatives in the Mid Ulster area have backed the families campaign.

The SDLP’s Denis Haughey said: “The British government has yet to comply properly with European Human Rights law by overhauling the justice system fully so that the truth can properly be established here in the North.

“All the victims of the troubles are entitled to the truth and we will be supporting these families all the way to the United Nations.”

Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness said: “The fact that they have had to resort to the UN route is an indictment on the current inquest system and on the obstruction policy adopted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland.”