Bid to stop renewed NI murder probe

Police in Northern Ireland tonight faced legal action for launching a new investigation into a loyalist sectarian murder nearly seven years ago just as they were officially condemned for failures in the first murder probe.

The court action to stop the investigation is being threatened by the murder victim’s family who want an outside force to carry it out.

The new probe was announced by PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde just ahead of another damning report by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland which heavily criticised the original investigation of the May 1997 murder.

Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan branded inquiries into the killing of 61-year-old Sean Brown “incomplete and inadequate”.

She concluded there were “significant failures in the investigation” by officers of the former RUC.

And she condemned the failure of Special Branch to hand on intelligence information about those possibly responsible. “I think it was enormously important that the intelligence was not passed on”, she said,

She focused on the “unexplained disappearance” of an important police document on the case after her inquiry was announced.

She said the disappearance was “sinister” and had “seriously impeded my investigation”.

Mr Brown, chairman of the GAA club in Bellaghy, Co Derry, was abducted as he locked up the club gates, bundled into the boot of his own car and later found shot dead a few miles away.

The Loyalist Volunteer Force claimed admitted the murder and although a number of people were arrested for questioning, no one was charged.

Despite the failings, Mrs O’Loan said she had found no evidence of police collusion in the murder, including no evidence that police allowed the vehicles used by the killers “safe passage” from the area.

Mrs O’Loan recommended that a “full independent review” be launched into the murder.

But less than two hours beforehand, Hugh Orde, admitting there had been “significant failures” in the original investigation, pre-empted her move by announcing the establishment of a special team to re-investigate the murder.

It will be staffed entirely by officers from within the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

The family of Mr Brown said they would not accept a PSNI investigation, “We want it by a totally outside force,” said the murdered man’s son Damian.

The family solicitor, Kevin Winter, said the Ombudsman’s report was a “damning indictment” of the police investigation.

It had revealed “a litany of deficiencies and a mockery of a police investigation”, he said. A reinvestigation by the PSNI would “only be a case of tarring over the cracks using the same brush”.

He revealed he had been instructed by the Brown family that “if there is to be a PSNI investigation, then the family will be seeking legal redress to stop that.

“They have called quite clearly for an outside police investigation other than the PSNI,” he said.

The PSNI said they had no comment to make on the threatened legal action.

The Superintendent who headed the original murder investigation, since retired, was also involved at a senior level with the Omagh Bomb investigation which was heavily criticised in an Ombudsman’s report two years ago.

Mrs O’Loan said he could face no disciplinary action because of his retirement.

But she said she had written to the Chief Constable recommending that his deputy – now himself a serving superintendent – be given retraining if he had not already had it.

She said she did not believe there was a deliberate culture of not investigating murders properly.

Among some 1,800 unsolved murders from over 30 years of terrorism were those of police officers, prison officers and soldiers, she said.

“I think a lot of the problem was a lack of training, a lack of skills, a lack of management.”

Of the particular murder investigation she said: “It was a very, very failed investigation, there’s no question about that. Simple things that could have been done, were not done.

“There is no question about it, the Browns were right in the complaint that they made to me.”

Returning to the missing Murder Investigation Policy File which vanished from a police station after her investigation into the conduct of the case was launched in 2001, she said it was a critical document in any investigation into the police.

“That is the document in which the senior investigating officer records all his decisions, all his considerations – why he did what he did, why he didn’t do things.

“This document would have enabled me to find out who was responsible for failures in this investigation.

“Ultimately the senior investigating officer is the responsible officer but that document may have told me other things,” she said.

Its absence “seriously impeded my investigation”, she added.

She told a Belfast press conference: “I regard it as sinister that this document disappeared – it is the only document, the only file , that disappeared from that particular police station”.

The SDLP policing spokesman, Assembly member Alex Attwood, said the revelations in the Ombudsman’s report were of the gravest concern and raised “fundamental questions about the nature of the RUC investigation and the attitude towards the murder of a well-respected GAA person.”

He said the report’s recommendations for a full independent review should be accepted by the PSNI ane that the police need to realise that many of the issues around the case went to the very heart of nationalist anxieties about the old RUC.

“Only by accepting these recommendations can the police demonstrate that the new order prevails and that the old policing order is gone and gone for good,” he said”.

Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness branded the report a “damning indictment” of the police.

He said it was his belief that “serious questions remain over the current position of Ronnie Flanagan.”

Mr Flanagan was the Chief Constable at the time of the investigation, and that of the Omagh probe.