Dead governor ordered Maze Prison files ‘to be destroyed’

Responsibility for the destruction of security files on hundreds of former paramilitary prisoners in the top security Maze Prison was today laid at the feet of a Northern Ireland prison governor who has since died.

The public inquiry into allegations of state collusion in the murder of Loyalist Volunteer Force leader Billy Wright inside the Maze in 1997 was told there is no written record of the order for the destruction of the key documents.

The inquiry, chaired by Lord MacLean, is holding a week-long preliminary hearing concerned solely with the recovery of certain documents.

It is seeking specific documents relating to the Maze Prison at the time Wright was murdered by three Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) inmates.

The preliminary hearings were called because the inquiry team was having difficulty getting the documents from the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS).

Under questioning today, Maureen Johnson, a junior governor at Magilligan Prison, which took over as Northern Ireland's main jail after the Maze was closed down, said she had been told in late 2001 or 2002 by the prison governor Martin Mogg to destroy the files on some 800 inmates who had been held in the Maze but released under the Good Friday Agreement.

The files destroyed included those on the three men convicted of murdering Wright.

Mrs Johnson told Derek Bachelor QC, senior counsel for the inquiry, Mr Mogg told her to get rid of the files during a meeting in her cramped office at Magilligan, where she was employed in the prisoner security department.