Ombudsman 'in witch-hunt against RUC officers'

The North’s Police Ombudsman is carrying out a witch-hunt against RUC officers who defended the public against terror, a unionist peer claimed today.

As Nuala O’Loan prepares to publish an explosive report into allegations that a ruthless gang of loyalist paramilitary informers were allowed to murder at will, Ken Maginnis claimed she was biased against the force.

Former Ulster Unionist MP Maginnis said: “The Police Ombudsman’s office is engaged in a campaign of stealth where, by leaks, it seeks to tarnish the reputation of the good men and women who, at huge personal cost, rescued Northern Ireland from the brink of a civil war.”

His withering assessment came as the British government braced itself for the devastating findings of a massive inquiry into a north Belfast Ulster Volunteer Force unit’s bloody reign of terror.

The gang, based in the Mount Vernon estate, was allegedly heavily infiltrated by agents working for Special Branch.

After a sprawling probe that began with the killing of former RAF man Raymond McCord Jr, 22, in 1997 but has widened out to include a decade of murders, Mrs O’Loan is expected to reveal damning evidence of collusion among detectives and paramilitaries.

Senior RUC men are understood to have been implicated, although their names will not be disclosed in the report published on Monday.

Their identities will, however, be contained in a confidential and even more extensive dossier to be handed to Chief Constable Hugh Orde and Northern Secretary Peter Hain.

With the inquiry centred on Mark Haddock, a UVF boss and Special Branch agent shot and wounded in an assassination attempt last year by former associates desperate to silence him, Mrs O’Loan’s findings are to be hugely damaging and embarrassing for the intelligence services operating in the North.

Files are with the Crown Prosecution Service, which will consider if criminal charges are to be pursued.

Despite the scale of the scandal uncovered, Maginnis was unrepentant.

He added: “The Police Ombudsman’s office has been costly, ineffective and unfair.

“It has brought misery and unhappiness to the victims of terrorism and has persecuted those who put their lives on the line for our community.”