Orde faces quiz on collusion scandal

Northern Chief Constable Hugh Orde will be questioned today about collusion between his officers and a gang of loyalist killers.

He is to meet members of the Policing Board in Belfast following a damning report into the protection Special Branch handlers gave to Ulster Volunteer Force informers behind up to 15 murders.

Nuala O’Loan, the Police Ombudsman whose dossier revealed the intelligence scandal, is also to give a separate briefing to the watchdog.

With nationalist MPs demanding the resignation of Ronnie Flanagan, the chief constable at the height of the UVF’s bloody campaign, Sinn Féin’s chief negotiator Martin McGuinness is to meet Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern in Dundalk to express the party's alarm at the findings.

Mr Flanagan came out fighting, however, amid a barrage of criticism over how Special Branch paid and shielded a terrorist agent at the centre of the storm.

He faced a clamour to explain what he did and did not know, with opponents appalled by the level of collusion, calling for him to quit his current post as head of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary.

SDLP leader Mark Durkan said he has written to British Prime Minister Tony Blair urging him to sack Mr Flanagan if he does not stand down.

Mr Flanagan insisted he knew nothing about the disclosures made by Mrs O’Loan.

Denying any suggestion that he refused to cooperate with the three-year inquiry, he said: “With respect to the specific matters dealt with in the ombudsman’s report, at no time did I have any knowledge or evidence of officers at any level behaving in the ways that have been described.

“I would find such conduct to be abhorrent and if such behaviour took place my hope would be that it would be the subject of criminal or disciplinary proceedings.”

Raymond McCord, who triggered the ombudsman’s investigation with his complaint that Special Branch agents beat his son Raymond to death in 1997, Mr McGuinness and Mr Durkan were all scathing about the former chief constable.

The SDLP leader stepped up his attack after Mr Flanagan’s denials by referring to Mrs O’Loan’s assessment that the scandal could not have happened without knowledge and support at the highest levels of the RUC.

“I warned Tony Blair that Ronnie Flanagan’s appointment as inspector of constabulary would come back to haunt him. Today it has,” the Foyle MP said.

“I have written to Tony Blair to demand that if Ronnie Flanagan does not go, he should be dismissed.”

Mrs O’Loan’s investigation, Operation Ballast, identified Mark Haddock as the key agent running the UVF gang in north Belfast’s Mount Vernon estate.

He was paid at least £80,000 (€121,500) and protected from prosecution by Special Branch handlers who destroyed evidence, tipped him off and guided him through sham police interviews throughout a catalogue of murders stretching back to the early 1990s.

It emerged yesterday that the former terror boss is under armed guard in hospital.

Haddock, 37, was transferred from his prison cell to undergo new surgery.

Up to four police officers are understood to be stationed round-the-clock at his ward in Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital.

Months before he was jailed for 10 years last November for attacking a nightclub doorman, former associates tried to silence him in an assassination attempt.

Haddock was shot six times in May after going to a rendez vous near Doagh, Newtownabbey.

Although he survived the gun attack, it left him with serious injuries. It is believed he will need a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.