Victims' commissioner publishes final report

Recommendations empowering victims and survivors of the Northern conflict are to be published this week.

Interim Victims’ Commissioner Bertha McDougall is releasing her annual report outlining the way forward before she resigns later this year.

Tomorrow’s findings will help inform Northern Secretary Peter Hain’s appointment of a permanent victims’ commissioner.

More than 3,700 people died and countless were injured during armed campaigns by republicans and loyalists and shootings by the security forces.

Central to Mr Hain’s task will be finding an appointee acceptable to both communities after his nomination of police widow Mrs McDougall was challenged by the High Court in Belfast.

Lord Justice Girvan ruled last year that her appointment was “improper and politically motivated” as a concession to unionists.

He said he would not quash her appointment because her term of office technically finished on December 5.

Attorney General Lord Goldsmith has ordered an inquiry into alleged efforts to mislead his court by the Northern Secretary.

Mr Hain is to challenge the ruling that the appointment was unlawful in the Court of Appeal.

The case was launched by west Belfast woman Brenda Downes, whose husband was killed by a Royal Ulster Constabulary plastic bullet in 1984.

She had claimed the move was a sop to Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party.

Victims’ groups, including the Omagh Self-Help Group of relatives bereaved by the 1998 dissident republican bombing that killed 29 people, have called for a commissioner with real powers.

They want an appointee who is a victim and has a background independent of government.