Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: Legacy Cases

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

Before the Division, I was about to speak about a couple of cases that have given rise to concerns on my part and the part of others about the manner in which the police ombudsman’s office conducts its investigations.

I was going to talk about Loughinisland in a little detail, from the perspective of a public representative, but I will not now go into the detail, because of your advice, Mr Owen, that we may stray into areas covered by the judicial review. I shall merely say that, to date, the findings of court proceedings have not eased my concern about the manner of the report, the findings that arise from the report and, in particular, how evidence was gathered and those conclusions were drawn. I will not go into any further detail about the Loughinisland case, save to say, of course, that we must not lose sight of the fact that in each of these cases there are human tragedies.

In relation to Loughinisland, the murder of six Catholics by the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1994, in the Heights Bar, while they were watching a World cup game, is to be condemned without reservation. The issue for me is not that justice should be done for those six men—because it should—and that the perpetrators should be brought to justice; the issue for me is the police ombudsman’s findings in relation to the case.

I shall focus, perhaps a little more than I had expected to, on another case. It involved the killing of two people in the Creggan estate in Londonderry on 31 August 1988. It is sometimes referred to as the “Good Neighbour” bombing. It is a very tragic story, which in a way epitomises the tragedy of the Northern Ireland troubles. The resident of a flat at 38 Kildrum Gardens on the Creggan estate had been kidnapped by the Provisional IRA. They had planted in the property a booby-trap bomb that was permanently affixed and was designed to be triggered when someone entered the property—at any time. In that sense, it was an indiscriminate device: it would kill whoever walked into the property.

The Provisional IRA held the resident for a number of days, and the police in Northern Ireland became aware, through intelligence, that there was going to be an attempt to kill police officers. Although they were not given a precise location, the Creggan estate was identified as the general area. The police immediately introduced an exclusion zone for members of the security forces, because the intelligence that they had suggested that the device was aimed at the security forces, but they did not have any more detail than that.

As the days went by, other elements occurred that were linked to this incident. The IRA, becoming increasingly desperate because the security forces had not entered the area, never mind the property, tried a number of ruses to attract the police into the area so that they might trigger the device. That did not happen, and sadly, on the morning of 31 August—some six days after the kidnapping of the householder, I think—three of his neighbours went to investigate, because they had not seen the resident for a number of days. As good neighbours, they did the right thing and went to check on their neighbour. Sadly, on entering the property through a window, Sean Dalton, one of the neighbours, was killed instantly, along with Sheila Lewis. The other neighbour, Thomas Curran, was seriously injured.

Of course the IRA apologised for the killings, admitting that they had been a mistake, but to his credit, Dr Edward Daly, the then Bishop of Derry, presiding at the funeral mass of the two victims, said that the explosion did not go tragically wrong; it did what it was designed to do—kill people who went to the flat out of concern for the missing occupant.

Six years later, the relatives of Sean Dalton, one of the deceased, made a complaint to the police ombudsman’s office. They claimed that the police in Londonderry had been negligent in allowing civilians to approach the flat, and alleged that the Royal Ulster Constabulary was aware that the flat had been booby-trapped and therefore had failed in its duty, under article 2 of the European convention on human rights, to uphold the right to life of Mr Dalton.

The police ombudsman took eight years to investigate the case and, at the end of the investigation, concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, the police had been negligent and had failed to uphold Mr Dalton’s right to life. However, when we examine the police ombudsman’s report, we see that that conclusion is not based on hard evidence or facts; it is based on the balance of probabilities.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this very timely debate. Does he agree that in relation to this case, like so many others, we and the police ombudsman’s office have to ensure that, however intensive and comprehensive its investigations are, it must never allow the emphasis to depart from those who carried out the atrocity by allowing an investigation to stray into areas where more criticism is made of those whose job it is to try to deal with the aftermath than the people who perpetrated the act in the first place?

[Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in his assertion. Of course the appalling deaths of Sean Dalton and Sheila Lewis are to be condemned by us all. As has so often been the case in Northern Ireland, the actions of terrorists resulted in the tragic death—murder—of innocent people. The IRA cannot escape the disapprobation, the condemnation, of all of us for that heinous crime.