Report: British troops at loyalist killing scene

Former republican prisoner Sam Marshall was killed in a hail of automatic gunfire, but the presence nearby of a red Maestro car, later found to be a military intelligence vehicle, sparked claims of a security force role in the killing.

It has now emerged the car was one of six vehicles in a major surveillance operation involving eight armed undercover soldiers – and though the loyalist killers launched the attack within yards of armed troops and escaped - investigators said there was no evidence of state collusion with the gunmen.

But John Marshall, a brother of the 31-year-old murder victim, said: “All we had heard about before this was the Maestro. But now, this has opened a big can of worms.”

The three republicans – who included Colin Duffy who was acquitted in January of murdering two soldiers at Massereene army base in Antrim – had been signing in at the Lurgan police station as part of bail conditions for charges of possession of ammunition.

The presence of the Maestro, and questions over how the loyalists knew when the republican trio would be leaving the police station, sparked major controversy in the 1990s and led the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) and government to deny anything suspicious had taken place.

A review of the unsolved case by the police Historical Enquiries Team (HET) has now found:

:: At least eight undercover soldiers were deployed near the killing, with their commander monitoring from a remote location;

:: The armed military intelligence personnel at the scene were in six cars, including the noted red Maestro;

:: Two plainclothed soldiers with camera equipment were in an observation post at the entrance of the police station as the three republicans arrived and left;

:: Two undercover soldiers followed the republicans on foot, and were within 50-100 yards of the attack, but said they did not to see the killing in which the gunmen fired 49 shots;

:: After the two masked loyalists jumped from a Rover car and started shooting, the troops did not return fire, claiming it was out of their line of sight and too far away, but alerted colleagues who launched an unsuccessful search for the killers. Despite being in a republican area, the soldiers make no reference to feeling at risk from the gunmen.

:: The killers’ guns are believed to have been used in four other murders and an attempted murder. Weapons of the same type have been linked by police to seven further killings and four attempted murders carried out in 1988/89;

:: The RUC found gloves near the gang’s burned-out getaway car, but the gloves were subsequently lost;

:: The RUC sought to deny the existence of a surveillance operation by giving “misleading or incomplete” statements. But RUC Special Branch had briefed the undercover troops;

:: Investigators could not rule in, or rule out, that the RUC leaked information to the loyalists. But they said the killers may have gathered their own intelligence.

The HET praised much of the original RUC investigation and found no new lines of inquiry on the attack which was claimed by the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

But the Marshall family has said the review of the case – which did not reinterview the soldiers but relied on RUC statements from the time – has only served to raise further questions.

Sam Marshall, his brother-in-law Tony McCaughey, and Colin Duffy, were known to the security forces and were high-profile republicans.

John Marshall said: “The gunmen meant to kill the three men that night, and it went wrong. The other two guys lived to tell the tale.”

Lurgan, a town half an hour down the M1 motorway from Belfast, was an area that witnessed intense violence and was at the heart of a region dubbed the Murder Triangle.

Sam Marshall, who was a Sinn Fein member, was sentenced to seven years for arson as a teenager and took part in IRA protests for political status while he was held in the top-security Maze prison.

But John Marshall said any suggestion of state collusion in his killing had to be probed. “We always believed that the state forces were to protect law and order,” he said.

His brother Gary highlighted the links to other loyalist killings and said: “People need to know what was actually going on.”

A police investigation into a robbery in Belfast led to the arrest of two loyalists later convicted for supplying the killers’ car. The gunmen have never been identified.