Judges to rule if IRA deaths breached human rights
European judges will rule tomorrow on whether the Government is guilty of violating the human rights of IRA members shot dead in Northern Ireland by British troops and the RUC.
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg is considering four separate incidents, including one which prompted claims that a shoot-to-kill policy was being operated by the security forces.
Relatives of the victims say the shootings and the subsequent investigations amounted to a breach of the Human Rights Convention, which guarantees the right to life.
The four incidents span a decade and involve the deaths of 12 IRA men and one Sinn Fein member at the hands of the SAS, the RUC and the Ulster Defence Association - allegedly acting in collusion with the RUC.
Lawyers for the families claim that excessive force was used and that there was no effective investigation after each incident, in contravention of the requirements of the human rights code, to which Britain is a signatory.
If the Strasbourg judges find that the Convention has been breached, they have the power to award costs and damages.
But, apart from the moral pressure generated by a finding against a government which has signed the Human Rights Convention, they have no power to direct a change in national laws.
The cases were brought by relatives of Patrick Kelly and seven other IRA men who died in a gunfight with the SAS; the father of Pearse Jordan, shot dead by the RUC; the son of Gervaise McKerr, who died with two other Provisionals at a the hands of a special RUC unit; and the mother of Sinn Fein member Patrick Shanaghan, shot by the UDA, acting in collusion with the RUC, according to a public inquiry.
Lawyers for relatives of Kelly and the seven others who died in the worst single loss of life for the IRA at Loughgall, Co Armagh, in 1987 argued in the human rights court that excessive force was used, that there was a failure properly to control and conduct the SAS ambush operation, and that there was no effective investigation into the circumstances of the shooting.
The subsequent inquest was flawed, they claimed, with no legal aid for relatives, lack of advance disclosure to the family of inquest statements, the use of public interest immunity certificates and the lack of compulsion upon the police officers who fired the shots to give evidence.
Similar claims of breaches of the human rights code were made on behalf of relatives of the other victims.
In addition, it was claimed that the trial judge in the prosecution of RUC officers involved in the killing of McKerr and two other IRA men was biased.
In Jordan’s case, it was claimed that the failure to prosecute those involved in an "unlawful killing" amounted to a breach of human rights, while in the case of Shanaghan, it was claimed that inquest was flawed because its scope was too limited and it was delayed excessively.
