Ex-Sinn Féin chief wants quashed conviction laid bare
Former Sinn Féin publicity director Danny Morrison today demanded the courts reveal why a conviction linking him to an IRA kidnap plot was dramatically overturned.
The leading republican was among eight people arrested after security forces swooped on a house in west Belfast in 1990, where an informer was being interrogated by the IRA.
But the Court of Appeal in Belfast quashed the convictions today after the panel of three judges, led by Lord Chief Justice Brian Kerr, read confidential files on the case.
Morrison demanded that the closed files be made public and claimed the convictions had collapsed because of the role of security force agents.
The Prosecution Service signalled that it will move to block disclosure of the files, but today the Lord Chief Justice said he saw no reason to do so, but would consider arguments at a further hearing next month.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred all eight convictions to the Court of Appeal, but it would only give its reason for doing so in a confidential file passed to the court.
At the time of his arrest the top republican claimed he had only arrived at the house to arrange a press conference where the informant was to admit working for the security forces.
Today he alleged the presence of a separate highly-placed agent at the centre of the episode was now being concealed.
Mr Morrison claimed the disclosure of the full details would link the security forces to the work of the IRA’s so-called “nutting-squad” which detected and murdered informers.
“What was refreshing about what the judges have said, and it’s good in this new dispensation we are in, is that they were quite prepared to state the reasons contained in the secret annex for overturning our convictions,” said Mr Morrison.
The solicitor for four of the eight people cleared today, Kevin Winters, urged full disclosure of the reasons behind the decision.
“From our point of view, and generally from a justice point of view, we feel it is incumbent upon the court to provide reasons as to why this case has been overturned and the convictions quashed,” he said.
“I think not only do the appellants require that as a matter of right, but I think in terms of an open and transparent justice system, we need that.”
Mr Morrison claimed today that he had been lured to the house where Sandy Lynch was being held so that he could be arrested under circumstances which would implicate him in the IRA kidnap.
“This was entrapment by the state,” he said and claimed the case could yet “reveal something of the dirty war”.
The episode has threatened to expose the ruthless tactics employed by security forces to infiltrate groups such as the IRA when violence was at its height in Northern Ireland.
Despite the arguments mounted by security forces that the desperate circumstances of the Troubles required desperate measures, cases that have shed light on this murky underworld have rarely reflected well on the state.
The plethora of allegations of security force collusion with loyalist paramilitaries has been compounded by evidence that agent handlers made life and death decisions to protect informants.
Mr Morrison’s case has recalled the controversial claims surrounding leading Belfast republican Freddie Scappaticci.
Mr Morrison is an author and journalist, but was formerly a leading figure within the republican movement and played a central part in publicising the 1981 republican hunger strike at the Maze prison.
The protest over conditions in the infamous H-Blocks attracted international attention when IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone before becoming the first of 10 republicans to starve to death.
Mr Morrison would later coin the “Armalite and Ballot Box” slogan, which symbolised republicans’ push for political power in the 1980s, while the IRA campaign was still under way.
In January 1990 there was, therefore, huge media interest when Mr Morrison was found by police hiding in a house on the Lenadoon estate in West Belfast near where officers found self-confessed Special Branch agent Mr Lynch.
Mr Morrison was jailed for eight years after being found guilty of aiding and abetting Mr Lynch’s false imprisonment.
At the trial, Mr Lynch identified Freddie Scappaticci as having been the man in charge of his IRA interrogation.
In 2003 Mr Scappaticci publicly denied the allegations against him and refuted reports he was the top IRA informer known as “Stakeknife”.
He has since disappeared and the media are now banned from reporting on his whereabouts.
Mr Morrison said today that the case against him never stacked up and he welcomed the Appeal Court decision.
“The three judges today had a chance to review all of that and what they have said is that our conviction was unsafe and we are now clear men,” he said.
It has been speculated that the case could open the door to large numbers of appeals from republicans who believed agents played a part in their imprisonment.
But one source who has closely observed the case said such a tactic could prove a double-edged sword, with republicans wary of suggesting that their ranks were so heavily infiltrated.
