Judge's army links lead to calls for quashing of Bloody Sunday ruling

The undeclared British army background of Britain's Master of the Rolls, Lord Woolf, has lead to calls for the quashing of the Court of Appeal decision to grant blanket anonymity to Bloody Sunday Paratroopers.

Lord Justice Woolf is considered something of a liberal in British judicial circles. When the possibility arose last January that he might be involved in a new hearing concerning the Chilean dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, he was reported to have hastily withdrawn from hosting an Amnesty International fund-raiser.

Sensitivity concerning Lord Woolf and the Pinochet case resulted from a three to two ruling by the Law Lords on November 25th, 1998, that the former Chilean dictator was not immune from arrest and prosecution for crimes against humanity.

It all went sour when it emerged that one of the panel who voted against Pinochet in the historic decision, Lord Hoffmann, had failed to disclose his links with Amnesty International.

Lord Hoffmann, it was revealed, was chairman of Amnesty's British fund-raising committee, and his wife had been an Amnesty worker for over 20 years.

In the end Lord Woolf was not chosen to hear the Pinochet case, very probably because of his Amnesty links and with due regard for the Hoffmann precedent. Suspicions persist that Pinochet's lawyers had objected to Lord Woolf's inclusion after having been allowed to vet the membership of the new panel.

This report, perhaps not surprisingly, was denied by Lord Browne-Wilkinson, a senior law lord who presided over the new hearing in January.

Several of Lord Hoffmann's judicial brethren were scathing in their criticism of him, and the international embarrassment his omission had caused their esteemed circle. He was accused of acting as "a judge in his own cause" by failing to declare his Amnesty links.

So scathing was their criticism that Lord Hoffmann's future as a law lord was called into question. He was accused of ignoring a basic judicial tenet, learned by every student in the first year of law school.

Lord Browne-Wilkinson accused Lord Justice Hoffmann of violating the basic principle that "justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done".

Lord Hope said, "Judges are well aware they should not sit in a case where they have even the slightest personal interest in it, either as defendant or as prosecutor."

Lord Hutton suggested that public confidence in the integrity of the administration of justice would be shaken if Lord Hoffmann's deciding vote that Pinochet could be prosecuted was allowed to stand.

The judgment by the panel including Lord Hoffmann was set aside on December 17th and a new hearing ordered for the new year.

It was, apparently, the possibility of being chosen to sit at the new hearing which caused Lord Woolf hastily to withdraw from his Amnesty fund-raising commitment and Pinochet's lawyers to ensure he did not.

Bloody Sunday Anonymity Hearing

Irish interest in Lord Woolf's principled stand was sharply focussed this week by what appeared to be the fourth and final rejection, by English judges at the English Divisional Court and the Court of Appeal, of the Bloody Sunday inquiry's refusal to grant blanket military anonymity.

The court granted, as a human right, the request of 17 soldiers, many of whom fired shots on Bloody Sunday, to remain anonymous throughout the inquiry. That the Saville inquiry decided not to appeal the decision to the House of Lords was seen as a victory by elements of the British military establishment and the Tory press.

Lord Woolf has presided over two Bloody Sunday anonymity hearings at the English Court of Appeal, including the latest case in which he delivered judgment last week. On both occasions he voted in favour of the soldiers retaining their anonymity.

A discovery last Thursday by a human rights worker, Mr Paul O'Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre in Derry, is now set to throw the whole British judicial system into a similar quandary as did the discovery of Lord Hoffmann's Amnesty links in the Pinochet hearing.

Curious as to the background of the three Law Lords who had ruled in favour of the Paras, Mr O'Connor discovered an undeclared detail in Lord Woolf's background which, all things being equal, leaves the British judiciary no option but to follow its own example in the Hoffmann case, for the same reasons stated above.

That is, they must quash the decisions of the English Court of Appeals over which Lord Woolf has presided, and order a new hearing on the issue of blanket military anonymity at the Bloody Sunday inquiry.

Why? Because it has now emerged that Lord Woolf failed to declare two crucial and relevant facts which, despite his reputed moderate background, are cause for serious doubt about the independence and impartiality of the decisions he twice presided over at the Court of Appeal.

These are his former British army background as a captain in the Royal Hussars, and his two-year membership of the British army's legal services.

This discovery, once again, raises the ugly spectre of the discredited Widgery Tribunal of Inquiry, presided over by Lord Chief Justice Widgery, himself a former British army officer who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Royal Artillery and as a brigadier in the Territorial Army.

Mr John Kelly, whose then 17-year-old brother Michael was shot dead on Bloody Sunday, has issued the following statement on behalf of several of the Bloody Sunday wounded and families of the dead.

`The English judiciary has interfered on four occasions with an international inquiry which is searching for the truth into the events of Bloody Sunday. The information that Lord Woolf was attached to Army Legal Services after qualifying as a barrister is alarming.

"There is a question mark over his independence in light of this information. There is also a question of bias. He has dealt on two occasions with the Court of Appeal hearing on the issue of soldiers' anonymity. He has never declared his previous employment with the Army Legal Services nor his status as a captain in the Royal Hussars.

"We are extremely alarmed at this information as Lord Widgery was also a former British Army officer."

Given his reported sensitivity in the Pinochet case, it seems surprising that a judge of such eminent standing should choose to sit on a case involving his previous employer, the British army.

Given that the case was Bloody Sunday and that the previous military record of Lord Widgery is often quoted as an example of the inherent bias which characterised his now discredited tribunal, it is even more surprising.

Perhaps most surprising is that Lord Woolf is a judge with sympathies for Amnesty International, an organisation which has championed the cause of the Bloody Sunday relatives for many years.

The families who lost their loved ones in Derry 27 years ago find it difficult to understand the logic of a decision at which Lord Woolf has twice arrived in favour of British paratroopers involved in the killing of unarmed civilians.

The soldiers seeking blanket anonymity, it should be remembered, abused the original anonymity granted to them by the Widgery tribunal, as revealed by Prof Dermot Walsh in January 1997.

He revealed major discrepancies and deliberate alterations in statements made by various soldiers involved in Bloody Sunday, as they prepared to give evidence before Widgery.

His report confirmed suspicions that soldiers had abused their anonymity and had flagrantly violated the basic principles of truth and justice on which the British judicial system believes itself to be founded.

Revelations in last Sunday's Tribune of an RUC report in July 1972 highlighting abuse by soldiers of anonymity at the Widgery tribunal adds to growing doubts about the fairness and impartiality of the British judiciary's role in an international tribunal of inquiry.

Sadly, Lord Woolf's own undeclared British army background has now added to those misgivings.

In the circumstances, the only reasonable way forward would seem to be the quashing of the most recent appeal court decision involving Lord Woolf, and the setting up of a new Court of Appeal hearing, for the same reasons as in the Pinochet-Hoffmann case.

Don Mullan is the author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday (Wolfhound Press) and has worked closely with the Bloody Sunday families in their campaign to achieve a new tribunal of inquiry.