A RETIRED British civil servant has stood over a note he made nine years ago stating that former RUC chief constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan told him that Robert Hamill could have died from oxygen starvation due to the manner in which his head was cradled by a member of his family.
The former civil servant, Anthony Langdon, also held to an official memorandum he wrote of a meeting with Sir Ronnie in July 2000. He wrote at the time that the former chief constable was “defensive and critical” in relation to the case of Robert Hamill who was fatally assaulted by a loyalist mob in Portadown on April 27th, 1997. Mr Hamill died 11 days later from his injuries.
Sir Ronnie last Thursday week insisted at the Robert Hamill Inquiry in Belfast that Mr Langdon’s report of their meeting was inaccurate and “disgraceful” and that he “completely refuted” the former civil servant’s account.
Mr Langdon, however, when giving evidence yesterday to the inquiry, insisted on several occasions that his note was correct, notwithstanding Sir Ronnie’s protestations.
“I have no reason to distrust the note I made at the time, and I don’t now either,” he said.
Mr Langdon was a retired civil servant in July 2000 who was asked by the Northern Ireland Office to provide a report on the murder of Robert Hamill for the then Northern secretary Peter Mandelson.
In his note of his meeting with Sir Ronnie on Friday, July 21st, 2000, he wrote that Sir Ronnie was in a “pretty defensive and critical mood” and that in particular the former chief constable “commented that Hamill’s death could well have been caused by his own family cradling his head in a way that led to oxygen starvation”.
Mr Langdon, expanding on this comment for Sir Ronnie’s solicitor yesterday, said he had a particular memory of Sir Ronnie making this point because he recalled him making a cradling gesture.
Mr Langdon said he trusted his note of the time.
