O'Dowd backs family call for Marshall killing inquiry

SINN FÉIN Minister John O’Dowd has supported a family’s call for an independent inquiry into the Ulster Volunteer Force murder 22 years ago of former republican prisoner Sam Marshall.

Mr Marshall was shot dead on March 7th, 1990, as he was walking to his home on the Kilwilkie estate in Lurgan, Co Armagh. He had just signed bail with two other men, including well-known republican Colin Duffy, at Lurgan RUC station.

The Marshall family and republicans have long claimed there was British security force collusion in his murder as, they claimed, the only people who knew of his movements were the police and his lawyers.

However a report on the murder by the Historical Enquiries Team (HET), which deals with unsolved killings of the Troubles, praised much of the original RUC investigation and found no new lines of inquiry.

The Marshall family has, however, called for an official inquiry into the murder, stating other elements of the HET required such a response. The team found at least eight undercover British soldiers were on duty near the scene and soldiers were deployed in six cars close to the scene.

The enquiries team also found two undercover soldiers followed the three republicans on foot and were 50-100 yards away when UVF members, armed with AK-47 rifles, attacked, firing 49 shots. The soldiers said they did not actually see the attack because of sight lines.

The HET report, which the family released to the Press Association, also found the RUC sought to deny the existence of a surveillance operation by giving “misleading or incomplete” statements.

The enquiries team, which did not reinterview the soldiers but relied on RUC statements from the time, said it could not rule in, or rule out, that the RUC leaked information to the loyalists, stating the killers may have gathered their own intelligence.

Local MLA and Sinn Féin education Minister John O’Dowd, supporting the family’s call for an inquiry, said “from the night Sam Marshall was killed people in Lurgan have been in no doubt that the British State was responsible for his death”.

“How three men armed with rifles were able to drive through an area which had such a heavy presence of British Intelligence operatives, park their car, get out open fire with a barrage of shots and then return to the vehicle and leave the area without any attempt to either prevent the murder or intercept the gunmen’s car has to be explained,” he said.