Vindicated but still angry at police

FAMILIES' REACTION: THE MEMORIES of the 15 McGurk’s bar victims have been “vindicated” by the Police Ombudsman’s findings, relatives…

FAMILIES' REACTION:THE MEMORIES of the 15 McGurk's bar victims have been "vindicated" by the Police Ombudsman's findings, relatives of the dead and injured have said.

“They were innocent victims whose memory was besmirched for many years by the slur that they were bombers,” the families said.

But their elation was overshadowed as human rights advocates, who have backed the families, clashed angrily with the PSNI chief constable over his response.

Addressing a press conference as Police Ombudsman Al Hutchinson released his report, relatives said that the pain of their bereavement nearly 40 years ago was compounded “by a deliberate lie, created in the aftermath of their horrific deaths, that our loved ones had been responsible for the explosion”.

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They said that the “IRA own-goal theory”, which led to bias and undermined the original RUC investigation, had “added intolerable insult to our unbearable injury and grief”.

Patrick McGurk, who lost his mother Philomena, sister Maria and uncle John Colton in the UVF bombing, said a “dark cloud had been lifted” by the removal of “an official lie”.

He linked the success of their campaign to clear their relatives’ names to the vindication of the Bloody Sunday relatives by the Saville report last June.

Mr McGurk’s son Chris then read out the list of the pub bombing dead and declared each of them innocent in turn.

Pat Irvine, who lost her mother in the explosion, said simply: “We’ve won. The truth was told today. This is the total exoneration of the victims, the survivors and all of the families, they were completely innocent.”

She said Mr Hutchinson’s report showed there was “collusion, corruption and obstruction of evidence”. She said, however, she disagreed with the ombudsman’s finding that the RUC’s failures “fell short of collusion”.

She cited Mr Hutchinson’s criticisms of the original police investigation and quoted his conclusions that it was “selective and consequently misleading”, that it “failed to investigate effectively the information received” and that it suffered from “serious failure”. These, she said, were tantamount to collusion.

Tommy McCready said there was “a pressing need for a legal definition [of collusion] from a senior judge”. In common with others he said many questions remained to be answered, pointing out that Mr Hutchinson’s investigators were limited to examining the role played by police officers.

“The British army was key at the time,” Mr McCready added, claiming that its senior officers had to be made accountable.

He insisted that he, along with other relatives, was “not out for revenge, only for the truth”.

Robert McClenaghan said: “There are questions for the British army, for the unionist government and the ministery of defence.” However, the relief at Mr Hutchinson’s findings was tainted last night by the response from the PSNI chief constable.

The Pat Finucane Centre and British-Irish Rights Watch, which backed the families, condemned Matt Baggott’s response, claiming it failed to meet a recommendation by Mr Hutchinson that police apologise for their conduct.

Mr Baggott said Mr Hutchinson’s report “demonstrates the difficulty of passing judgment on murder inquiries carried out in their hundreds over a generation ago, and setting them against the standards of today”.

The Pat Finucane Centre and British-Irish Rights Watch said: “The families will be hurt and re-traumatised by the chief constable’s statement. He has missed an opportunity to lift a shadow from their lives and set the record straight.”

NI Police Ombudsman main points

* RUC guilty of “investigative bias” in believing Provisional IRA rather than loyalists was responsible for McGurk’s bar bomb.

* Bias prevented proper investigation of the atrocity.

* RUC did not collude with UVF gang responsible.

* RUC gave selective briefings to British government and media in 1971 that IRA was responsible.

* The original investigation was not proportionate to “magnitude” of the attack.

* No loyalist questioned about attack between date of bombing and July 1977.

* Even when a loyalist confessed to the killing in 1977/78 police still failed to properly investigate the matter.

* No RUC or PSNI chief constable has corrected the “erroneous perception” that the IRA was responsible.