In regard to a point raised on another thread this afternoon I feel it's best answered in a thread all of it's own, as I don't wish to see yet another thread drift as happens all too often when Keith or Teribus arrives.

As many of you are aware I have been involved with a team of International lawyers over the past two years looking into evidence of British security forces collusion in the North of Ireland.


The evidence they found implicates the British security forces in direct collusion in 74 out of 76 murders. Their report is only the latest of many other reports which implicate the British government and its agents in the murder of our people.

Similar conclusions have been found by Barron Cory, Stalker, Stevens and others.

If we were to consider the scale of these atrocities, the refusal of the British government to instigate public inquiries and the lengths that they go to obstruct the course of justice we would have to ask what role they could play and how they could be trusted to deliver in the Irish peace process itself.

And the plans to increase the role of MI5 rather than confine these spooks to history would be their decisive and defining answer.

We might wonder also how a member country of the European Union which boasts so loudly about its democratic traditions can engage to such an extent in the selective murder of people who they claim as their own citizens - and on such a scale - and steadfastly refuse to investigate properly the mounting evidence which links them to the bombing and shooting of citizens in a member state.

If we were to consider all of this and the public statements and admissions of their informants and spies, then we are looking at criminality of iceberg proportions.

And it won't be shifted by the evasions of their chief of police. The arrogance of their secretary of state or the deafening silence of the entire British political constituency.

That these are the type of human rights abuses which this same government uses to justify its illegal war in Iraq.

We now have the PSNI sponsored "Historical Inquiries Team".

This team is not independent but a unit of the PSNI which must itself be investigated as a major player in these atrocities.

And they informed us that they can only track down 1,577 RUC files from 3,268 deaths. There was no RUC or PSNI central registry until recently.

Files were stored in police stations, officers could take them home and some were destroyed.

And as for collusionitself, the rules and guidelines under which the Historical Inquiries Team operates prohibits them from investigating any murders where there is alleged collusion !

Such cases must be dealt with by another team in London called the "White Team".

It goes without saying that none of this amounts to a genuine attempt at creating justice and closure for grieving relatives but rather a cover up of this catalogue of murder and a disgusting contempt for the rights of the families.

There is widespread agreement that neither the political process nor the peace process itself can succeed until the policing issue is resolved.

I had expressed hope that the policing issue could have been resolved by the end of this year, sadly it won't be. The policing issue cannot be resolved until the police themselves and all the armed groups that the British have sent over to us in the guise of peacekeepers are brougt to account for the crimes they have committed, and until adequate legislation is introduced to guarantee their accountability in the future.