Sorry for the double post... Mudcat was down earlier, and I didn't realise the erlier one went through. As a matter of fact, American courts, during extradition hearings found evidence that the SAS did not, as a matter of tactics, take prisoners, that they were, in fact guilty of a shoot to kill policy. It was evidence of this which led US courts to find a prima facia case for political assylum in the Doherty case. I am at a loss to think of an instance of an unarmed Bobbie being gunned down by an IRA member. I would appreciate a name and date. Not to say it isn't so, but, such an event would have likely been raised in the IRA extradition cases here, where US courts found the IRA not to be a terrorist organisation, and as such, until the rewriting of the US?GB extradition treaty, removing the political offence bar to extradition, no IRA members were extradited under the old treaty. England and the US state department used all their mighty resources to prove the IRA was a terrorist organisation and failed. Having failed, they changed the rules.
As for SAS answerabilty, the civilian witness to the three murders that day, underwent persicution at the hands of the British government in an attempt to discredit her when she came forward with her account of the murder.
I agree, that this is not relevant to the hunger strike commemorations, other than to answer the issue of weither or not they were right in expecting fair treatment under varrious human rights conventions, but it is in deed a tangential issue.
Perhaps some one with better computer skills than I may put in a link to Brendy's excellent post on the recent history of the occupation of Ireland for our brother, Yonger.
All the best
Larry