The criminal justice system in Northern Ireland has already been
moved further away from due process by the effective removal of
the right to silence some years ago, but to add to this that the
failure to answer questions or to co-operate with the police can
now be corroborative eveidence is to push the system outside due
process entirely. To allow a supect to be convicted on the word
of a police officer, coupled with the refusal to co-operate with
the officer, means that a defendent is no longer presumed
innocent but must in fact prove his innocence.
Statement from the Solicitors' Criminal Bar Association. Irish
News, Friday 28 August.
It was very frightening. I'm just glad that a lot of the young
Catholic men were away this weekend, at the concert in Slane or
wherever. God knows what that crowd would have done if they got
their hands on a couple of Catholic lads.
Onlooker in Portadown after a 200-strong loyalist mob ran riot
through a shopping centre last week.
The attack was not about removing the British government presence
from our country. It was not an attack on the British military
establishment in Ireland. It was not an attack on a commercial
target. It should not be allowed to be claimed as part of the
legitimate and honourable struggle for Irish independence.
Sinn Féin Vice President Pat Doherty speaking at the West Tyrone
republican commemoration last Sunday.
America say they want peace in Northern Ireland and then they
show the peace they're capable of in Sudan.
Libyan medical student Khalifa Al-Libi, who lives in Ireland,
quoted in Ireland On Sunday 30 August.
In Ireland, every person has certain inalienable rights under the
law. Among others, they have the right to be presumed innocent
until proven guilty, they have the right to a fair trial, and
they have the right not to be compelled to incriminate
themselves. It is a massive departure from the current position
that a person should be capable of being convicted on the word of
a senior police officer, and that their silence should be capable
of corroborating that belief. It is highly worrying that because
of of their extreme nature, these measures may convict a person
who is completely innocent of the charges against them.
Michael Finucane of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
Ireland On Sunday, 30 August.
We are after all, proposing that the RUC - some of whom were
accused of running death squads and operating a shoot-to-kill
policy just a few years ago - now be given the power to jail
people on the say so of a senior officer. No matter how you cut
it the RUC is unacceptable to many nationalists because it is
drawn overwhelmingly from one side.
Niall O'Dowd writing in Ireland On Sunday 30 August.
A policeman could take the hump at you and you end up in prison.
The same thing happened to us in Britain. They believed the
police and believed we were liars and it took us 16-and-a-half
years to prove them wrong.
Johnny Walker of the Birmingham Six on the new `security'
legislation.
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