Republican News · Thursday 1 August 2002

Lifting the stone - the unaccountable nature of the Special Branch

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Over the next two weeks, GERRY KELLY, Sinn Féin spokesperson on policing, will examine what conceivably have been two of the biggest tests of effective accountability since the RUC became the PSNI - that is, the Ombudsman's report into the Omagh bomb and the new Policing Board's response to this. This week, he looks at the Ombudsman's Report.

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The Ombudsman's report on the RUC investigation into the Omagh bomb came as a shock to those with a casual interest in Irish political affairs. Those with direct and indirect experience of the Special Branch were not surprised at the nature or extent of these allegations. The essence of the report asserted that:

• unnamed members of Special Branch obtained prior notice of the plan to bomb Omagh in August 1998;
• this information was not passed to the relevant RUC personnel at the time;
• incriminating evidence relating to this failure was systematically buried;
• information relevant to the original RUC investigation into the bombings was withheld; and
• there was a conspiracy to prevent Special Branch activities from coming to light during the subsequent investigation by the Ombudsman.

Not surprisingly then, the Special Branch, with the support of Ronnie Flanagan, as a pre-emptive damage limitation exercise, attempted to undermine the Ombudsman through personal attacks on her office in advance of the publication of her report.

The report supports a widely held view that the Special Branch has been allowed to operate with impunity throughout the conflict in the north. Their ability to do this has been reinforced by the British government's 'Police Act'.

Previous Special Branch activities have involved torture and ill-treatment of detainees and the implementation of a shoot-to-kill policy against suspected republican activists - areas which have been criticised by the European Court of Human Rights and by a large number of international human rights organisations.

The Ombudsman's report is a specific indictment of the role of the Special Branch in undermining the investigation into the Omagh bomb and a general criticism of its all-pervasive nature in dictating police force strategies and tactics

More recently, it has again been demonstrated that Special Branch were party to the murder of Pat Finucane and a large number of nationalists as a consequence of arming and giving political and military direction to elements within the UDA. But in each and every circumstance where evidence of illegal police activity has emerged, or has been suspected, a cover-up has ensued.

The Stalker/Sampson and Stevens reports were all subverted by the Special Branch in order to prevent such illegal activities from coming to light. British Intelligence destroyed evidence gathered by the Stalker team. Identified agents also received preferential treatment in the courts in return for their silence and co-operation whilst those agents who spoke out publicly about Special Branch activities known to them were jailed and discredited or were murdered, as in the case of William Stobie.

The obvious conclusion, in the absence of prosecutions or court cases relating to Special Branch activity, is that they will do anything to protect their position of power and privilege and that they also enjoy the patronage of extremely powerful establishment figures. Moreover, the non-prosecution of Brian Nelson on the charge of murder by the then Attorney General Patrick Mayhew, the judicial support offered to those accused of involvement in shoot-to-kill operations and the refusal by Mayhew to prosecute Special Branch members exposed by the Stalker team, places the British government, at its highest levels, at the centre of the cover up.

Guidelines have also come to light which clearly demonstrate that the Special Branch still enjoys precedence in relation to all policing activity, demonstrating the nature of politicised policing in the north of Ireland. These guidelines are contained within the Walker report and detail the nature of the relationship between Special Branch and the CID. This requires that arrests cannot proceed without the prior approval of the Special Branch in order to protect agents and informers.

The report also highlights how Special Branch briefings relating to police investigations must always be conducted in such a way as to protect Special Branch agents. This, in my view, is the explanation for the lack of arrests or charges against UDA personnel in north Belfast who have been involved in a protracted campaign of bombings, shootings, pogrom and murder. In effect, the uniform branch and CID became a filter for the recruitment and protection of Special Branch agents.

It was criticism of this influence that prompted Chris Patten, the Chairman of the Policing Commission, to refer to the need to eradicate the malign influence of this 'force within a force'. He recommended that the numbers involved in Special Branch be significantly reduced and that Special Branch be amalgamated with the CID under a single Assistant Chief Constable. It is Sinn Féin's position that this does not go far enough.

The real issue relates to demonstrable control and accountability over the Special Branch and, just as significantly, to the eradication of the counter-insurgency mentality that justifies and condones such illegal activity on the part of the police force. One contributory factor, but not the primary one, is that many of today's Special Branch have been in place since before the first IRA cessation eight years ago. The O'Loan report into the investigation of the Omagh bombing demonstrates that the Special Branch mentality and malpractice has survived Patten and will survive the scrutiny of the Ombudsman and the Policing Board in the absence of stronger powers of accountability overall.

The Ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, spoke generally of 'a failure of leadership', 'poor judgement and a lack of urgency' and a 'defensive and uncooperative approach' from senior police management. More specifically, she identified Special Branch denial of the existence of highly significant documents relating to intelligence issues; the withholding of access to identifiable documents; misleading Special Branch information to the Ombudsman inquiry; and the existence of a number of missing intelligence files.

Ronnie Flanagan, the former head of Special Branch, and a fierce critic of the Ombudsman's findings, was specifically accused of sending 'factually wrong' information to the media concerning the quality of the information received prior to the Omagh bomb and of delaying the progress of the Ombudsman's inquiry by denying access to RUC intelligence and information.

On this basis, the Ombudsman made six recommendations. Two of these related to an outside and independent investigation into the Omagh incident and other related activities; two related to lines of command and communication and access to intelligence; a fifth recommendation concerned the appropriate guidelines relating to a review of a murder inquiry. The remaining recommendation - and the one of most significance - was that a review should take place into the role and function of the Special Branch and its integration into the main body of the police force in the north.

Although the Ombudsman may only recommend change, at any reading her report is both a specific indictment of the role of the Special Branch in undermining the investigation into the Omagh bomb and a general criticism of its all-pervasive nature in dictating police force strategies and tactics on the basis of its self defined counter-insurgency role.

Despite this, and in spite of the unprecedented focus on the activities of the Special Branch, the fact is that these recommendations will not ensure that this all-encompassing aspect of the Special Branch is targeted and undermined. This of course is no fault of the Ombudsman. For like the Policing Board itself, her powers of inquiry - of holding the police force accountable - have been deliberately restricted by the British government.

It is for this reason that:

* Full implementation of the Ombudsman's recommendations will still allow the Special Branch to run informers and agents in an unaccountable manner.

* There is nothing to challenge Special Branch primacy in relation to decision-making processes within the police force.

* Both the Ombudsman and the policing board cannot effectively tackle allegations surrounding collusion with loyalism and Special Branch complicity in the murders of Pat Finucane and others.

Special Branch corruption is an inevitable outcome in the presence of absolute power - the power over life and death in many cases - and in the absence of credible accountability measures. And the corruption does not stop there. Inevitably, when the Special Branch have seniority over every other section of the force, their corruption percolates all the way down. This is not adequately dealt with in the Ombudsman's report. Nor could it be. It is outside her remit.

The report concludes that 'it is in the interests of everyone that those responsible for this terrible atrocity (Omagh) are brought to justice'. It is also in everyone's interest that structures of accountability are created which are unwilling to condone the negative and corrosive influence of Special Branch activities and which can expose and prevent such activities.

The British government is seeking to ensure this does not happen; to ensure that the partisan political control resides with the securocrats and that we have the shape but not the substance of democratic accountability. Sinn Féin will campaign until these barriers to an acceptable police service are removed.