Republican News · Thursday 8 August 2002

Special Branch: Still Untouchable

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Last week, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Policing, GERRY KELLY, examined the Ombudsman's report into the role of Special Branch at the time of the Omagh bomb. This week, he scrutinises the response of the Policing Board to this report and asks what all of this means for the required "new beginning to policing".

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On 12 December, the Ombudsman published her report indicting the Special Branch and the RUC leadership over their role at the time of the Omagh bomb. She was also highly critical of the obstacles placed in the path of her inquiry into vital issues. Former RUC Chief Ronnie Flanagan responded on 24 January. He in effect binned the Ombudsman's recommendations. On 7 February it was the turn of the new Policing Board to publish its recommendations. At the core of all of this is the Special Branch - the 'force within a force' - which has acted with impunity for decades. Below we explore if this has changed as a result of the above Omagh Bomb reports.

Forewarning of Omagh

There is no dispute that information and intelligence was available to the RUC before and after the Omagh Bomb. This fact was a critical finding of the lengthy investigation by the Ombudsman into 'matters relating to the Omagh Bomb'. The investigation was triggered after media revelations by the RUC agent known as 'Fulton' that he had forewarned the RUC about the impending attack. What has been disputed is what information was available. This is what the Ombudsman's report investigated.

Further revelations have also been published. The Sunday Business Post, 10 February 2002, reported that other information was available and provided directly to MI5, by David Rupert, the British agent. It was alleged that Rupert was associating at that time with the people who claimed responsibility for the Omagh Bomb. Unlike 'Fulton', it is unlikely that the PSNI will seek to discredit the MI5 agent, since he is the main prosecution witness in a forthcoming trial. These latest disclosures mirror what had already come to be known through the investigation by the Ombudsman. That is:

that information relevant to the Omagh bomb was available beforehand

that this information was in the hands of the Special Branch and MI5 before the day of the Omagh bomb and,

tragically, the bombing went ahead without impediment.

The duty to ask why

The questions the Ombudsman's investigation provokes are:

Why was the information available to the Special Branch not used to at least try to prevent the bombing?

Secondly, why were no disciplinary or other proceedings taken against those Special Branch officers who hindered the Ombudsman's investigation?

The central controlling agency in the handling of agents and the analysis and application of such information is the Special Branch, under the overall direction of MI5. The Ombudsman's investigation underlined this fact. They found more than 300 Special Branch documents with relevance to Omagh in possession of Special Branch but which had been withheld from the Omagh Bomb investigation team. In fact, "computer systems where intelligence vital to the investigation was held," were hidden from the Ombudman's Investigation itself.

The question as to why information available was not used or released by Special Branch before or after the Omagh Bomb is at the core of this public scandal. The Policing Board's response to the Ombudsman's Investigation did nothing to illuminate this crucial question or provide credible answers to it.

Shooting the messenger

The Policing Board was not established to referee disagreements between the Ombudsman's Office and the PSNI. The Board's primary and overriding responsibility, as envisaged by Patten, is to hold the police force to account. Having been presented with a damning critique of the RUC relating to the period before and after the Omagh Bomb, the Board's responsibility was to take action against those who failed before Omagh, failed after Omagh and did their utmost to subvert and obstruct the investigation by the Ombudsman into the multitude of hidden failures. The very concise and grave conclusions of the Ombudsman's investigation stated: "This report is about a failure of leadership". Yet, Flanagan and Assistant Chief Constable Raymond White, the head of Special Branch, received no reprimand or sanction of any kind from the Policing Board.

Instead, having exonerated the RUC/PSNI, the Board targeted the independent body which undertook and completed the investigation. They ordered a review into the Ombudsman's Office, thereby impugning the credibility of that body's work.

The Board has offered no evidence or logic for this decision, but it is self-evident from efforts underway at Westminster during the passage of the Justice Bill, that the Ulster Unionists want the investigative powers of the Ombudsman further reversed and hamstrung in 'protocols'. For instance, on the evening of 5 February, the day the Policing Board convened to consider the Ombudsman's report, the British government at Westminster indicated that it would make legal provision to subject the Ombudsman to scrutiny.

For the SDLP to have acquiesced in the face of this attack would have been bad. But the fact is the SDLP supported this attack on the Ombudsman as members of the Policing Board. This can only further subvert a key accountability mechanism.

The reality is; the Policing Board:

• refused to acknowledge the fact that Special Branch under the overall direction of MI5 had information which it suppressed before and after the Omagh Bomb.
• did not initiate any disciplinary proceedings or sanctions of any kind against Flanagan's commanders or subordinates in Special Branch as a result of the Ombudsman's investigation.
• did not hold Ronnie Flanagan publicly accountable for the findings of the Ombudsman's investigation.
• did not implement the package of recommendations made by the Ombudsman.

Instead, the Board accepted Flanagan's assertion that his appointee must continue to lead the investigation. It also accepted Flanagan's appointment of the Merseyside Police officer as advisor to his own appointee. The Board gave this police officer some obscure, 'enhanced status'. But critically, he has no joint or independent command of the investigation. In addition, the Board has appointed another officer whose job, in the final analysis, amounts to carrying messages to the Board about the investigation.

As if to emphasise the futility of these additional advisory and oversight appointments, the Policing Board has exonerated the Special Branch and their superiors of any responsibility for the Omagh Bomb. In words that Ronnie Flanagan himself endorsed, the Policing Board made the extravagant claim that "on the basis of the information available, the Omagh bombing could not have been prevented".

d, incredibly, the Board endorsed the Special Branch - "The Board fully accepts that there is a need for a Special Branch..." Incredible because the Board has no power to investigate Special Branch activities in the past - for instance, in respect of the killing of Pat Finucane or its wider involvement in collusion; its involvement in the torture and inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners or indeed its role in Omagh at the time of the Omagh bombing.

These are the people who have hindered investigations and inquiries into the deaths of the hundreds of people killed through collusion between the British forces, the Special Branch and the loyalist death squads. The Pat Finucane killing dramatically and tragically exposes the real role of the Special Branch. The leader of the UDA group that carried out the killing was Tommy Lyttle, a Special Branch agent. The man who provided the weapon, William Stobie, was a Special Branch agent. The man who confessed on tape to RUC CID officers to carrying out the shooting, Ken Barrett, was a Special Branch agent and the man who set up the killing, Brian Nelson, was a British Army agent.

The Special Branch officers involved with all of this are still there. Their agents in the UDA in North Belfast are still in business. They continue to have the same power as they did in 1989 when Pat Finucane was killed and they are still exempt from any effective form of democratic accountability.

In addition, the Board has greatly restricted powers in respect of any investigation in the future. It is incredible that the Policing Board would give such a blank cheque to a 'force within a force' over which it has no effective accountability either for its actions in the past or in the future. And indeed one of the British government's proposals after Weston Park will ensure that entrenchment of Special Branch's ability to ward off scrutiny.

The Untouchables

Despite the catalogue of Special Branch obstruction and subterfuge encountered by the Ombudsman during the period of her investigation, no member of the PSNI or members of Special Branch or MI5 has been subject to investigation, disciplinary action or other sanctions.

Supporters of the Board have been making a virtue of the unanimous nature of the Board's report. But after unanimously exonerating the PSNI, especially Special Branch and MI5, and unanimously impugning the Ombudsman's Office, the Board can hardly expect this unanimity to win confidence or respect in the nationalist and republican constituency. For this is the constituency which most needs to be convinced about policing arrangements. Not least, since the Special Branch - 'the force within a force' - indicted by the Ombudsman's investigation remains an operational, clandestine, counter-insurgency elite, which makes its own rules within the policing structures.

Like Stalker, Sampson and Patten, the Ombudsman's investigation found repeatedly that Special Branch was not accountable and was not willing to be held to account. With the unanimous, uncritical backing of the Policing Board, 'the force within the force' will continue to be untouchable.