Republican News · Thursday 15 August 2002

McLaughlin challenges Policing Board on Devenney assault

Sinn Féin National Chairperson Mitchel McLaughlin has called on the Policing Board to disclose what action, if any, it has taken against the PSNI members who attacked the chairperson of Sinn Féin in Belfast, Paud Devenney, in May.

"Paud Devenney was savagely assaulted by four members of the PSNI in the Short Strand on 11 May, resulting in him suffering life threatening injuries," said McLaughlin last Thursday, 8 August. "Mr Devenney subsequently spent a significant period in intensive care and although recovered, he will have permanent impairment of sight and hearing as a direct consequence of this attack.

"A number of questions need to be answered by the Policing Board. We were told that CCTV cameras at interface areas would provide essential evidence on who were perpetrating attacks. Is there CCTV footage of events at the time of this attack and will it be produced? Have these PSNI members been removed from our streets? Have they been charged in connection with this assault on a community activist who was attempting to maintain calm in the face of orchestrated attacks on his community? If not why not? Were they transferees from the RUC or were they some of the recent recruits into the PSNI trained in the old ways of the RUC?

"If, as prominent members of the Policing Board continue to assure us, it is in control of the PSNI and that there has been a new beginning to policing, then it should have no problem in supplying answers to these questions. Or will it once more hide behind the Ombudsnan's Office to mask the fact that it is powerless to act against these thugs in uniform?"