Irish Republican News · February 25, 2004

Orde accused of political intervention

PSNI police chief Hugh Orde has ben strongly criticised after he said that his force cannot cope with the demand to deal with outstanding murder cases of the conflict.

Half or 1,800 murders from the 3,600 killings remain unsolved and Mr Orde repeated yesterday that some form of truth and reconciliation forum should deal with them.

He told the Guardian newspaper that the workload of old cases was putting fierce pressure on the PSNI. He said he may have to refuse requests from families for previous murders to be investigated.

"Tension is building to such a point that I think we are reaching a crisis . . . There is a growing demand for reinvestigation. The harsh reality is that I am not funded to reinvestigate history. I am funded to police the present. We have to come up with some form of closure that may not include a judicial process".

The Sinn Féin spokeswoman on human rights issues Ms Caitriona Ruane accused Mr Orde of deliberately and very cynically entering a debate around truth recovery and inquiries in a bid to protect senior members of the PSNI from having their past role within the RUC investigated.

"He knows that many of these individuals are human rights abusers and were centrally involved in organising a campaign of genocide against the nationalist population.

"Recent attempts by Mr Orde to scupper the demands of families for inquiries into the murders of their loved ones through the collusion policy is a very cynical and political move being made in an attempt to protect his senior colleagues who were in the past central to this policy.

"The political interventions being made by Mr Orde in recent times mirror the sort of political policing which we became accustomed to under the various Chief Constables of the RUC and which if we had a truly new beginning to policing would have come to an end by now."

The DUP's Jeffrey Donaldson also said his party would oppose the notion of a truth commission and any amnesty for paramilitaries. He did not accept Mr Orde's comments that he could not investigate murders going back 30 years and said new techniques such as DNA could help to apprehend those responsible for murder.

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