Documentary shines Spotlight on South Armagh deaths

An English television documentary has placed a focus on a number of murders and other attacks in South Armagh in which the involvement of British Crown forces is alleged.

Colm McCartney from Bellaghy, County Derry and Sean Farmer of Moy, County Tyrone were murdered as they returned from a Gaelic football semi-final in Dublin.

The men were each shot in the back of the head after they were stopped by a group of men in military uniforms manning a ‘checkpoint’.

An unmarked RUC police car drove through the scene earlier and reported it to the British Army, but no action was taken.

The BBC Spotlight programme on Wednesday night touched on the murders as part of a wider investigation it is carrying out into claims of collusion in the Armagh and Tyrone area during the 1970s.

The Pat Finucane Centre has called for anyone who returned from Croke Park following the Dublin match to contact them with any information the programme might have prompted them to recall.

Sinn Féin Assembly member for Newry & Armagh Conor Murphy has said that Sinn Féin had been a lone voice for decades in highlighting the extent of collusion in South Armagh and elsewhere.

“This was not simply a case of bad apples. It was a policy decision which stretches directly to Downing Street and as Spotlight showed also involved the support of the judiciary in the six counties.

“ The programme however only scratched the surface of the mountain of evidence which exists linking prominent South Armagh security force families to murders and bomb attacks in the area.”

Mr Murphy also said the silence of lobby groups like FAIR in the wake of the programme “has not been lost on the nationalist and republican community in South Armagh.”

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