Loughinisland families demand truth on anniversary

Families of six Catholic men slaughtered in a County Down pub by loyalist gunmen while watching the World Cup 30 years ago are “being let down to this very day” because no one has been held accountable for the massacre or the suspected Crown Force collusion, a lawyer for the victims’ relatives has said.

Grieving relatives of the dead attended a special anniversary mass this week to mark the anniversary in the village of Loughinisland.

The church service was also attended by some of those who survived the loyalist attack in which innocent local men Adrian Rogan Malcolm Jenkinson, Barney Green, Daniel McCreanor, Patrick O’Hare and Eamon Byrne were cut down in a hail of bullets.

The Heights Bar had been packed to watch Ireland play Italy in the village on June 18, 1994. Aidan O’Toole was working in the pub when the assassins walked through the doors and slipped two AK-47s out from under their coats before opening fire.

The barman, who managed to take cover in a storeroom after being shot in the back, has always maintained that the police knew who the killers were “from the very start”.

Victims and survivors of the atrocity have been campaigning for justice for three decades now.

Laawyer Niall Murphy said that families “are mindful of the truth recovery that they have been able to achieve” through a 2016 Police Ombudsman probe and the award-winning documentary ‘No Stone Unturned’.

“But they are desperately frustrated that there has been no accountability for that truth,” he said. “The human cost that the families have endured and the cruelty of the state, who were supposed to protect them not persecute them, has been too high.”

At age 87, Barney Green was the oldest victim of the conflict. Mr Murphy said the PSNI police and the British government had forced his dying widow, Brigid Green, “to fight to her last days through the courts for justice for her dead husband.”

Five years ago the Police Ombudsman’s office issued an apology for “failings” in a 2011 report into the sectarian murders which had declared there was insufficient evidence of collusion. After the report was quashed by the High Court in Belfast, it has since withdrawn the claim and has accepted “collusion was a significant feature” of the Loughinisland murders.

It has also since been confirmed that the RUC knew the names of suspects within 24 hours of the killings, but delayed making arrests, and that one of those involved in the massacre was in fact a state agent.

Mr Murphy said the atrocity “stands out because all the evidence now shows that the police knew an attack was going to take place, the police failed to prevent it and then have protected the killers from prosecution for the last 30 years”.

Mr Murphy added: “They put their faith in the police’s assurances that the killers would be brought to justice and they are still being let down to this very day.”

Former Ireland footballer Niall Quinn was among those who attended the church service. He was in New York during Ireland’s defeat of Italy as part of the World Cup on the day of the shooting and recalled his memory of the day of the tragedy.

“The contrast in emotions that day, I will never forget,” he said.

Fresh flowers were placed around a small stone memorial outside St Macartan’s church.

Hundreds of people attended the open air Mass followed by a procession to the scene of the killings where prayers were offered for the victims.

A relative of some of the victims, Patrick McCreanor, said the families are “still looking for justice”.

He said: “We are only scratching at the surface at the minute, this goes right up to the highest level of the authorities.

“Really up to the highest level, there is more still to come out.”

Urgent Appeal